Power Outage and Decadence

 It feels lately like I'm in some hurricane of discombobulation where I'm accomplishing absolutely nothing. Goal setting? What's that? I must set some new goals. Must write them down. Must prioritize. Must get off Facebook. Stop frittering away on Twitter.

 Between focusing on elderly father's health and updates. Working at part time job. Searching for a new full-time job. Trying to think of new query ideas, I appear to be going nowhere fast. I'm starting to act like a real Salt Springer. Pretty soon I'll start wandering aimlessly with a coffee in my hand or worse yet, sitting on the steps of T.J. Beans just staring into space, or god forbid, I'll take up folk singing and convince the editor of the local paper to write some inane story about how nobody wants to support me when I'm standing outside sounding like every other amateur folk singer who has ever lived on the planet in this millenium.

When I heard there might be snow, pre-weekend, I went and  bought a small roast to see if I could still manage to cook such a thing. I figured if it snowed a lot and I was holed up like a crazy bacheloress hermit crab, I wanted to eat well, watch good movies, have lots of books and magazines, and at least one good bottle of red wine. I wasn't counting on one thing: Power outage. No woodburning stove. Are you kidding me?

So, I packed it all up and headed over to the luxury hotel more recently nicknamed The Shambles by its infamous owner Pauline.

It's true, her main cottage might be chock a block full to the rafters of two households worth of furniture given  the impending completion of the new cottage that is taking longer to build than the pyramids did.

We holed up with Maggie and Griffin "the beast" and we ate roast beef dinners, drank good red wine, watched movies, ate popcorn, talked about men and Salt Spring and work and getting old and dying, about buying a flat in France next to a bakery and tried to compile a silly list of everything you'd really needed to know about Salt Spring before you move here that nobody ever tells you.

She loaned me a nightie and let me wear her furry pink floor-length robe. She heated up the heating pad and I crawled into the big, beautiful bed in the loft with the old fashioned quilts.


Before that I made sure all the cuckoo clocks stopped their incessant ticking and turned off the lights and sunk into the heaven of a Beauty rest, the mattress and yes, a description of the luxurious sleep I had.

I awoke to golden light streaming through the windows. The snow on the evergreens was crisp through the skylight. I could hear her in the kitchen below speaking to the dogs as she made the coffee and I was aware at every moment that it's one of those memories that I'll tuck safely and fondly away to go back to with love when I need to.