Much Better

Because it smells clean, is it?  The want-to-be-normal side of me says sure – why not?  The paranoid-germ-o-phobe side of me says the nice smell is just covering up something gross.  No matter – the smell and look of this hotel room makes it WORLDS better than the one we stayed at two weeks ago.

Something that appeared (I hoped) was chocolate was splattered on the wall –
Crumbs/bottle caps/barbie shoes/hair clips covered the carpet in places –
Some sort of black crud that Nia called poopie lurked under the rim of the shower –
Several stains of who knows what were accenting the couch designs –

The first night there I actually cried about how disgusting the place was.  I cried because I was so upset at myself for worrying so much about it.  Andrew felt awful.  (He spent a lot of time trying to find a hotel that allowed dogs and offered two adjoining rooms so we could veg together like we’re used to while the kids slept.)  He said we could leave but we had just got everything in the room and it was really late – I wasn’t going to go that far – instead I ended up going just about a block away from that far.

I bought:

• Comet to scrub the tub

• Disinfecting wipes to remove any spot I saw and clean anything my kids touched

• One of those new sticky broom things to collect the crap on the floor

I also made Andrew buy two blankets – one so I would feel better when Nia sat on the couch- another so I would feel better when Nate crawled on the floor.  I even built a barricade of sorts around the blanket so there was no way his hands touched the carpet.

I know – I’m a freak. Even when we got home I continued to drive Andrew nuts with my worrying.  He came up to me and said “Why are the bags in the hall?  I had already put them in the bedroom.”  Knowing he would seriously wonder if he needed to get me professional help if I told him why I replied, “You don’t even want to know.”  “Oh, come on,” he said.  “Well, I heard that bedbugs can travel and I didn’t want the bags next to our bed just in case.”

Now comes the best line from Andrew – “Should I burn the bags?”

Of course, that didn’t happen – but it was tempting to me.  Instead, we packed up those same bags last night and are now at another hotel – a much cleaner hotel.  At least it smells that way.