Temperatures fluctuate between thirty and forty degrees during the day and twenty and twenty-five degrees during the night. The sparrows, so to speak, are falling from the roof. And the pigeons – which refused to respect my sister’s no-fly zone all spring – are nowhere to be seen. While the guests seek refuge in the air-conditioned rooms or the cool pool water, I keep working through my to-do list day after day. It’s Wednesday and we’re fully booked. Monday, July 22 was the last day that I no longer had guests in my house and – as it looks for now – it will take until Tuesday, August 27 before I have another day off. That is, if no one decides to book last minute. And although there is a good chance that that will happen anyway (since the Spaniards are happy to book last minute), I am currently looking forward to that moment.
But while I look with both joy and fatigue at the neatly aligned reservations in our reservation system, I fear that – if this continues all year long – there will be nothing left of me. Running a busy Bed & Breakfast with five rooms, a garden and a swimming pool is currently demanding a lot from my body. Add to that the unforgiving Spanish heat (and the often associated lack of appetite) and the kilos literally fly off. The “you look so good!” is increasingly becoming a “flaca!” (skinny!). And the coveted “summer body”? That is nothing more than a side effect of a year of hard work and, moreover, completely useless – because there is absolutely no time to parade across the beach with that beach-ready body.
And although my sisters – who work equally long days in Switzerland – and I regularly text back and forth that we really don’t have time to make a phone call right now, I still feel like time passes by slowly. This in contrast to my fingers, which – while writing this blog – seem to fly over the keyboard. Because the sooner my weekly report is done, the sooner I can get into bed for a short break with the fan on. While I try to watch the new season of B&B Vol Liefde (a Dutch reality show about B&B-owners looking for love), I notice that my eyelids are quickly becoming too heavy. The heat doesn’t outweigh my fatigue by a long shot. We came to Spain for a quieter life. Ha! What a joke. The life of a Bed & Breakfast owner has (so far) proven to be anything but peaceful. But while I have recovered somewhat after a well-deserved siesta and calmly rewind to the moment when I fell asleep, I am grateful again that – unlike the candidates in the program – I do not also have to entertain a number of bachelors in addition to my guests. Because when a notification of a new booking appears on my phone, I know one thing for sure. I don’t have time for love at all right now.