I call them “apartment zombies”. If you’ve worked in an apartment leasing office, especially one that attracts large numbers of college kids, you know exactly who they are. They have to find an apartment urgently, but forget to prioritize looking for one, procrastinating taking care of this most basic human need. When they’ve half-finished sixteen other things that day and our office is closing -I’m literally turning the key to lock the door – they run to the door, screaming to get in, throwing themselves against the door, pulling the door handles until you think the lock might break, sometimes crying. These are the apartment zombies. But of course they have to be taken in too. We don’t discriminate against zombie types. These are the people, though, that keep you in the office until eight thirty at night.
The poised, sassy Princess Kelly has joined me here at The Addison, my enormous Mediterranean villa in Baton Rouge. She’s here to help fill up all the empty rooms in this brand-new building. She looks demure, standing 5’5″ with curly brown hair and a calm demeanor, but she packs a fire and her sarcasm has me in stitches throughout the day. Even Rodger, my snail friend, likes her quite a lot and has hinted he might like to travel with her instead. I, in turn, squashed that idea as quickly as possible.
This week has been a whirlwind of activity for us with too many zombies left to take care of at the end of the day. Today, finally, Kelly and I were able to lock the doors behind us and leave on time with no zombies in sight. And we decided to go to Area 51, the trampoline park next door.
I went to Area 51 when I first arrived in Baton Rouge to check their prices and make sure it wasn’t outrageously expensive. At $13 per hour, I decided I could try it out. After four long workdays in the office, it was the perfect energy release! Not only did they have the basket-ball court sized trampoline area, there was a climbing wall (harnessless! squee!), basketball hoops, various obstacle courses, rings, a long fall, a narrow ledge above a foam pit where combatants can fight one another with huge foam beams. In a second, all the phone calls, emails, drying paint, furniture shipments, and internet outages had gone away. We were both flying high.
Kelly perfected her flips, I tried to figure out how to dance on a trampoline in time with the music, and soon we were dripping sweat and grimy from all the foot dust everywhere. An hour was more than enough to exhaust us. We went home happy to the beautifully lit apartments across the street…
…with still not a zombie in sight.
~ The Dauntless Princess ~
