My Salem Happenings

Well, freakies, I have made it. I’m here in beautiful Salem, Massachusetts. I must say that it is quite lovely here. The drive from the airport was picture postcard perfect. I even saw the Atlantic Ocean on my way. The air here in Salem is not dry as I thought it would be. Actually it is very damp. If it wasn’t so cold, it would feel like a humid day just like in Houston.

The people here are mostly nice but their ways are very different from ours. I’m used to southern hospitality as you know. The first thing I noticed is that I received no help with my luggage. I was carrying a camera bag, a computer bag and a very heavy suitcase. When the van got me to the hotel, the driver took my luggage out of the van but left it standing there on the sidewalk so I took hold of it and tried to bully it through the door. I was not having good luck with it at all. It was heavy and I kept banging my ankles with bags. Finally some people came out the door and they held it open for me. Then I proceed to the front desk and I get the usual “front desk” kind of look that they all are so famous for. Funny: Listen how they say “thank you.” It’s hilarious! So I get all checked in, they hand me my door key and say “thank you.” Well thank you to you too! There was no one to help me up to my room with my luggage! No one even offered! Well, thank you, drive through! What, no bellboys with their hands out wanting tips? This has to be a first for me. Nevertheless, I managed to get up to my room and the room is wonderful. Now if I can figure out how to turn on the heat.

As soon as I got a bit settled, I raced outside to get some photos! That’s my real purpose for this trip. Oh, and I wasn’t disappointed with this! I got some great photos and I never went more than a couple of blocks from the hotel. Salem is really a small city. It’s no more than about a mile from one end to the other. You can really walk to everything if you wanted to. I did see a couple of panhandlers in the park …… feels like home.

Now at this point I’m really starving so I make my way back to the hotel. Have you ever noticed that when you look forward to doing something for a long time and when you finally get to do it, everything begins to go wrong? Well, my problems with my luggage have been ongoing considering the fact that I tripped over my computer bag on the jet way as you leave the plane and I almost crashed into a lady sitting there in a wheelchair. I didn’t feel too bad because the man in front of me was pulling his bag along on rollers and it got stuck on a corner that was there. So here we are, the man’s pulling and tugging trying to get his bag free and I’m trying my best not to land squarely in the lap of the lady in the wheelchair. And why do we always want someone else to suffer along with us? Me, the man and our luggage!

So here I’m really tired, hungry and my ankles are aching. I walk in the restaurant and I immediately feel uncomfortable. It’s because I’m alone. When you are eating alone, you feel like everyone is looking at you. The service was good and so was the food BUT you guessed it, I screwed up again. Things have been so rocky since the airplane landed that I swear someone has put a curse on me or something. Now I pull a good one. While I’m eating I suddenly turn around to look at something over my shoulder and what’d I do? I knocked my damn sandwich on the floor! So what’s the first thing we do when we do something really stupid? We look around real quick to see if anyone is looking, right? Fortunately, I didn’t knock the whole sandwich over, just a portion but it’s a club sandwich and there’s about six layers to each section. Well one of my sections is now on the floor and I’m trying to pick up the pieces with no one seeing me. I’m having trouble bending over to get at it and then I get this picture in my mind of me and the chair toppling over. That struck horror in my soul so I left a piece of chicken on the floor. I kicked it under one of the legs of the table and they’ll probably find it in about 10 years. And no, I did not eat it. One of the pieces came up with what looked like an orange feather on it. Nope, won’t be eating that!

I did finally eat and went to my room. I was exhausted! Hmmm, there may be a ghost in here. I just felt someone or something playing with my hair on the top of my head. I thought maybe it was a spider or something but nothing’s there. Thank gawd! I hate spiders and I would have run screaming down the hallway. Now I’ve got the heebie jeebies …. stuff crawling on me.

Let me tell you a funny story. The whole time I was on the airplane, I kept smelling the most beautiful fragrance. It was a haunting odor. You ever smelled something like that? I couldn’t figure out what it was or where it was coming from but I really liked it. I’m thinking that I sure would like to find perfume that smelled like that. Anyway, I enjoyed it the whole flight. It smelled vaguely familiar like I had smelled it somewhere before. After I left the airplane and for the whole drive to the hotel, I didn’t smell it anymore. I really didn’t give it another thought until when I took a bath. For some reason I could smell it now in the bathroom. I thought how strange it was. I was loving it and then suddenly I realized, the odor was the lotion I had put on my face. So, I was sitting there on the airplane, a window seat, smelling my own face! Oh my gawd, I have to be the silliest dumbass I’ve ever known! I had just started using this lotion a couple of weeks ago and there I was smelling my own face bouncing off the airplane window! Dork!

And that was my first day in Salem!

Luvs,
Janet