Blogging on the road is not my forte. I realize my writing is totally crappy when I sit down at a laptop perched on a table in front of a hotel room's air conditioner (106 degrees outside, 70 inside--brrrrrrrr), rush to bang out a post in a matter of 10 minutes, and then hit publish without time to proofread or rethink anything I've said. Yikes.
I'm kinda out of sorts today. I don't know if it's returning from vacation letdown or what, but I'm tired and cranky even after lots of sleep. I feel like I could have the start of a cold. I spent a good chunk of the weekend wrapped up in settling in to my apartment. I love my new place so much. It makes me happy, but I want all the boxes gone and for it to start feeling more like home. It's a slower more time consuming process than I like right now, but I'm excited to see things shaping up. This evening, I almost started to cry after a yucky man at the grocery store paused in my path to stare at a part of my body in an obviously lascivious and yucky way. I wasn't wearing anything remotely showy, so it took me by surprise and just felt inexplicably bad in the moment, so I wandered into the soda aisle to simultaneously talk myself out of crying and scold myself for letting someone else's actions affect me like that. Lame. Combine this with a bunch of other minor frustrations and I'm in full on Grump Girl mode.
Me!
On the brighter side, I've had a great time catching up with my friends over the past couple of days, and I love this great weather. Also, I'm in the honeymoon phase with digital cable. After numerous calls and an online chat with Comcast after I got home, my cable is finally in working order. I had it installed before I went on vacation, or so I thought. The day before my trip I came home for a two hour window during work for what was supposed to be a "quick" installation, and I ended up with a newbie who liked to chat but couldn't chat and work at the same time. She moved very slowly. Her trainer didn't like the way the cable was wired, so he called in a supervisor who decided that the wiring needed to be redone. This led to a four hour ordeal and, as I discovered later, improperly installed cable. I went from having only the basic channels to no channels by the morning I left.
Way too early this Saturday morning, a tech came out to fix things and talked me into adding HBO and Starz for only $12 a month. I'm claiming that I was vulnerable after having no TV for two weeks. Since I'd only had the bare bones channels for so long, she showed me all the perks of digital cable and On Demand. She also filled me in on all her romantic problems and, without even asking about my own relationship status, introduced me to Dating on Demand. Yes, it's true. You can now find a date through your digital cable box. I'll have to keep this in mind. They even sort the videos of prospective dates into different categories to help you out. For example, you can click on Beef Cakes to find out that BigBiceps is a very open and adventurous Gemini who doesn't want to be with a woman who only talks about herself. Clearly I'm not a good match. However, I'm enjoying curling up on the couch with popcorn and other assorted junk food to watch Sex and the City and Entourage episodes On Demand. I may never have to leave the house again.
So, the rest of the trip. After my stint riding in the back of the van on top of the tow truck bed (please call me Tow Truck Mama from now on), we settled in to Cottonwood for a couple of days while the van was being fixed. After our long wait on the side of the road and a delay in deciding which mechanic would most likely be able to fix the car, we arrived after business hours. We had to just leave the van and figure out a plan for the night. Our tow truck driver helpfully suggested a cab service, a motel, and a car rental for the next day. We made the mistake of taking his advice and ended up at the Roach Motel after a somewhat bizarre cab ride.
The motel wasn't really called the Roach, but it might as well have been. It is a flat, shabby, one story building set on a hill behind a strip mall and next to a Super 8. The woman at the front desk sported a serious mullet and informed us, with a cigarette dangling out of the corner of her mouth the entire time, that they only had a room with a double bed, but they had rollaways available. She kept calling Keith honey. As in, "Honey you'll need to carry the rollway, 'cause I just had back surgery. Ya hear? Back surgery, honey." Or, "It's okay if you didn't bring your swim trunks, honey. You can wear your shorts into the pool." We followed her to a storage room in front of the building and discovered no rollaway beds. So then we all had to troop down stairs to a basement storage unit where we found two extra cots. Both had sheets on them. Are the sheets clean? I asked. Yes, of course. They put clean sheets on them each time, she assured me. Uh huh. We pulled out one bed and the white sheets were sprinkled with funny blackish-brown spots. I refused that one, so Keith grabbed the other. There were clean sheets stacked on a cart, so I grabbed some of those too. Later on, Keith told me he was glad I had done that since he had brushed a dead cockroach off the bed when he picked it up. Ugh, but that didn't disturb me too much, since I've seen plenty of cockroaches in Maui. It definitely said something about the quality of the establishment, though.
Setting up the little cot was a production too, and Amy and Keith jokingly referred to it as the Craftmatic adjustable bed. I responded that yes, it had two settings: concave and super concave. Luckily, it was comfortable enough for me to sleep through the night. Most disturbingly, Amy and Keith woke up with lots of little bites that itched like crazy. Fleas? Bedbugs? So gross. The room itself seemed fairly clean, but the shower was made for Smurfs and the soap smelled horrible. I had to do a painful backbend to rinse my hair. We were not loving our situation.
The next night we stayed at a Best Western, and it felt like a luxury hotel to us. We got a room with two real beds, a very clean bathroom with nice soap, and internet access. After checking in, Keith took off to do a few errands, leaving Amy and me to bask in the relief of a bug-free room. I was so overwhelmed with joy I had the urge to jump on the bed and do a happy dance. So I did. Amy encouraged this and took up jumping on her bed too. We then discussed little bed bouncing tricks from our youth and attempted to demonstrate them. We laughed so hard the entire time. It felt wonderful and freeing for both of us, and it was great to share in the childish fun with someone who appreciated it as much as me. It's amazing how the little simple things can do that for you.
I have more to report from the trip-trip, our visit to the fabulous town of Jerome, and the drive home, but it's late, and I need to close my eyes and forget all the little annoyances from this day. Put Ms. Grump Girl to bed.
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