JLee Brown
This is a Diary kept by an Innkeeper of a bed and breakfast. (me)! It tells tales. Some funny, some sad, some scandalous, and some directly from outer space. You won't believe what some people do! The names have been changed to protect the not so innocent......
Her second book continues with the humor and sarcastic wit she's known for - but this book takes a little different slant from her short stories in "If Only In A Dream". These stories are true! She is still running a bed and breakfast on the Atlantic Coast but has actually run more than one. She refuses to divulge the location of her Diary entries, and even confesses some stories just couldn't be printed. Her love of writing is fueled by her love of people and wanting to entertain them. If she finds it funny...she must share. So enjoy - these are the stories that passed the "it cracked me up" test.
May 13th
Well Dear Diary – your gonna love this one! It started out to be a pretty normal day. Did I say normal? Well, this, as they say, is one for the books! Everyone has successfully gotten to their prospective rooms – I have people in all the cottages as well as the Bed and Breakfast. I felt pretty secure that everyone was happy and I could go to my room, put on some sweats, turn on Turner Movie Classics, listen to Humphrey Bogart while I catch up on emails…..it got to be about 10:30 pm….and someone is pounding on the outside door. I go out to the hallway, (sweats and all) and look out to find this rather young (twentyish) guy with very blood shot eyes jumping around on the deck, frantic. I opened up the door and he is obviously inebriated – starts to tell me that his Mother just saw three (THREE have you) black rats run across the floor in the living room of their cottage and they have run under the couch. Um…okay – first of all I have never seen a black rat…especially here.. and the fact that we have 4 outdoor cats that live under the house makes me almost laugh. Did I tell you they were all at least 3 inches long? Okay – let me also explain that this 20ish drunk son is about 5’11’’, 200lbs – his father is even bigger and they are coming to me to solve this problem. Girlie girl Innkeeper that wears lip gloss to bed? I said, from my balcony looking down on their cottage porch – “What do you expect me to do? You are grown men…..” The father yells up – that he thinks they are living in the couch – the wife is running around frantically outside – saying something to the effect of how she has never seen such a thing, oh my God Oh my God…something like that…I by now have gotten a kind of abstract view of this picture and it looks extremely funny to me, and I start to laugh. This seems to be an annoying characteristic of mine. I told the father to flip the couch over and told the now crazed mother to come up on the deck…in case the 3 inch long black rats run out of their home –the couch. She get’s half way up the stairs and her husband turns the couch over and there is a long silence and then he says, “Honey could it have been a bug you saw?” Now I am coming down the stairs really laughing-knowing that what she saw was a palmetto bug – indigenous to our island – big ugly and harmless….when I got to their front door – I saw it run from under the couch….maybe less than an inch and dark brown – but still ugly. I explained to them what it was..that their isn’t much I can do about them – and so their three 3 inch black rats had mysteriously turned in to one palmetto bug and they decided they would be fine. I went back to my room – but ya know after you have done this for awhile – you kind of feel what kind of night your going to have….I left my clothes on and laid down on top of my bed….fell asleep. That is until about midnight. You guessed it - my friends were back at the door – this time knocking like they’ve been watching COPS. I go out this time – he tells me to come downstairs because the air conditioner fell out of the window and fell on his car….no joke! I walk over to the window…and there it is…sitting in the gravel upside down….he has a little dent in his front right panel – this thing missed his hood completely and it looked like it just bounced off his car. He is standing there telling me he was in bed with his wife….and he heard a smash and it just “fell out of the window”. Never in my life have I heard this, that an air conditioner decides it doesn’t like it’s window and just pops out and tries to escape. (Apparently they do this from time to time.) Well….it was quite obvious when Mr Macho man who is afraid of a bug, turned the couch back over and shoved it up against the window he hit the air conditioner…and he pushed it out…you know that, I know that….even the palmetto bug knows that. But I once again..I stood there…and listened to this – until I couldn’t take it anymore…told him there was nothing we could do about it right now…and we would deal with it in the morning….Think there is a happy ending to this? Guess again. 1 a.m. – homey is calling me on the phone this time…demanding that I come down there , because he wants insurance information, and he is packing up his family and he is going somewhere else. I told him that was fine…to pack up and leave but I wasn’t coming downstairs at 1 am – he couldn’t call the insurance company at 1 am and to do what he felt he needed to do. Then I hung up – and watched this strange family pack their car….to go out into the island and find somewhere better according to him. Somewhere ….without 3 inch black rats and escaping air conditioners apparently.
