Advantages of bed rest

I finished a sweater.


The pic shows construction, starting from the hems and upper edge of the sleeves, decreasing and then... forget it, making it somehow. The sleeves got crocheted up and I'm finished now

My back keeps hurting, thanks for asking, and I'm slightly bored by all the bedrest. I went to pick a skirt from my dressmaker friend who lives two hundred metres away because I had an itch. It took me twenty minutes to walk there (well, the outing took an hour but we spent some time chatting at the fence) and while I got some fresh air, I admit that it wasn't the most brilliant idea. On the other hand, I apparently can run the hotel and do stuff over the phone, from my bed. Not bad.

Huh.

During the journey from Italy, I was slightly bored. Mom decided that I may get sick and pushed me to the front seat which prevented me from knitting (dad doesn't like seeing me knit in the car and driver decides about music and general ambiance) so I stared at the mountains, made a few mental notes, such as getting a book about those castles around Brennero, and taking the old road sometimes, and kept inventing curses.
The latter proved a productive... what's the right word again? Well, thing. Bear with me, I hope I'll be the old eloquent self again. First, it's a great fun to get the starting point at Let the fleas of a thousand camels feast in your armpits and go on. It's not as easy as I kept cursing the whole area so the curses had to be inclusive; Let your wife run away with someone cooler than you someplace cooler than where you live means that the runaway wife had some fun - and that's not the way to go. It has to be locusts and plague for everyone. Second, one can use the odder bits of one's vocabulary, but dear readership needs to find their own examples as I can't think of any.

There was some usual stuff. The chef not reading my email and deciding that he doesn't know what to do - he conjured up something entirely different from the first line and didn't bother to go beyond so the holiday aftermath was screaming about damn illiterate idiots. Parents said that I was overdoing it... and today morning, chef signed a mail with his name misspelled in a bad way. And the Ministry of Education shall send their special units upon thee; they will descend like angry and particularly angular hailstoneson you and beat you with hard-bound literature until you cave, you lazy morons. Those who will fail to get edumacated will be sold to North Korea.

And then I finally started writing the book of my hotel stories. The guys from the publishing forum had prompted me to, offering to actually pay for that. I'm on page 1 and it will be hard to assemble all the fragments I spread over the internetz, in my notebooks and wherever as I forget everything but things don't do themselves and one has to start somewhere. I may or may not keep you informed.

Breakfast or Tuesday afternoon

The other day, I spent half an hour rummaging among my craft supplies and tools, because the Lunéville hook would be either somewhere with the beads and embroidery stuff, or in that jar that contains mostly knitting needles, along with a few other elongated tools.

And then I stood in the middle of the kitchen, with this somewhat strange instrument, wondering what I was up to. No train of thoughts went through my head, nothing along the lines of If I intended to embroider, there would be tulle and frame. I just stood there, puzzled. Mom came to save me saying that there's TV to watch, I went around the corner towards my chair and there it was, my yellow throw with edge unravelled. I sat down, fixed the edging - machine done with a hook thingy but I don't have that tiny crochet hooks - and finally, after half a year of whining at the thread, I fixed it.

There it is, I'm barely able to decide what I want to eat and whether I want to eat or why the steaming hell I'm standing by the kitchen counter. Normal people would go and get a sick leave but the charm of a family business is that there're various emotions and other crap intertwined with work and as it happens, work of any sort gets usually more complicated than fixing a sandwich.

The other day, after a thousandth last drop, after I found and fixed further of the same mistakes caused by people ignoring my orders and instructions, I just started crying. I've been saying it round and round for at least half a year that I lack people skills and facing the horde of semi-literate morons, I'm just lost. Because, having the brains of three dunces doesn't mean that I'm able to fruitfully communicate with one. Especially if said dunce doesn't want to. So, they've been lying to me, ignoring assigned tasks, fucking things up and when I said something, the response was Oh, really, I wouldn't have thought so.

When BossDad returned from his skiing trip, and there have been phonecalls when I was screaming that I'm totally not going to put up against this so he was warned, I just said I'm leaving. That the guy was hired as an executive something so he can manage half a day in the reception with ten guests around. The guy wouldn't manage a chicken coop, by the way, I caught him writing to clients once, when it was too late, and had to made an idiot of myself explaining that the cook, against all instructions or permissions, had an urge to act, and that while his writing skills, especially when it comes to punctuation, are horrendous but he cooks reasonably well. Which was not very exact description, and after having seen the pots overflowing with strange sauces, I'll never eat out. I mean, nothing wrong with sauces but when he told me that sauces are the bestest and the more the better and everyone likes a nice thick sauce in large amount, om nom nom, I said 'xcuse me, I hate sauces of this sort you describe, sauce is a thing that comes by spoonfuls at max, and not necessary with everything. Then I ordered him to cook things that don't float in goop and was halfway ignored. Yeah, and he can't calculate a price of a meal, excellent if someone is to manage a kitchen. Semi-literate morons, I say.

