Oh em gee, I left my house (*for essential travel)
I’m not a traveler.
I wanted to be when I was younger—hell, I wanted to be a lot of things. I was far more flexible and spontaneous in my twenties, often to the detriment of stability and what others saw as a “normal life.” I had two kids young—which meant a lot of associated drama, too much to talk about here (or ever because this is not a syrupy Lifetime drama called She Had Terrible Taste in Men or My Ex Is a Dick). Needless to say, I was a wildfire contained in a jar in my younger years … I had so much burn to do ALL THE THINGS, but domesticity and parenthood and responsibility kept me confined within the glass.
That’s probably a good thing. We should be thanking the jar—we know what happens to wildfires when left unmanaged.
Burn, you little flame, burn.
Now I’m older, and I have more kids and more responsibility and an awesome husband who loves me and we live a VERY drama-free life, so drama-free, in fact, that the Lifetime Network would immediately pass on any proposed biopic on the day-to-day of this author and her brood in suburban Canada.
Thank the old gods and the new.
With that said, I do a fair amount of complaining about how hard it is to get any work done around here. Three kids, two cats, a husband who works long hours. Ripe for interruption. It is not uncommon for me to throw a little fire now and again about how I need to leave town, go check into a hotel for a month to get any real work done.
You know, like Hemingway. He did that, right?
The pandemic hasn’t messed with my work life the way it has for so many of you, at least in terms of location—I work at home and have for many years. I was interrupted before when the baby needed feeding or changing, when the toddler needed extraction from the top of the fridge, when the school-age kids needed cupcakes delivered or pick-ups due to chipped teeth or bloodied noses; I’m interrupted now when teenagers need rides to their driving test, when someone needs help with homework, or when another someone just needs a willing ear to listen to the bullshit going on at work.
My husband, not used to being at home for months on end, has been grappling with more layoffs than usual—he works in the film industry—so that has been very stressful. My daughter has only been to her downtown office a handful of times in the last year. The middle lad put off university because of the pandemic and has been working on the frontlines in a drug store—great to have a bead on TP but terrifying that he’s working in a place where people go when they’re sick. Our youngest is the only one left in school, and even that has been on again, off again, jiggity-jig.
I don’t need to tell you all this. You’re living through it, too, in whatever shape it’s taken in your life and local community.
Not a self-portrait. My feral COVID hair has a LOT more gray than this lass.
Cut to March 2021: Husband had been off work for enough weeks that we’re getting nervous again (ahhh, the glamour of Hollywood, folks!), so when a job comes up—across the strait in Victoria—he couldn’t say no. “Hey, you wanna go spend two weeks in a hotel to write while I work on this [upcoming TV show name redacted due to confidentiality]?”
“WHY YES, I DO, THANK YOU VERY MUCH, GAREBEAR.”
Except:
We’re not telling anyone because of COVID;
You can’t leave the hotel other than for groceries or a walk outside;
We can’t have any visitors; and
Husband will still be tested twice a week during the job (the film business does not play with protocol) so you can’t risk exposure via outside contacts.
“OK, OK, that seems cool. I have a juicy client edit to get through the first week, and then I have revisions on my own book to get back to for the second week. No problem. I’m in.”
Except:
I have a formidable anxiety problem;
I rarely leave the house, COVID or no COVID;
My children—though two of three are legal adults, have access to a car, money for groceries, and good sense—will miss me; and
MY CAT. SHE WILL BE SO SAD WITHOUT MOMMY TO SNUGGLE AND BITE.
Husband: “But think how much work you’ll get done without the interruptions of home. You always say how nice it would be to escape for a bit …”
“Yes. You’re right. Let’s do it.”
I should’ve felt like Bilbo Baggins: “I’m going on … an adventure!”
The reality: I’m more like Bilbo when he’s telling Gandalf all the reasons he can’t go on an adventure—needing his armchair, his books, his warm hearth …
Courage mustered, I load my things into a suitcase and prepare for liftoff.
What my suitcase actually looked like. I also took my otter coffee cup and my cozy socks and Blankie. Duh.
Day one: Husband has to take certain chemicals and supplies for this sculpting job. This means we are technically transporting dangerous goods on the ferry, which is a whole bunch of extra paperwork and no fewer than THREE VISITS by the BC Ferries staff while we’re in the lineup, the final one just seconds before we were supposed to be boarding, as they needed to inspect our cargo (like, it wasn’t much because it’s a minivan and no, we’re not going to blow up the boat because I don’t want to die today, not even if it means I get a spotlight on the evening news). They end up confiscating a bottle of acetone (think: paint remover; the stuff you use to take off your nail polish) because we’re not a commercial carrier. And given that we need to check in with the production office over in Victoria by a certain time, Husband implores the supervisor to let us board and not wait two additional hours for the next sailing.
