Room angst

Before I go to bed, I am reading The Enchanted April on my Nook. So here are the women gathered together in San Salvatore and there is conflict over the bedrooms. Mrs. Fisher and Lady Caroline both arrived a day early to pick the best bedrooms in the house for themselves - even though they were the two add-on residents for financial reasons. The original two ladies, Rose and Dotty, got stuck with smaller rooms. To add insult to injury, Mrs. F. and Lady C. had the extra beds in their rooms crammed into the smaller rooms of R and D. Mrs. F. even barricaded the sitting room next to her bedroom and claimed it for her own.

All of these shenanigans give me pause. I am someone who frets about getting the perfect room at a hotel or bed and breakfast. So I found myself anxious as if I were the one getting snookered about. Everyone in the story wants to be alone with their thoughts or their memories or their sadness. I can identify. I would be worried as well that someone was going to take over my space, my time, intrude on my experience.

And now one of the husbands may be coming to join the ladies and there is more conflict about sleeping arrangements.  Another bedroom might be taken by Dotty's husband until Mrs. Fisher connives to announce that she is inviting a female guest and that ends that as there is only the one bedroom left. Dotty and Mellersh will have to share.

Lady C. is fearful that a man in the mix will only cause trouble. Men like to grab, she thinks to herself. I don't know so much about grabbing, but men do like to talk, make noise with their coughs and snorts, and be the center of attention. So this development would displease me as well.

So instead of having a lovely Italian holiday with the women in a house overlooking the sea and fragrant gardens, I am left with a strange anxious feeling in my stomach.