I'm Ba-a-a-ak!

Well, howww-dy. I'm so glad to be here.

The trip was uneventful, but the stay was something else.

My sister says I have an aura that attracts wierd stuff. I have no idea what she's talking about.

Do you remember my post about my hospital stay? Well, let me tell you about my motel stay.

There is only one motel in Inverness, Florida (a town about 1 hour, give or take, north of Tampa). It is called The Central Motel. It is located on the outskirts of town.

When we made the reservations, there were only two rooms available for Thursday and Friday night, so we picked one...Room 35. (Actually, it was room 135, located on the second floor.?)

The key (no, I mean key...a real stick-it-in-the-doorknob-and-turn-it-key) had to be jiggled profusely to open the door, but we got in.

Upon entering, we noticed that there was some waxy looking stuff on the carpet. We later learned that it was wax, hence the waxy look.

We also noticed that the carpet had some fuzzy stuff on it along with some twiglets and some other non-descript matter.

Then we saw it...a very large bandage with dried blood on it sort of hiding under the traditional motel round table just inside the door.

Being very tired, we did not call the front desk immediately, but chose to take care of the kinds of things you have to take care of after a long automobile trip (our car not having come equipped with bathroom facilities).

The bathroom door would neither close all the way nor lock. (Actually it would lock, but with the door un-closable, it did not matter that it was locked, it was not locked.)

Shortly after our arrival, and while we were trying to take care of those things we had not been able to take care of in our non-bathroom equipped car, there came a loud knock at the door.

"Hi!" came the voice of the knocker, "I'm supposed to get some wax off of the carpet." (This is how we learned that the waxy looking stuff was wax.)

I said, "Oh, well come on in."

"Oooo! That's a lot of wax. When are y'all goin' out? I'm (pronounced "Ahm") gonna need to put some strong stuff on that and y'all don't want to be in here." He had that part right, but we had already paid for the room.

So we left to spend time with my more-than-slightly disfunctional family.

My afore mentioned sister had gone to get some KFC. When she got back, she discovered that, although she had asked for the sixteen piece family special, there were only 12 pieces. We called KFC, and they said come on back and they'd have the other pieces waiting for us. I volunteered to go get the other four pieces.

When I pulled up to the window, this young fellow stuck his head almost into my car and asked, "Which four pieces were you missing?"

Trust me...it has been a very long time since I have been speechless, but he was not going to withdraw his head until I answered, so I said, "The four on the right side of the chicken."

"OK," he said, "I'll (pronounced "ahll"...I think he might be related to the wax guy) be right back."

We had a great time eating our chicken and had four pieces left over.

When we had bid a good night to all and returned to our motel room, the smell of the strong stuff lingered, but we were tired so we went to bed.

In the dim light of the motel room night we bacame aware of shadowy movements atop the bedside table. On came the lights.

Roaches!

I dispached one of them, but the other had taken lessons from Roger Bannister (do a Google or Wikipedia search), and got away.

My wife thinks roaches are creepy. She was not sure she could sleep.

So I got up, made some "I'm looking for you" motions, slapped the side of the table and shouted, "Gotcha!"

We slept OK.

The next morning Bonnie (my wife) looked on top of the bedside table. There was a roach crawling around.

"This place is infested," she whimpered.

To make a long story short (ever notice how people never say that until it is too late?), housekeeping removed the leftover medical debris, the wax was almost gone and management promised to spray for roaches (which, of course, will be of no benefit to us...we are gone.)

But God is good.

My 87 year old mother is doing as well as a woman with only 3/4 of one kidney, an enlarged heart with leaky valves, emphysema, asthma and brittle bone disease could be expected to be doing. She laughed and told the same stories of yesteryear that she always tells and had a good time.

My depressed sister laughed and my manic sister cried. My brother-in-law sat around saying very little and then went off to bed.

Today we came home.

Charlie, our vivaciously funny pug, and the subject of many future posts, went straight to his bean-bag, circled 17 times, mashing and butting it until he got it just the shape he wanted, curled up and went to sleep.