Wanderings: The Weller House Inn

 

The Weller House Inn, Fort Bragg, CA

 Unsure whether I was at the right door into the old house, I walked in, saw no one, heard nothing and called what I thought was a loud enough, “Hellooo?” After peeking around some corners, feeling rather lost and getting no response, I went off in search of a more appropriate entrance. I never found one. It was dark and raining outside; the house was unlit (nothing like the professionally shot photo posted on Vivien's profile) so I went back and called out a little louder then sat on a bench to wait. Nearly10 grueling, uncertainty filled minutes later, Vivien came out of one of the closed doors across from where I was sitting (she never heard my hellooo?) to 'greet' me and show me around a bit. Schlepping my bags, I was led through a maze of small connecting rooms piled high with office papers and plastic bins and clothes and what seemed like just a bunch of junk. In a private dining room, I was introduced to Angelina, the housekeeper I would be working with. She was sitting at the end of a long dining table littered with Bernie Sanders campaign flyers and pamphlets. Vivien began telling me about her passion for Bernie, peppering me with questions about my political views and who I was looking at for the election. She said I might be working at the campaign office in town and mentioned a few upcoming events she had scheduled. Hmm…I thought I was there to help run the inn and clean guest rooms.

After a bit more chit chat about her hero Bernie, Vivien led me through the kitchen and introduced me to Babar, from Pakistan who was at the stove cooking. She called him her partner.  It was not a well lit area because of an electrical glitch in the circuit breaker on that floor so I couldn't take in much beyond Babar at the stove and the island behind him piled with dishes and pots and pans. After an invitation to eat dinner with them later (no, he was not the cook for guests of the inn) I was led with my bags around a corner to my room. Vivien explained that the electricity wasn’t working in half the kitchen or in the room she normally puts workers in and asked, "Do you know anything about circuit breakers?" "Not in 150 year old houses," I replied, wisely leery of ancient electrical systems. I followed her to my room. The door opened out into the hallway because there wasn't enough space for it to open in, as most doors do. The room held a full sized bed shoved into a corner, some shallow built in shelves big enough for toiletries and my cell phone on the wall next to the head of the bed. A portable heater about the size of a carry-on suitcase was squeezed between the wall and the end of the bed. Tucked to the right of the doorway, at the side of the end of the bed was a tiny nightstand with a tinier lamp on top.  A mere two square feet of floor space was available to put my bags...unless I shoved them through the floor level cubbyhole that opened to the hallway. The other option would be to could climb on the bed and set them on top of the wall that stopped a good ten feet from the 'real' ceiling...this room had no ceiling of its own and was constructed by adding two walls to a larger area...my room's ceiling light was in the hallway. Maybe this configuration is not so strange for an old Victorian house turned B and B but it felt like an afterthought, as did I at the moment. I set my bags on the bed as Vivien mumbled something about having trouble with ants and was off to get me some clean bedding. 

Did she say ants? As my host walked out, I looked more closely at the bed where I had just set my things. Ants indeed. Everywhere. Crawling ants,  dead ants, dying ants...on the nightstand, on the bed, the portable heater, the window sill. Thank God for the window, which I immediately opened because the recently sprayed chemicals were making it hard for me to breathe.  The shelf on top of the wall suddenly seemed a better option for my bags so up they went. I carefully removed the comforter cover and sheets, trying to keep the ants from falling back or crawling up onto the now unmade bed. Vivien returned with clean bedding and said, "Here you go," then left me to make what was supposed to be my bed for the next three weeks. 

When I was done, I tracked her down (she was busy sorting and stacking Bernie stuff) and asked for something to clean the ants and chemical smell off the floor. She scoffed and let me know it was just orange oil. My horrible sense of smell had been miraculously revived and I was absolutely sure I was NOT smelling orange oil. I was given a crusty old, rinsed-a-hundred-times rag to wipe the floor and shown to the near-by bathroom (I'll spare you those details) for access to water and a broken broomstick if I wanted to use it with the rag to mop under the bed.  After several wipes and rinses and moppings, I put away my tools and sat down to hum a few bars from Cinderella....in my own little corner in my own little room, I can be...etc., etc.  I gathered my thoughts and willed myself not to cry.
 
When it was clear that no one was coming to see how I was settling in, I made my way to the kitchen to chat with the man cooking. Vivien walked through and announced that she had to go pick up her son from the movie theater. “Have some wine, make yourself comfortable and set the table for 6 while I’m gone,” she told me. Um…okay, bye. Back in the dining room I solicited Angelina’s help to set the table for dinner. Neither of us knew where the dishes were stored but we eventually found what we needed and got the table set. While I was awkwardly waited with her as she concentrated on her computer, Babar came in and told us to get started with dinner because he had to go…something about a call from his sister. He yanked the naan bread from the oven, set the wok with the spicy curry chicken on the table and left. The little bit of info I had extracted from the housekeeper revealed that she was only there because her internet was down and she had some emails to take care of. When I asked her about how many guests were there that night, she said in broken English, "Oh there aren't never guests," then proceeded to fill up a bowl with food and left, saying she needed to get home to pack for her trip home to her family in Mexico for the holidays. Huh?


Lesson 2: You can't judge a host by her profile.