Hotels and Lip Loops

I'm starting this post at 10 PM the night before because the temperature has only made it down to 81.  I would go to a hotel, but I don't even know where one is.  You don't usually stay in hotels in your own town.  Plus, I HATE staying in most hotels.  You wonder who sat on the couch with WHAT disease and with WHAT clothing -- if any -- on.

Before we bought this house, I used to stay in a hotel for weeks at a time, and I had to stay up here for most of a year.  (We had a business here, and the Manager quit, so I had to come take over.)  One time I sat on the hide-a-bed couch in a pair of shorts to watch TV, and I broke out in huge hives all over the back of my thighs!  That is why I cover all furniture in hotel rooms now unless I have pants on.

I always look at the bed too and wonder who did what on top of the bedspread, and whether or not the bedspread is ever washed.  And not only "that", kids wetting the bed or diaper changes gone awry, food or drink spilled and starving creatures looking for a snack.  You just don't KNOW!

And the carpet.  You KNOW the carpet never leaves the room.  I always make sure I have shoes or slippers on my feet. 

And then, of course, I can't talk about hotels without describing the overwhelming joy of hearing people run up and down the hallway at midnight before and after letting their doors slam.  Or the deaf person in the room right next to your headboard that has his/her TV blaring all night long.  And wasn't I in a hotel the time I stepped into the shower, and when I turned the water on, the shower head blew across the tub and smashed into the opposite wall, landing on the tub floor in pieces.  I thought I had been shot.

And the MOST exciting hotel stay of all was when we went to my sister's house for Thanksgiving and had to stay in a hotel, and my Mom was with us.  I paid for adjoining rooms with a door in between so she could stay right next to us.  The accommodations were great EXCEPT for the fact that the door between the rooms was a heavy, thick door AND it closed by itself like a refrigerator door does.  Well, it didn't really "close" -- it SLAMMED.  I KNEW the door did that from when we first arrived, but when I woke up the next morning, I had forgotten.  I opened the door and leaned into my Mother's room with all of my body EXCEPT one hand that was still on the door frame.  You guessed it.  The giant door swung shut and hit my hand.  It hurt like H**** and I screamed and cried.  I fell to my knees holding my hand and decided to blame it on my husband who didn't have a clue what had just happened, and I started yelling at him that he should have HELD the door. 

After I finally quit crying and holding my hand like I was half-dead, we went downstairs to leave to go to my sister's.  I walked over to the reservation desk to tell the clerk that my hand was smashed by their door and they needed to put a warning sign on the door that it slams shut.  She suggested that maybe the customer should watch where they put their hands.  I suggested I wanted them to DO SOMETHING.  Jerry was probably hiding under a table about that time.

The clerk told me that they could send me to their doctor.  I told her we had to go to my sister's, and we left.  After lunch, however, I decided to go back in case my hand was broken or something.  I thought they should have to pay for it.

The lady couldn't run when she saw me returning because she was the only one working.  She handed me some form to sign and told me to go see the doctor in the clinic around the block.  Jerry and I and my Mother went to the clinic.  BIG MISTAKE!  Mother wanted to go home the night before and had complained most of the day that she shouldn't have come.  We left her in the waiting room, and Jerry and I followed the nurse who asked me a thousand questions. 

Then she made me follow her down a long hall -- turn the corner -- go down another long hall -- turn again -- walk another mile -- to a little room with the x-ray machine in it.  (The clinic had a tunnel leading to the hospital next door, or something like that.)  

My hand was then x-rayed in every possible position. 

Then we walked all the way back to where we started and where my very whiny Mother was still whining in the waiting room, and I had to go back in the exam room with Jerry.

The doctor came in and showed us the xrays and said my hand wasn't broken.  He then said he would be right back and left. 

Then we waited and waited and waited -- over an hour.  The doctor NEVER came back and neither did anyone else.  I decided I wasn't waiting any longer.  My hand had quit throbbing by then, and we knew it wasn't broken, so I just wanted to leave. 

I opened up the door and stuck my head out into the hall and said, "Excuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuse Me!"  "Does anyone KNOW I am in here?"  I think Jerry crawled under the exam table at that point!

Some girl, moving at a snail's pace, came into the hall and wanted to know if there was a problem.  I explained to her we had been there almost FOUR hours, and we needed to leave and make the 4-hour trip back home dropping my Mother off on the way.  She said she would investigate, and she wandered off.  I told Jerry we were leaving, and we started to walk out.  As we passed the window where they grab you to pay your bill, some girl informed me that I could NOT leave.  I asked why.  She said they were getting me a prescription for pain meds.  I told her I could have made the pain meds MYSELF as long as I had been there.  I told her I would take an aspirin, and we left.  Jerry tried to act like he didn't know who I was, but I think they all knew anyway.  Poor guy.  And by that time, my Mother certainly had reason to be impatient and tired.

It is 11 now, and I am going to TRY to sleep.  Still quite hot in here. 

I'm thinking of those people somewhere on a river in Africa that we recently watched on TV that have no house and no bed and no air conditioners.  They live in the nude, and they chew and spit a lot.  And the girls have huge holes in their lower lips where they keep inserting bigger and bigger discs because the girl with the biggest disc gets the largest dowry of cows. 

Over here, isn't it the girl with the biggest boobs?  Whatever.  I've got to go to bed. 

Beauty surely is in the eye of the beholder.  Night.

Hugs, Joy