Forever blowing bubbles

Bumpus has discovered he can blow spit bubbles, and it's his new obsession. He also now entertains himself in his swing or on the floor by chatting and cooing, and now making a little sound that sounds like the beginning of laughter. For those of you who advised me that the first six weeks are really hard but that it gets much better, you were so right! He's just a ball of joy and fun lately. In fact, he's the bright spot during this very stressful pre-event time.

Spoke to my hotel rep today in hopes of feeling better, but I actually feel much worse. After ruminating on it all day, here's what I think is going on. I think this hotel, probably like many, thought once the recession hit that they needed to give their customers a lot of breaks and perks to keep their business. And now it's four years later and things still suck, so they have decided to start "cracking down". This is the term used by the rep today - someone, upper management no doubt, has decided it's time to "crack down". So yes, I'm stuck paying full rate for my 100+ staff rooms next year. The midnight breakfast buffets I have for my customers are not making enough money so those will probably be pulled this year; the lunch buffets may be pulled next year (and considering there's one crappy sports bar with terrible service and nothing but wings to serve 500 + people in the hotel, this is a major problem). Already I have no band in the lobby (my volunteer guy who does this every year is out if town this year), and nobody to teach yoga (again, volunteer person out of town - it will cost $600 + to replace her, if I can even get someone at this late notice). Oh yeah, and my rep just sighed when I demanded a plan for the parking and said she couldn't promise anything, and by the way, she won't even be present to oversee my event like she usually is because she's moving that weekend. So you want to run a dance camp for a living, huh?

I just hate that this is supposed to be my big 15th anniversary, and yet the quality of the event is being so compromised, AND my budget has ballooned out of control all for things that don't make the event better for anyone. And I'm very worried about the future - any enthusiasm I had about moving to Labor Day has been squelched by all these threatened cut backs and rate increases. And just for the record, I'm trapped - it would cost me several hundred thousand $$ to break my contracts for the next three years. So, no moving to a new hotel, and no not doing the event. My ass is theirs until 2016.

Fortunately they always do an intensive survey after the event online, and if things go at all the way I think they will, I will absolutely tell them I don't feel valued and have noticed a serious decline in customer service lately. Hey, if all my customers get to bitch to me about petty, unimportant shit, I should be able to bitch to the hotel over this big stuff, right?

In good news, my AC works, which is fantastic on these 100 + degree days. My kitchen facelift is going swimmingly. It sucks having people in the house every day and my kitchen torn up, but the end result is going to be an amazing, sparkling clean kitchen, something I've never had here. It wasn't terribly clean when I bought in 2001, and I just slapped some paint on it inexpertly and left it half done all these years. It'll be worth every penny to have it done by a professional!