Making the Most of the Hotel

He’s taken to sitting by the fire pit with my old computer, writing stories. The business travelers seem amused by a small boy with a laptop.

I guess you can tell by the title of this post that we’re still not back in the house. Yep, six weeks out from the fire and I still don’t have any estimate as to when we’ll actually be able to move back home. So for now, I’m trying to find a new normal routine and make the most of hotel living.*

There are some pros to living in the Hyatt House:

• I haven’t had to make a bed or clean a bathroom in six weeks.
• Someone makes breakfast every morning.
• If I time it right, someone makes cookies every afternoon.
• We have a pool.
• We have a small kitchen with a fridge, which is a huge improvement over our first week’s room at a different hotel.

But there are also plenty of cons.

• I can’t work from “home.” The Assistant is sleeping on the pull-out couch, which means that the only place to sit is in my bed.
• As there’s no space to work, I have to go to bed when The Assistant goes to bed. This should give me ample time to blog, but there’s nothing about this arrangement that gives me any oomph to actually work.
• I can’t work early in the morning, like I used to, without waking everyone as I try to sneak out to the lobby.
• I’m sick of restaurants.
• When I decide to cook, the efforts are generally fairly lame. They also require us to stake out a table on the patio because there’s no place for us to eat in the room.
• I have no idea what we’re going to do about a quiet homework space for The Assistant when school starts in three weeks.
• I’d forgotten how much I hate waiting for an available coin-op washer and dryer to get my laundry done.

Fitness-wise… ha, there’s nothing to report there. I haven’t ridden my bike in six weeks, which means that I’ve lost any training gains that I made back in June. I also haven’t been running. I went out this weekend and lumbered through two of the ugliest miles that you’ve ever seen. It felt like I ran 12. If there’s anything worse than running, it’s starting to run. Again. I know this, and yet I still let it happen.

The fitness thing has been the hardest. Never has there been a time when I needed it more, yet with the logistics and scheduling it’s really hard to fit it in. I can’t go early without waking the family. I can’t go late without waking The Assistant. I now have a temporary office — in an actual office building — and can’t go midday because there’s no place to shower (unlike my home office).  So I need to figure stuff out on that front. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know.

So for now, we do our best with the New Normal, and try to figure stuff out one day at a time.

* I am completely aware that having to stay in a hotel is a first world problem. We’re not homeless. We’re not bankrupt. We’re not in any sort of unsafe situation. But it’s still mentally draining, and upsetting to The Assistant.

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