Meet Me at the Hotel, Motel...

Hotel rooms can really make or break a trip. I don’t care where you are—Tahiti, Hawaii or even just down the street if it gives you a break from your everyday life—if your room is horrible, you aren’t happy.  I just got back from a business trip where, coincidently, I stayed in a hotel.  (I had the BEST roommate ever… the kind of roommate that quits 24 hours before said meeting, thus ensuring I had a single room!) I have been very fortunate to have stayed in many hotel rooms, from down the street to the other side of the world.

Once we had a room in Cancun with no electric lights.  Another room in Bloomington, IL had a car alarm outside that wouldn’t shut up (it was totally our car, but whatever). The most expensive hotel room I ever stayed in (if I tried to write the cost per night, my keyboard would burn up.  BTW the only way that I got myself there was as a guest of my husband’s employer… when he told me he had a trip to Antigua I informed him that if I wasn’t going on that trip, niether was he) had the lumpiest, worst mattress (the floor was more comfortable).  There was that room we had in Paris that doubled as a set for snuff films and our “roommates” in China (roaches, roaches everywhere)   …

Sometimes, the room is perfectly fine—it’s the idiots who are staying in them who render them terrible.  One of the first ‘dates’ my husband and I had was in Jacksonville.  (Because my husband and I lived about 800 miles away from each other when we met, and because he is a pilot, many of our “dates” lasted 72 hours and were in different places around the country.)  The first day I was there, my husband had to work all day. So I did what any woman who was bored and had more than five dollars of disposable income in her pocket and more than ten minutes to herself (gosh I miss those days) would do—I went to the mall.  I found a candle store, and, determined to ‘make it special and memorable’ (shout out to Cosmo), I purchased a few small candles that smelled divine—not too strong, not too flowery, but the perfect mix of spice and floral notes. Or at least they did in the store.  When I got back, I unpacked the candle… and instead of smugly congratulating myself, I was second guessing myself.  I must have had sensory overload when I finally made my selections at the store (possibly due to an expected high from candle sniffing for an hour), because those candles STUNK.  BAD.   The suite at the Embassy Suites was quickly becoming more of a tiny cruise ship cabin than a nice, spacious suite. However, I was undeterred.  After all, I had read Cosmo, and, remember, this was going to be a Special And Memorable Night.  Thomas came back to a beautiful candle-lit (albeit stinky) hotel room.  The evening was in fact, memorable… Right before we got into bed to go to sleep, I leaned over to blow out the candles… and engulfed my entire head in a fireball. Yes, a fireball.  During this time of my (young, silly) life, I thought I was a blonde (I will say, though, I have definitely had more fun as a brunette. Also more money in my pocket as I don’t have to cough up $$ (edited due to husband’s reading of this blog) and more time on my hands (as I don’t have to sit for three hours at the salon every six weeks). As you can tell, I have DARK brown hair… dark brown hair that gets very fragile when bleached to a lovely, brassy, bleached out color. Also, I am very accident prone (many more stories for you to enjoy on that topic in the future)… Basically, I was a walking recipe for disaster.  As the smoke cleared (yes, there was smoke), and I calmed down (as you can imagine,  hysterics were involved. I mean COME ON, MY HEAD WAS ON FIRE), I inspected the damage.  I lost all my right eyelashes, over half of my (way too skinny) right eyebrow, and I now  had what could best be described as a ‘fringe’ standing straight up from my scalp at my hairline.  I was a hot mess (and that’s being generous). The flame extinguished itself; and thankfully, no one and no property was permanently damaged.  However, some damage had been done… namely to me and more specifically, my face.  As I am pondering how the hell I am going to make myself presentable to the general public for the next several weeks, my husband spoke up.  I turned and looked at him, ready for some comfort—a hug, a smile, any sort of reassurance would have worked.  Instead of A) inquiring about my charred head, B) giving me a hug to comfort me after my near death experience, C) telling me some nonsense like ‘it’s not that bad’ (it really was that bad), or D) offering a cool compress/ washcloth if I needed one, he picked E) laughing so hard he cried, and then F) ordering me to take a shower immediately because I smelt so horribly of burning hair.

Hotel rooms can be a glimpse at what living with someone might be like.  I learned about my husband in that room.  I learned that he is sensitive—not to me and my near death experience, but to smells.