She does. We board. First crisis averted.
(I even treat myself to a pair of adorable PJ bottoms and a book on climate change from the ferry gift shop. Things are looking up!)
VERY cute pajamas from the BC Ferries gift shop. Visit https://www.littlebluehouse.com/ to find some for yourself.
Next: Arrive in Victoria without blowing up the boat due to dangerous goods. Find the hotel.
Which turns out isn’t a hotel at all. It’s a motel, you know, with the room doors facing the outside, sheltering an interesting collection of human beings. No in-house restaurant, no in-house bar, no plush lobby or long, carpeted hallways of well-appointed rooms. Also, a liberal pet policy, so dogs. Lots of dogs. Dogs who like to bark. Lots of barking.
And a parking lot full of diesel-burning, industrial trucks for tree trimming and power-line work, all of whom are up and ready to go to work at 5:30 a.m., right outside my window.
My plan to use the motel’s fitness room to get back on track after months of sitting? Nope. “Fitness facilities are closed because of COVID.” OK, that’s fine. I’ll just do jumping jacks in my room.
“Also there’s no housekeeping services because of COVID, so if you need anything, you have to come down and ask for it.”
Oh. Sure. Makes sense. I’m very practical anyway, and I’m uncomfortable with people waiting on me, which is why I never get massages or manicures, so that’s not a big deal. I’ll just buy some cleaning supplies and come down when I need a vacuum and/or fresh towels.
We’re fine. Everything will be fine. This is fine!
We locate our room, unload the van, buy groceries, seek dinner, crash in front of a hockey game, send 100 texts to the kids to make sure they and the cats are OK.
And as the warm buzz from the dinnertime beer wears off, Husband reveals that the sculpting job he was hired for is at least a three-person job, not a one-GareBear job. He is thus very stressy, which means I am now very stressy because I’m a sponge, and when the people around me are worried, nervous, anxious, and/or stressed, I absorb it. I’m like the Scott Towels of worry wicks. I’m like the Poise pad for panic. I’m a Shamwow! for shock. You freak out, stand next to me, I soak it up.
Husband goes to work the next morning, bright and early, after a long night of tossing and turning—him from stress, me from his stress and from not being able to sleep the first night in a new place. Did I mention I’m also paranoid?
Yeah, that definitely matters. Every noise outside is probably someone coming in to kill me. I check the motel door thrice. Check the windows. Look outside to make sure no knife-wielding ninjas or clown-faced murderers are hiding below, waiting to strike. As mentioned above, I’m not ready to die yet, and especially not in a motel across from a busy mall in downtown Victoria.
Exactly what it looks like in my brain.
Tuesday morning, I allow myself to sleep a little later since I’ve not slept much at all thanks to a restless bed partner, the voice in my head whispering about murderers, the industrial trucks leaving the lot at sunup, plus the last few days have been A LOT for my blunted, homebody sensibilities. But my belly says FOOD NOW PLEASE, so up I get for my morning Rice Chex with rice milk. It’s then I discover the wee, tiny fridge doesn’t keep things very cold, despite being cranked up to its highest setting.
Anyone else fussy about warm milk on their cereal?
Ick.
“OK, that’s fine, just make coffee and toast. This is a first-world problem, missy.”
There’s a toaster in the room, and it works! Boom. Done.
Toast, shower, clothes, hair, etc. Sit down to work.
About an hour in, I hear coughing outside. And not just a cough-cough-oh-dear-it’s-allergy-season, but someone is about to lose a fetid, goopy lung through their nostrils.
Oh my god. Someone outside has COVID, and I’ve got the window open.
I stand and peek through the drapes. We are the last room on the third floor overlooking the very busy parking lot—and the smokers’ gazebo.
A young woman is in the gazebo smoking—and coughing—and coughing and coughing and coughing.
This goes on for twenty minutes.
I close the window and can still hear her coughing.
This seems bad. Do I make sure she’s all right? Do I open the screen and throw out a box of lozenges or maybe a hazmat suit and some masks and a gallon jug of Purell and maybe some Nicorette and orange juice?
Is she going to die in the smokers’ gazebo and I’ll witness it and end up on the evening news anyway, since I didn’t get my shot at a news story while transporting dangerous goods on the BC Ferry nor was I murdered the first night in the motel?
Yeah, right. Nuit would never wear a mask. She won’t even leave her shark costume on at Halloween.
Ugh. I don’t want to die of COVID. Please, old gods and the new, don’t let me get COVID from Coughing Cathy out in the gazebo. Not after all these months of being so careful. I know I said I just needed to live long enough to see Zack Snyder’s Justice League, and I did in fact live long enough to see that beautiful opus but there are other things I’d like to live long enough to see, like season two of The Witcher, so maybe don’t kill me with the coronavirus from Coughing Cathy, thanks very much.
