The Joys of Innkeeping

Today was a great illustration of why I love, love, love having housekeeping help: because it frees me up to deal with all the other guest issues.

Last night, the new guests checking into room 14 told us the phone had no dial tone. I went to check. Sure enough, no dial tone. So I swapped out the phone, just in case we were in luck and it was an easy fix. No luck. They were gracious about it. I added "Call phone repairman" to my list for today.

The phone repairman diagnosed the problem relatively quickly: while rerouting the sewer lines last week to avoid the freezing sewer pipes issue (a real fun one, that), the plumber cut one of the phone lines. This, of course, is easy to do because the lines are just strung willy-nilly under the deck. Grr. The nice man fixes the phone line and I add "Fix phone lines to lodge" to my list of long-term projects.

While he is diagnosing the phone line issue, one of the housekeeper comes to tell Michael there's something wrong with the toilet in room 14. Michael takes a look, decides we need to fix the flow valve tower, hands me a bunch of parts and an instruction sheet, and heads off to the hardware store to get a piece we are missing, instructing me to follow the directions.

I'm pretty good at following directions, and these were actually written at my knowledge level (which is to say, very basic). It would have been a perfectly pleasant way to spend an afternoon, if not for my fear that the guests would check in early and if not for needing to still answer the phone. (I do understand that this week seems like a great time for people to plan their January and February ski vacations. But really, I'm just trying to survive this week.) Which brings me back to my original point--our first year here, we'd have been doing all this plus cleaning all the rooms.

It took us an hour and a half and another trip to the hardware store (turns out we had to replace the handle assembly as well) but the toilet now flushes and fills without running constantly.

Yea us.