The Resort Years - 7

DO IT YOURSELF!!

The first phase – chistling out cracks, pinning in rebar, and pouring 6 yards of concrete was completed in May.  The wooden deck is getting screws put in where nails were extracted, and rotten boards replaced before the building permit is pulled at the County. “The before” also entails getting engineered plans drawn to submit to the County.  (The engineered plans were over and above the $40,000 bid by the Valley pool specialists.)

I was told that the permit could be pulled once the plans were done, even if we had already poured the six yards of cement.  We will see if that happens…

We also need some assurance that there will be money to PAY for the second and third phases of this project.  We discovered several items that caused us to ENLARGE the project since there was no water this year to fill the pool anyway!!  VERY THIN concrete in several places, lines of algae at the base of the walls where the connection to the floor was not what it should have been when the pool was built in 1957/58.

The rebuilding of the Strawberry Pool necessitates making it ADA compliant (even if the cabins are not?!)  The County had said that they were NOT the ADA enforcers.  But pull a building permit, and they ARE ENFORCERS!

  

EMPLOYEES

While the RESORT doesn’t require quite as many employees as the Strawberry Inn and gas station and trailer park did, we still have them, as it is too much for one person to accomplish.  Interesting is the fact that bookkeeping and bed making were the two jobs at the Inn that I avoided if at all possible.  I keep books for the ten units and for a portion of the twenty years Tom’s computer business, the book publishing arm of our corporation – Strawberry Hill Publishing - and even Martha Weathers REALTOR! 

I could write a book about Employees Only, and Kathleen, our daughter, working on her degree in “Crisis Counseling” says I could write one on Psychology!  And I would have to include a chapter on “Judge NOT, that ye be NOT JUDGED!”  Being a hyper-active, possibly ADD, person made me perfect for the restaurant / bar business and the multiple “hats” I have worn for the past twenty years also suits my personality.  I always have a couple of knitting or crochet projects going, and a book or TWO!

My resident-of-Strawberry handyman – he came with the property twenty years ago – had a small son who lived with his mother in Tuolumne where our church was located, so we returned him to his mother each Sunday after worship.  One Sunday, we returned for a pot-luck in the evening and were asked if Wiley was home with the babysitter?  I was shocked to think that they hadn’t figured out that WE were the babysitter, and he was at home with his mother.  I do hope he learned in Sunday School that GOD loves him.  We were invited to his High School graduation and proudly attended.  I made sure to tell him that we expected an invitation to his college graduation as well.  I need to check on that!!

The handyman had several addictions that he battled over the years but did work hard to keep the Resort in running order.  I especially noticed that he kept the vacuums up and running by doing maintenance and bag changing on a regular basis.  He also was great at throwing a weighted rope over dead tree branches and getting them removed without enlisting the work of a tree removal company!  That saved the Resort Homeowners the cost of a tree climber with a chain saw!! 

He also was the “recycling sorter” twice each week in the summer, just before the garbage guys arrive.  This is a job that I have had to do the past several years so I now really appreciate the efforts of our “handyman” employees over the years!!  When the guests have to recycle EVERYTHING down home, it is hard to convince them that we ONLY recycle the things that we get paid for!  CRV ONLY!!  So we see yogurt containers and milk jugs in with the plastic bottles.  Oh, and we have to remove the lids from those plastic water and soda bottles before taking them to our local recycling business!  We see wine bottles in with the beer bottles.  We get whole bags of unsorted often with lots of trash in with the recycling items. Which is my explanation for not having a RECYCLE ONLY BIN, the amount of TRASH would mean that the Homeowner’s Association would be charged for a second bin of garbage by Waste Management – the garbage company in our County.

I discovered something else that Leni the handyman did – stain picnic tables and reseal decks at least every other year!!  The two picnic tables at the pool side plus the wooden bench just sucked up 1 ½ gallons of stain, and the wooden deck will probably use ALL of the 5 gallons of Thompson’s Water Seal!!

HOUSEKEEPERS

Our best housekeeper ever was the wife of that handyman.  They moved off the mountain to manage an apartment complex - the wife doing the office work and the handyman doing the yard and maintenance.  This was the same time that we moved to Sonora so Tom could be the pastor at the Sonora United Methodist Church. 

The mom and daughter team of the DUSTONS worked out quite well for several years.  The daughter even worked through a couple of pregnancies and then was able to “bring her wee ones” to work and still manage to get the job done.  Since they were paid by the cabin, and not by the hour, it didn’t matter if she took time to nurse the baby or rock the toddler to sleep.  The stroke suffered by the husband and father caused the mother-daughter team to have to give their notice.

Enter a recent college grad from the Bay Area living just up the hill and needing work.  She said she was the oldest in her family and had been doing “housework” for years!  She and a 14 year old neighbor did fairly well right up to the middle of August when her parents “needed her” at home and the 14 year old had to start high school!  The most amazing thing about this young person was her degree – Art History!  I am sure that it is an interesting subject and she was/is a creative person, but I asked her, “What do you hope to do with your education?”

Her answer was:  “Teach Art History!  But I may need a Masters degree to do that.”

The young adult that I hired to replace her did OK until she incorporated her “friend Smoky” into the equation.  The amount of work accomplished vs. the hours on the time card made me question exactly what they were doing!!

But my plate was full, and there was no way I could make beds and clean bathrooms with a “bad hip” due for replacement!

So in two years I went through FOUR different housekeeping teams!  Try to keep up with that!  The directions are written out, but it amazes me how many folks have the inability to learn from written instructions.  I have taught myself to knit and crochet, run an Inn in the mountains, do medical transcription, graphic design all from reading the directions.

Replacing the handyman who moved to Sonora took some inspiration, and just plain LUCK.  Some years it is a family member in need of the work, some years a friend of our son – who knows everyone!!  That was the solution to my housekeeping problem that materialized just four days before my “new hip” was scheduled back in February of 2013, Allan’s friend came through and is doing a great job. So is my hip, PRAISE GOD!

Logan, like the Dustons several years before her, is a contractor.  I give her the list and when they need to be ready and she does the work on her own schedule, fitting in “other jobs” as she sees fit.  Seems to work well so far!!

She even has the laundry duty.  I had spent countless hours for sixteen years at the Laundromat.  I even had the key to the one in MiWuk Village. It is one thing that I chose NOT to take back. While I miss that upper arm exercise, I do not miss the six hours a week at the Laundromat!  I consider the lack of laundry duty to be an overdue raise / semi-retirement!? Logan suggested rolling the linen needed for the various bed sizes rather than the grab-one-from-each-pile method that I had inherited from the days of the Linen Service.  “Whatever works for you!” was my response!