crab sandwich

Kelli and I live in a high-class dorm. “Dorm” in the sense that I live in room 106 and Kelli’s in 103, each hallway looks the same, and there’s a cafeteria upstairs where breakfast ends at 7:30, lunch starts at 12:30 and dinner doesn’t go past 7:45.

“High class” in the sense that each room has a flat-screen TV with digital satellite and hundreds of channels. We can stuff our dirty laundry into a little mesh bag, set it in the hallway at night, and magically find clean clothes hanging on the door handle by 10am the next day. “Thanks, Laundry Fairy!”

Fill out form …

Set outside and magically …

Thanks, Laundry Fairy!

We live in the Chevron “Staff House”, where contractor employees stay during their 28-day-on stints.

Did I mention that someone comes by everyday to clean our rooms?

Ok, ok. Maybe we’re living more “high class” than “dorm.”

Kelli and I are a little sheepish about someone coming in and cleaning up after us, but hey … whatever … we can’t complain. That said, we’ve noticed that the cleaning crew has been skipping our rooms lately, sometimes for days on end. Maybe they’re getting fed up with our (my, I should say) shitty-ass Portuguese. Maybe we smell strange. Maybe they’re just weirded out by finding actual occupants in the rooms they are cleaning (we are literally the only residents in the building since everyone else leaves for their jobs by 7am).

Now, I could care less about making the bed or mopping the floor, but hook a brutha up with some toilet paper!

Anyway, on a weekend a while back we were off to a sluggish start. I was sipping on some contraband coffee that I had smuggled into the country while Kelli slept in. Since I was going to do a little work, I thought I’d jump into the shower to make this whole “waking up” thing official. I stepped into the shower thinking, “I’m sure the cleaning people will hear the shower and leave us alone, if they come at all.”

I step into the warm water with its exquisitely high water pressure: Shampoo, shampoo. Steamy-steam, steam steam steam. Soap, soap, soap. Ahhh.

Suddenly I hear mumbled voices from the room, the door bursts open in a blur of white cap and hunched over cleaning woman … Kelli: “Nooooooooooo!” Screeching halt. A surprised / mortified / oh-shit-what-have-I-done face looks up at me, and in one motion, she turns on a dime and flees with a slam.

I just stood there holding the bar of soap.