Spin, Spin, Spin

It is not a good Monday.

I had a four day weekend.  We took Thursday and Friday off to drive to the Poconos for a little mini getaway.  We arrived and the house was super cute and well stocked and seemed promising. However, we quickly learned that the hot tub was not working, and spent the next two days dealing with the property manager trying to get it fixed.  He was very responsive, but the guy he was sending over couldn't get it figured out.  Finally on Saturday he conceded it was broken.  Also on Saturday, the fireplace (aka the other thing we'd been most excited about), which had a fireplace insert in it, started chirping at us CONSTANTLY because the battery in the receiver was low.  We determined that based on our own research b/c the property manager had no idea and couldn't get a hold of the owner to find out.  It drove us CRAZY.  :-o

I learned something about the Poconos this weekend---I don't need to go back.  It may be pretty in the summer and fall, but in the winter it is not remarkable and there's nothing to do if you don't ski. Seriously.  We spent the day driving around Friday trying to explore, but most things we wanted to check out were closed, and the rest were lackluster at best.  We had lunch at a brewery with OK food, but it was full of one bajillion kids for some reason, so it was seriously obnoxious.

Now, the lack of things to do wouldn't have bothered me so much if everything at the house was in working order. I would have been A-OK spending my weekend in and out of the hot tub and the rest of the time in front of the fireplace.  But by Saturday even the fireplace option was gone.  Friday night was bearable only because we grilled (in the cold) and drank a lot of margaritas.  :-o  Thank god for our traveling frozen margarita machine!!

We were bored.  The hot tub was totally unusable, and the tub inside the house was miniscule.  The fireplace would have driven me up the wall.  We decided to come home early.  We left around 2:30 on Saturday afternoon and got home about 6:30.  NOT what I'd planned.

I was so disappointed.  So frustrated.  I had really been looking forward to that, and I think we really benefit from those periodic escapes from daily life.  However, this trip just felt like a string of frustrations and it really dampened the whole experience.  We tried to make the best of things Saturday night.  We broke out our own firepit and roasted turkey hot dogs over the flames for dinner and drank strawberry daiquiris.  Admittedly, that was fun and it helped dull the disappointment a little bit.

We've had such good luck with our rentals in the past, so this was a bummer.  The property manager said he would work with the owner to see what kind of compensation he could get us for our issues, so hopefully we get comped for some of our expenses.  We searched for houses that specifically had fireplaces and hot tubs and didn't consider the ones that didn't have them.  If we'd known the hot tub was broken we never would have booked it!  Hopefully the owner takes that into consideration.

Beyond that, later that Saturday night I got an email from my mom telling me that my grandfather is moving into some Hospice House place on Monday.  He'd been in the hospital for awhile with pneumonia and then other issues, then went to a rehab place to work on putting some weight back on, etc.  Insurance decided last week that he wasn't making enough progress so they wouldn't cover it anymore, so he had to make a quick choice on where to move to.  He can't really be at home on his own anymore, so this is the new choice.

My mom says that aside from the name, this place is actually pretty OK and that it doesn't mean we've given up on him, but it's just more suited to his needs now.  Nonetheless, I spent some time crying about it Saturday night, which was obviously a mood killer, and it's just casting a dark cloud over everything right now.  I feel bad for not being there, I feel so sad that his life is going to be further reduced to a single room of his own space (aside from the common areas).  Yes, he can leave if he wants to go do things with the family, etc., it's not a prison.  But it's a huge change and it's sad and hard and I'm not even there to deal with the full weight of it.

Quite honestly I just feel very weepy and sad and annoyed with myself for making a big deal out of this stupid weekend vacation house bust when my grandfather's entire world is changing.  But that's what's happening and either I'm awful and selfish or one thing is magnifying the other and...who knows.

I know I'm a bit hard to love right now.  Short on patience, irritable, frustrated, always on the verge of boiling over.  BF is doing what he can with me, and he definitely means well, but right now I don't even know what I need.

I'm just trying to focus on work, which is annoying b/c of my patience levels already, but I just feel like my head is swirling and I need a good cry, but that's not feasible for the office.

This post is a mess.  Fitting!