Off course, in the rough.

I apologize for the terrible lag in posting again.

These last few weeks have been an absolute conspiracy of impediments. This week has somehow been worse despite having actually been home.

Among the largest of the detours: per my last post, my son hurt his knee a week ago. I’ll spare you the all-consuming play-by-play since. The punchline: He has an issue which likely won’t be remedied without surgery. For now, he can play on it. If he reinjures it, he’s likely looking at a long, unpleasant shutdown and recovery. For now, though… he’s back to soccer and heading toward tryouts in two weeks. Will his knee hold up? We’ll see. It’s a bit nerve-wracking TBH.

Adding to the fun, my son came down with some bug this week (which wasn’t COVID). I had him all week and then - because, of course, I did - I promptly came down with his bug at the exact moment when I dropped him off at his other parents. The moment when I was supposed to be free of distractions to catch up on writing. Naturally.

My brain has been mush ever since.

If I didn’t know it wasn’t COVID, I’d be sure it was. Total brain fog. It has sucketh very much. I’ve been in a walking fugue. A spacy sleepwalk. It hasn’t been terrific.

To round out my complain-athon, I have been attempting to sequester myself somewhere consistently quiet to 1) catch up on sleep; 2) shake off this fog; and 3) get some writing done.

That effort has gone comically un-well.

For real, you just have to laugh at this…

Friday, I booked myself into a hotel. I had a connection. It was absurdly cheap. One of those little extended stay chains. Clean. Nice. Street rate was $149. I paid $50 - and it came with breakfast!

I would reside. And recoup. And ‘rite. Three ‘r’s’ for only fifty bucks.

And then I arrived at the place to find it filled with little league teams. Positively overrun. There was much running in the hallways. There was much yelling. And that was just the parents.

There was much distraction. There was no writing. There was, however, plenty of coughing as my cold kicked in.

What is it with youth softball/baseball tournaments? I think they’re following me.

Saturday, rather than enjoy another night at the Bad News Bears Suites, I ventured off to somewhere else to see if I could get a cheap room. Got there to discover that it was filled with staff from the LIV Golf Tour. They were in town for a tournament this weekend.

Event staff tend to drinky-drink-drink. This much I know. That wouldn’t help, so I got on my phone to work my dark hotel magic and find a deal somewhere else. Found one only twenty miles away.

It looked highly accommodating of my writerly needs. It had the varied sitting areas beloved by yours truly. I would assuredly be able to select a spot offering just the right level of environmental noise and commotion.

It also had a restaurant. The food would assuredly be overpriced and mediocre. However, in accordance with the immutable laws of large-ish hotels, on the menu would be a chicken quesadilla which would assuredly also be mediocre but not really overpriced. It would assuredly do the trick. I was sick. I wouldn’t have to go out. I could just sulk and write, write and sulk. And it was only a short drive away from the place overrun by the golf tour staffers. Why, yes! That would work quite well…

Y’all, I was a mere half-hour away from going all Hemingway while brooding my way through a chicken quesadilla !

“Okay, last night was a cluster. Tonight though… tonight is going to work out great!”

This is what I thought. I thought this.

I was so brimming with confidence, I actually opted to not go directly to the perfect-hotel-in-waiting and instead spent the last hour of sunlight getting a little Vitamin D with a pleasant walk at a preserve.

Surely, some fresh air would help my cold!

I’d then hit the hotel and go full-quesadilla on some evening wordistry. Fantastic fucking words were about to occur. That much I was abso-damn-sure about.

Enjoyed my visit to the preserve. Had a magical moment with a red fox kit. Breathed deep in the way the universe had clearly aligned to bring me both joy and healing.

And then I set off for the hotel…

Got there. Parked in a noticeably full lot yet took little notice of the police officer working security at the door. Nope. I just bustled right past him into the lobby as if it was normal for an officer to be stationed at the entrance to a Central Jersey hotel. I paid him no mind; and he paid my paying him no mind equally little mind. (Not exactly elite security work there, Officer Lastnight.)

So, I stroll right past him without pause through the revolving door and into the hotel at which point, I was greeted with a VERY large sign splayed across two easels.

It read:

WELCOME LIV GOLF!

Picture me: a little flu-ey, be-little-leaguered from the night before, a refugee from a hotel overrun by LIV Golf people…

WELCOME LIV GOLF.

Sigh.

Now just picture me staring at the giant-ass sign mounted on foam-core which is the kind of thing a hotel only pays for if there is significant money involved. This wasn’t some lame 3’ x 2’ posterboard. This was a mini-billboard. Not a banner. At least 3/8” foam-core backboard with a glossy laminate.

No joke, I just stood there for a solid thirty seconds looking at it with an expression very much like Steve Martin’s late in the movie Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. In my look was a mounting sulkiness over my now-worsening cold along with my inner “really?!” over my fruitless attempt to flee the LIV Golf people… only to find a place somehow chockablock with what I presumed were even more LIV Golf people.

And who the fuck were THESE new LIV Golf people?!

I had left a hotel stuffed to the gills with their tour staff. How many damn LIV Golf people ARE THERE?

Yeah, so, anyway…

As it turns out, I had fled the “event staff hotel” and inadvertently landed at the… “player’s hotel.”

At that point, I had no choice but to accept that The Lord Above for some beguiling damn reason wished for me to be irritatingly proximate to these golf people. So, I just accepted my lot and begrudgingly embraced the back half of the “beat ‘em/join ‘em” couplet.

I clearly couldn’t beat ‘em. I had no choice but to join ‘em.

Perhaps that would break the curse.

Dropped my stuff off in the room. Took a hot shower. And then went down to the bustling bar/restaurant. BUSTLING. I came here to UNBUSTLE. I was led to believe there would be no bustle. That was a cruel lie.

In for a dime, in for a dollar, I ordered a beer and asked for a menu. You will be shocked to learn almost everything on it was overpriced but there was a chicken quesadilla which likely wasn’t going to win any awards but wasn’t outrageous. I ordered it. It did the trick.

Post-quesadilla, I ended up talking to some of the other folks at the bar. Almost everybody in the damn place was either a competing golfer, worked for one, or was connected to the tour. Told the folks I met my story about fleeing the one hotel to get away from the entire LIV entourage and then ending up there at… the player’s hotel.

They thought it was hilarious.

Usually, fans are falling all over themselves trying to find a way to get close to the players. Yet, I had ended up in their hotel by trying to avoid the event altogether.

Okay, I will admit, that is kind of hilarious.

It almost makes the whole weekend cluster-effery worth it.

Anywaaaaaay, with the LIV Golf people leaving today and the hotel poised to empty out, I decided to just sulk-in-place today. Finagled an even bigger steal for a second night. Slept in this morning. Ventured out only to find an iPhone cord. Then I spent the rest of the afternoon just frittering about trying to shake off this damn brain fog.

With the haze lifting, I sat down in the quiet lobby this afternoon with a plan:

1) Peck out this little update
2) Pivot to finishing the overdue story of my L.A. trip with my son; and
3) Possibly have a quesadilla. They aren’t terrible.

I could do all of that! I practically had the place to myself!

Then, just as I was nearing the finish line on the first of those three, a black Escalade pulled up. And then another. And then another. And another…

Apparently, the golf folks haven’t all left. The event is over. A few of the players are here for another night. Some of the staff stayed behind.

Welp, this could be interesting.

I better eat a quesadilla before it gets nutty.