So, since dear staff decided to ignore me, I guessed that the jerk of a receptionist won't be working on Saturday, I hung around, fixed his further fuckups, cried, threw some beer glasses and other things around, cried more, BossDad said to come in the morning so at 2 pm he appeared, I cried more, yelled at him that everyone should be shot in their knees, with particular attention to some people and that I want the fuck get out of there. After he asked who will be in the reception in the evening, I said that I don't care. I told The Guy - can't call him a chef as he can't cook beforehand so this was a bit of the show, bleeding pure adrenalin doesn't mean that I can't make a better point.


Haven't really talked to BossDad since. Actually, I've been avoiding him like plague. I'm probably acting silly but I just can't go on. I'm a sociophobe and I've had problems with strangers, phone calls, too many people in too little time... so no way I'm calling anyone I haven't encountered in person. Don't care who will do it, I won't.

I always fondly recall someone back at the Arts department claiming: Them managers. What an easy life full of fun. They drive their fat capitalist asses in Mercedeses and make phone calls all the time. Phew.


I don't know how to recognize nervous breakdown but I suspect that throwing things around and not caring is pretty close.

Well, Italy...

...although it possibly may happen anywhere. I hear that people don't go on strikes in Finland and that trains are always on time and at the right place in Japan but those may be legends.
At midday, I wanted to take a bus to Santa Maria Novella to leave my suitcase there, the buses stop across the street, so that I wouldn't have to drag all my bags at once. After half an hour of waiting for the buses which didn't go, some compassionate fellow citizen told us who waited there that there's a bus strike. I brought the suitcase back home and went to take books back to the library and for a lunch with Laura. (The stuffed rabbit at Lo Skipper was excellent.)
I thought about not being caught by a rainstorm out in the wild and walking back barefoot several times this spring, so... exactly this happened today. I was soaked wet, with half-dissolved shoes and adequately pissed.
I finished my packing, went to the Campo di Marte station, the train was announced to be some 15 minutes late. I had a reserve for unscheduled delays and disasters so I was okay, it was still doable.
Alas, I had no reserve for unplanned unscheduled delays. The train for SMN landed not at the first platform but at the second and I wasn't able to catch it with some 50 kilos of luggage. I went to try and catch a taxi. Meantime, some logistic woman from Student Agency called me where the hell I am. In a taxi to Piazza Adua, will be there in a while. She started explaining that the bus is due in a few minutes, when I migt arrive and that she'll call the driver whether they could wait for me. So far so good, excellent service, I thought to myself until the logistic gal called back, saying that they totally aren't able to wait for me for a single minute and that I might take a taxi to catch the bus in Venice, for example. I held back and didn't tell the gal to go kill herself for such ideas - I don't have an oil well at the backyard to go to Venice by taxi, that's it. I guess that neither the logistic gal has.
The bus was due at 1815, I was there 1818.
Three minutes, the hell.
We cursed the ATAF, Italian Railways, bus drivers and just the whole world in unison with the taxi driver, he dropped me off at the train station and I went to buy the ticket for midnight express to Vienna, quietly hoping that there might be a sleeper place available.
The queue was long and slow so meantime I tried to call parents, I needed to whine and to let them know that there'll be no need to pick me at 0730 in the morning. Dad wouldn't pick the phone but mom was there. I summed up the situation and she said You're so chaotic. As always. You should've gone earlier. She's unteachable. When I need to whine, I need to whine and be told that they are all arseholes, whoever I'm whining about. I even explicitly told her to let me whine, promise me a cake and I'd be fine. Nope, she needed to say that so she got a full dose of pointy sarcasm. Well, then she promised cakes. And no, they had only seats for the Vienna night train. So, I dragged my possessions to the waiting room and I'm waiting. I'm high on adrenaline so I'm afraid that the next smartass who will give me useful advice or something might get a bleeding wound or two.
I settled at the waiting room - there's just about time for one lappy battery and one sandwich... and meantime, I invented a revenge.
Student Agency offers free coffee on their buses. A cup of vending machine coffee worth 35 cents. My unused ticket was for 63 euros.... so, let's drink all their coffee. Serves them right because giving false hope is just too evil.