On the Road, but I'm not Jack Keroack.

I love hotels. Morgan, a good friend of mine is so disgusted by hotels that she won’t even take her shoes off, and she brings her own sheets!! But I can’t get ENOUGH of them!!! I just walked into a hotel (after watching 2 hours of Lost in the car); we’re in Tupelo, MS getting ready to do a show tonight, and we stopped in at the hotel first. And my heart just exploded because I had an overwhelming moment of gratitude. Well, it’s always good to write those down, right? So, here are the things, in no particular order, that I love about hotels:

The blackout shades: you could sleep until 2 p.m. and not even know it.
There are more than five channels and they’re all CLEAR. And the remote works.
The beds are made.
The feeling of vacation, because when you were young, hotels always meant vacation, which, for me, meant Disneyworld or Branson.
You can crank the a.c. or heater and you don’t have to worry about an electric bill.
My friend Whit once pointed out the brilliance of hotel showers, the curved rod at the top and the high water pressure.
The mirror next to the TV is ALWAYS a slimming mirror. Ladies, do your makeup there!
The window: which means a fresh perspective, even if that’s only a fresh perspective of the highway…it’s different from what you normally see, right? That’s song material.
Usually you get to a hotel after a long drive so a good stretch on the bed is wonderful.
My mom used to “christen” the hotel beds by laying on her back with her feet and arms in the air and making herself bounce, which was hilarious, but we always do it.

Of course there are the negatives:
I know I know, the bedspread never gets washed, who knows who was here before me, there’s always the temptation of porn late at night (which I will admit is not a struggle of mine, though you always hear in youth group how tempting it is), the drinking glasses only get wiped down and not soaked or scrubbed, and I always wonder if, while I’m changing or something, there’s a peephole that some pervert is watching me through. But why focus on the negative (and scary) when, as an adult, SOMEONE MAKES YOUR BED!!! AND RESTOCKS YOUR SHAMPOOS!!!

Life is incredibly mundane, people. I can only be thankful for what I have, and be a good steward of my thankfulness. So as I sit here for a few moments in the Wingate in cute little Tupelo, I will deny the possibility of nasty little scabies (which my hypochondriac mother taught me about) and filthy bedspreads, peeping toms and e-coli-infested drinking glasses. Maybe the maids don’t even LIKE my cheap jewelry. Instead of freaking, I will go christen the beds, make some coffee, and kick my shoes off for a little afternoon of cable. Little pleasures. Like Deb Talan of The Weepies says,

Can I get up in the morning, put the kettle on
Make us some coffee, say hey to the sun
Is it enough to write a song and sing it to the birds
When they hear just a tone and not understand my love for words

But you will hear me and know
I want to live this
I want to live a
I want to live a simple life.

Zitstache

I decided I'm going to write a book. The first chapter will say something like this:

I had just broken off my engagement and moved from Minnesota to New Orleans to be with my family and re-evaluate whether I really wanted to get married or not. My brothers love to point out my flaws, like how I sometimes have darker hair on my upper lip, or on my chin (which is gross, yes, but guess what? it happens sometimes). I was a complete wreck and sitting on the front porch with my mom, trying to get in touch with this obsessive compulsive psychiatrist because, well, some of us just go crazy when we go through bad break ups. My mom was sitting there for moral support and I could feel her looking over my face. The psychiatrist put me on hold and my supportive mother whispered, "Sair, you really DO need a lip wax." Inappropriate? Totally. My mother? Completely. She went inside and got the number to her lip waxer at Belladonna, a wonderland of smells, make-up, and all things rich trendy New Orleans. I called and made an appointment for the next day.

The women of the world who wax don't tell you how painful the first one is. I thought I was going to die as she ripped away at my skin, just chit-chatting like she wasn't physically abusing me. Why do people pay for this. And even worse, my mother had told her ALL about my break-up so she was offering her advice and how happy she was as a single woman. And how strong I was to have left Minnesota (this is not consolation, by the way, I can't tell you how many times I heard it though. I wonder if there are TONS of women who were so scared about the outcome that they just stayed in mediocre relationships... that seems devastating to me). So she yanked the hell out of the papers stuck to my eyebrows and upper lip and chin until she seemed satisfied. I swore to my body that I would never do that again. I immediately went to Audubon Park to exercise... all the websites and books about depression tell you to exercise! Well I guess the now-empty glands (since there were no more hair follicles) were too tender to have sweat drip into them. I walked around the park, not realizing that a microscopic volcanic eruption of sweat was pouring into the valleys of non-hair glands, slowly creating mountain after mountain of disgusting, painful pimples. But of course, they didn't fully develop until the next morning. So when I woke up, already wishing I was dead because of the breakup, I looked in the mirror to see a horrid, disgusting, nasty zitstache. It was like my face was giving me the finger. Or like on Arrested Development, when Tobias gets hair implants and as it grows, it's BEAUTIFUL but his body is rejecting it, so he just gets sicker and sicker but his hair grows gloriously. I try not to be shallow. But come on, a zit mustache? That's a hard one to just brush off. Especially given the circumstances. So the zits eventually faded (after like 3 weeks!!!), I got a job at a coffee shop, started going to a Presbyterian church and making friends, and life got better. Nothing gets good overnight though. It takes so much time. But it's good to look back on the suck moments and laugh. Which I do quite often.