Back to work. Joy of joys, the new soundtrack for Justice League is also out—yes, I’ve lived long enough to hear that too!—and it is glorious.
Turn on the music, and let’s fix some comma splices, baby!
[Work, work, work.]
Wait—what is that noise? I hear something …
Remove earbuds playing the nuanced, layered, emotionally resonant soundtrack by Tom Holkenborg.
Ears tune in … “OH MY GOD, THE PEOPLE NEXT DOOR ARE HAVING SEX.”
And I don’t just mean, like, romance-novel sex. These people are GOING FOR IT, and I’m hearing way more than I ever wanted to hear about, well, everything, and I am awash in a cold, nauseating sweat because I am NOT a voyeur and I don’t care what other people are into or whatever, fill your boots on PornHub, just don’t make me party to it, but listening to other people copulate loudly and aggressively at three o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon in a roadside motel when I’m just trying to fix crooked sentences …
Traumatized. That’s the only word for it.
It’s fine. You can laugh. I’ll wait for you to finish. I had to wait for them to finish too.
But then it happened again on Thursday.
And then Monday, I think? And yes, Thursday again. Although this last Thursday, based on the rhythm, frequency, and vigor of the banging against our shared wall, it may have been a dog trying to escape the bathroom. Either that, or some poor orifice was taking a pounding. Ouch. Also, I think maybe someone is using that room to run a clandestine business op.
Maybe.
From 3:02 p.m. that first Tuesday afternoon, it was earbuds or foam earplugs or the TV on in the tiny bedroom because eww.
Ewwwww. <— sounds best if you say it like Moira Rose
Also, it turns out two weeks in a room with nothing but work and toast and a giant bag of plain M&Ms and no real outside contact is kind of … lonely. Sure, Husband was there at night (as were dinner foods), but he was tired and stressed. The internet connectivity sucked, so streaming the things that calm me (Schitt’s Creek, et al.) was a no-go. I tried reading, but my job is words—you get to a point during the day where you’re just tired of words.
And not having my kids ask me 1000 questions or my cat climb onto my keyboard and bite me until I give her cookies was also way harder than I’d anticipated.
Needless to say, when we reached the end of the second week—in alignment with no Canucks hockey because the whole team fell sick (!) and explosive growth of COVID cases in BC so no way to go anywhere or do anything—I was ready to return to my permanent residence.
On our last morning, I was awake at 5 a.m. but waited until 6:17 a.m. to fly into the shower as a courtesy to tired GareBear. We were up and out by 7:45 a.m. We made the 9 a.m. ferry and we didn’t capsize, I wasn’t stabbed in the back of the head by the weird guy three rows back who had his phone on speaker to which he treated the whole crowd to his lengthy conversation about either growing Christmas trees or pot and then decided to press the same two keys on his keypad, out loud, for TWENTY MINUTES until another dude in a camouflage neck gaiter and a couple of wild kids said, “Hey, bud, knock it off, have some consideration for other people on the boat.”
I drove home (because Husband was exhausted), white-knuckling it all the way because I was not going to die in a fiery crash on Highway 17 after enduring the last two weeks of unmitigated anxiety induced by gazebo-dwelling human vectors and sex-crazed motel patrons and possible murderers hiding in the untrimmed shrubbery.
When we walked in the door of our humble abode at 11:30 a.m., my elfin daughter and my chubby cat were waiting in the kitchen; my baby boy, who grew at least an inch while Mommy was gone, waltzed in wearing his housecoat, and I started to cry, and I hugged them all one thousand times and then when the middle kid finally got home from work, I smothered him with all the hugs, even if he did smell like hand sanitizer and sweat and should probably change deodorant brands …
The moral of the story:
I love my kids and my bed and my cat and my own toilet and no one here is having loud, aggressive sex and no COVID Cathy is coughing outside my window and even though I could still get murdered in my bed and at last make the evening news, I’m hoping for the best.
Also, my family said they will, from now on, laugh at me every time I complain about how IT IS SO NOISY IN HERE I CANNOT GET ANYTHING DONE I’M LEAVING I NEED A VACATION FROM YOU PEOPLE.
Bluff, you have been called.
Well played.
The day we got home—cat heaven! Rosie Cotton usually doesn’t love me, but I guess she missed Mommy too. Also she always wants to be near Nuit, even though Nuit thinks Rosie is a tiny monster.
P.S. I have a new book coming out on Earth Day, April 22. You should preorder it so I can keep buying the medicine that keeps me from hiding under my bed with the cats and those leftover M&Ms. Murderers never look under the bed, do they?