Dude! I’m so sorry, I’ve been totally swamped with work, and my
refinance, and some other BIG BIG things we’re working on that I’ll have to
tell you about when they’re a little more settled, but the summary of the past
week and a half goes a little something like this:
Wednesday the 4th was Jan’s big surgery (Jan is
Stephan’s mother, in case you just started reading this blog. Jan is also the name of my stepmother, but
that just happens to be a coincidence.
It’s Jan Cox my mother in law we’re talking about here).
So, we were up in Palo Alto for a week or so while she was recuperating
at Stanford Hospital. If you’d like to
know some more details about the surgery, I’m sure she would be happy to tell
you once she’s recovered, and if you need her email address, let me know. That is probably about all of her business I’m
going to be blogging about today. But yes, this is the same mother in law who just had total knee replacement surgery like two months ago, which does in fact make her a total bionic badass.
Anyhoo, you know that thing where I’m a total freak and I’m
scared to eat food in B-rated restaurants?
Well, I’m sure it won’t surprise you to learn that this neurotic
behavior also extends to hotels. I
always have to change rooms at least once, I guess because I always figure the
room they offer you first is for suckers, or because I “just have to make sure everything
is ok” or something like that. Usually I
will change rooms until I am on the top floor, not near an elevator, an ice
machine, or the closet where they keep the vacuum cleaner. Sorry!
I figure I’m traveling for business (or even pleasure), and I’m going to
totally bug out if I don’t get enough sleep, and I’m not going to get enough
sleep if I’m on the first floor, next to an ice machine and an elevator. I’ve traveled a lot, ok? Trust me on these things. If this makes me high maintenance, then I am
high maintenance AND I am more awake at my business meeting. Of course, I HAVE been much more anxious
lately, which makes this tendency much worse.
So, I had already called ahead and told the hotel where we would be
staying the LITANY of requirements, as if I was Mariah Carey or some crazy
thing. They were like “yes, that’s fine—we’ll
put you in a top floor room in the back, don’t worry.” So I didn’t.
And we got there, and it was actually nice.
But, that’s when I laid down on the bed, looked up at the
ceiling, and saw that it was covered in flies.
No joke. There were probably 25
flies on that ceiling, but it was so late, and I was so tired, and the surgery
was so early the next morning, I actually didn’t have the energy to kick up the
Culwell-style fuss you know I was thinking about. So, we killed them and went to sleep, and
the next day we spent the whole entire day at the hospital, and when we came
back—MORE FREAKING FLIES. Again I was
too tired to do something about it right then, but I’m sure you can imagine
where this is going. By the time Jan was
situated, I was ready. To kick
up. A ruckus.
Oh, did I forget to mention the dogs barking in the hotel
room below ours? This really only went
on during the day so it wasn’t bothering me that much, but by the time I was
ready to go in and crack some skulls, I swear to you, without overreaction, I
could hear the dogs barking, PLUS there were at least 50 flies in the room
again, and we were killing them, and they had blood in them, and….
That’s when Jim Cox (my father in law) and I came up with
the theory that there must certainly be a dead body in the room below
ours. Why were the dogs barking? Why did we never see anyone go in or out of
the room below? WHY WERE THERE A ZILLION
BLOODY FLIES? Clearly it was because
there was a corpse below us the whole time.
Also, I would just like to point out that the ONE TIME I DON’T MAKE US
MOVE ROOMS, there’s a dead body and a bunch of zombie flies. I’m not bitter.
So, I took pictures of “FLYMAGGEDEN,” as we started calling
it, and I called the manager, and I told her that I knew things about how to
work the internets, and I’m sure that everyone I know on Facebook, and my blog,
and Hotels.com, and Expedia, and Priceline, and everyone else in the free world
would like to see this disgusting photo and to know that there was an alleged
dead body in their hotel and that for sure our room was filled with flies that
had blood in them when we killed them, and wouldn’t you know, ten minutes later
there was a guy there helping us move our luggage to another room, and letting
us know that the manager was going to go ahead and give us a half-price rate on
the new room. He didn’t really seem to
want to hear about our “dead body being eaten by flies” theory, but I made sure
to tell him while we were moving rooms.
Is that wrong? I thought he
should know!
When we got to the new room (which was lovely and totally
fly free), there was a gift bag there with a big Snickers bar in it, which is
the only reason I’m not going to tell you the name of the hotel. It’s because of the big Snickers bar, the cut
rate, and the hand-written note from the manager. Pretty cool, I thought. I even called back this week to yell some
more so we could get the discount rate for the whole week, and she was even
cool about that. So, there you go.
Let this be a lesson to you:
always listen to me when I’m being totally neurotic about hotel rooms
and food, or someone could die, man! My freaky compulsions are here to save you!
Just kidding. It was
a total coincidence, but one that really encourages me to be even more weird,
don’t you think?
OK, now I'm going back to being swamped with work, and preparing the other exciting updates I have under wraps for now. No, I am not having a baby, just to end the suspense there. Not yet, anyway (that was for you, Shannon!).
