Huffing & Puffing

2024-03-27T22:19:05Z

Georg—from whom I had the lack of foresight to rent the Ithaca Airbnb associated with the upcoming Eclipse Trip—had the gall to write me that lookfar, Toby, and I could not host Ichabod, RTT, and the international culinary student for a family-style dinner on the night before the eclipse.

WHAT AN UNSPEAKABLE ASSHOLE!!!!!!

He’d already pissed me off by telling me he charged for extra guests—no other Airbnb host in my extensive experience with Airbnb has ever done that—but I could kinda, begrudgingly see the logic behind that one.

But not to be able to have people over for dinner?

“It would not be fair to the others staying in the house,” he wrote, and I thought, What the fuck do you mean, “others staying in the house?” You advertised this place as an apartment. That means, discrete! Behind lock-able doors! What the hell business is it of “others” in the building what we are doing behind doors that lock so long as we don’t go full-throttle Johnny Depp?

This has been particularly galling because I had to be such a fuckin’ saint all day long.

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All day long, I TaxBwana-ed for clients who either had difficult tax returns or were difficult people.

Like 89-year-old Mrs. Gumbo (not her real name) who is the nicest little old lady in the world but who’d forgotten her social security statement, which meant I had to figure out a way to get it for her since she doesn’t do computers. Mrs. Gumbo also prepays her federal & state taxes, and state vouchers are not part of the tax software package TaxBwana uses, so I had to cull through the unspeakably bor-r-ring New York State government website to track those vouchers down.

She was very grateful to me for doing all this.

But there were many, many, many such clients throughout the day, and each one took its toll.

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My last clients...

Married couple. He was just incredibly fuckin’ stupid and not at all cute by my standards, but of course, my standards are not other people's standards.

She was smart but very, very, very plain. And had made her deal with the devil I suppose because here she was, married to him.

They had a child, and the child was just adorable and very bright.

Both of them ignored that child completely.

The child was remarkably well-behaved but let’s face it: The TaxBwana-torium is not a place for children.

I tried to amuse the child while I did their tax returns—which, fortunately, were very easy.

But all the while, my heart was breaking for that child.

How old will he be when he starts huffing? I thought. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he’d start with huffing

That’s probably what happened to his old man: first the airplane glue, then the meth.

###

Anyway.

There is really nothing I can do about the Ithaca Airbnb.

‘Cause as soon as I got Georg’s email, I thought, I’m gonna cancel the reservation with this asshole, but then I looked and there was not a single other booking to be had.

It will all work out fine, I told myself.

And, These are First World problems.

But honestly, I was pissed.

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Huffing & Puffing