Housekeeping

Wednesdays are our days for Housekeeping here at the Extended Stay Hotel. The cleaning lady surprised me last week at around 10:00 am, so today I thought I'd be safe, wake up at 8:30 am, and have plenty of time to shower and get out. Today, she knocked on the door at 9:15 am (which would have been fine had I not hit snooze a few times after 8:30... oops...). So I asked if she could come back in 30 minutes and she agreed. I got dressed without showering (ew!) and get Charley ready to leave. We ran to Starbucks to get some breakfast, went to the ATM, and then to the Post Office. I got back around 10:30, thinking that would have been plenty of time for her to clean. Nothing has been touched. I realize now that I'm screwing up her schedule by being here. The bad part is, she's scared of Charley, so I have to be sure to take him with me where ever I decide to go while she cleans. Normally that would not be a bad thing, but we already ran our errands for the morning on this side of town. I'm not sure when she's coming now, or what I'm going to do with the kid when she comes back. I would take him for a walk, but it's been raining off and on and it looks like that will continue at least until this afternoon.
Dilemma #2 is that I have a meeting today at 2 with our Realtor and the company that is going to build our fence, so I would like to be in the shower ASAP to get ready for that. I can't take Charley with me to the meeting. I don't want to be pushy with the staff here and say that she needs to do it sooner rather than later, but I'm not sure how else to handle the situation. With any luck, maybe she'll show up in the next few minutes, Charley and I can take a walk, and it won't rain. We'll see.
On a brighter note, we will be in our house in a week. This is assuming everything has gone through with the loan officer, etc. Casey told me yesterday that she has not been the easiest person to get in touch with, and she hasn't followed up the way she was supposed to. Luckily, everyone else we're working with has been very helpful, so hopefully that will all work out. [I am really trying not to end sentences with a preposition, but sometimes it's really difficult. Growing up with a father who was an English major makes me aware of things I shouldn't say, but somewhere down the line I forgot the rule about ending sentences with a preposition and I'm not sure how to stop. I just did it twice.] Please just laugh at me and don't think about how ridiculous I sound.
So even though my 'accident' the other day wasn't that big a deal, I'm still nervous to drive. Maybe it's because the GPS is being a POS. I don't know. I think it's also because I have no idea where I'm going around here. I know that will get better with time, so I'm sure it'll all work out- it's just frustrating right now. I miss Columbia. At least there I knew where things were. Okay, I say that, realizing that I would have probably killed to have a GPS when I first got there, because I had no idea where anything was at that point. It feels like things should be easier to find here, though. It's the Midwest. It's not like SC where you could never see the street names because they hid them on the side of the road in a bush somewhere. At least here they post them up by the traffic light. And the Midwest works on more of a grid system. Thank goodness! Not to be a jerk or anything, I'm just glad to get back to a system that makes a little more sense. I remember getting lost numerous times in Columbia because I'd take a street and then suddenly it'd turn into another street name without warning, and I'd be in another town or something. It really wasn't that difficult. I say that, knowing that I'm terrible with directions and get lost a little more frequently than I'd like to admit. Going to Jenny Amos' graduation party, I got so lost that I literally ended up almost 45 minute away from where I needed to be. But again, I will blame that on the fact that the street sign I was looking for was definitely in a tree at the time, and it was nice that when I finally got to the party, other people said the same thing. It's still embarrassing to be late, though!!
I guess that's about all for now... I'm still waiting on the cleaning lady to get here. I guess until then, I'll hang out in the room with Charley and kill time by reading or something. I'll probably write again later after I get back from the meeting at our house this afternoon.

-Ash