Hotel Life

**mi casa**

i didn't feel so well today and so i took it easy. this post will eventually fit the title, i promise.

**i'm where the star is**

i spent a good 8 hours in the car yesterday, driving missy back home so she could pack and drive her car back to school and work. her dorm will re-open next week and she's bunking in with friends/coworkers until then. then, driving back alone to my hotel. in between my two road trips, missy and i took a drive around to look at ike's effects, which were pretty sobering. after missy left, i packed more clothes in the hope that i won't have to do laundry, and visited with hubs once he got home from work.

we managed to carry several rubbermaid storage tubs that sat in the storage buildings on our back deck, which were destroyed by ike. hubs had not had time to do it yet. we also made a can of trash to put out for pick-up.

i finally pulled out to return to san marcos just after dark. the drive is 3 and a half hours if you're lucky and you drive atleast a third of it at 70 mph or more. my cruise control got a workout. i have now made the trip one way or another 3 times -- twice in the day time and once at night, and i prefer the day because it's visually safer, but there is a lot less traffic at night. vox nix i guess.

anyway, seeing my street, neighborhood, town really affected me. i couldn't even take pictures because it's all ugly. very little of the tree debris has been picked up so far, and because it's all brown now, it makes everything look dead. then, there's a smell everywhere. to call it a stench is unfair. more like an odd smell. old timers to hurricane know the smell, and no one can really describe it except to say it is different. so the whole thing combines to make things eery there.

anyway, i think the smell is, in part, vegetative decay, but also maybe just the stirring up of the atmosphere. after all, what is a hurricane but the catastrophic dumping of one part of the world onto another different one. maybe it's what the atlantic ocean and gulf of mexico smell like.

justapoxed against that is the ever-constant hum of generators. hardly any street working signals and lights. some businesses open for some hours, some not. i thinks we have 8 grocery stores and only 2 are open. dozens of gas stations, but only 3 are open. parts of neighborhoods have power, parts of the same neighborhoods are still without.

back at my own home, i tried to take a brief nap during the heat of the afternoon. the corduroy couch, usually such a cool cushion, was hot and itchy. just as it absorbed the cool of the a/c, it now absorbed the hot wind and muggy heat blowing through without a/c. i was pretty exhausted so i did drift off for a bit. the heat woke me up, and i remembered that is how it is every night spent without a/c down here. i'd been considering going back the next morning, but that nap helped me decide not to stay overnight.

i think even though i'd had a most busy and stressful day, what wore me out more was trying to do things inside the house while waiting for hubs. i could go on, but if you have never experienced our summers, it won't help. i have always heard visitors or new residents from up north or out west marvel at how much hotter it seems with more humidity. summer nights are almost stifling sometimes. i think they call it radiant dispensation or something.

**the actual pool at mi casa**

so this brings me to hotel life. solitary hotel life. oh, and free hotel life. my brother told me to apply with fema for direct hotel payment because my zip code had mandatory evacuation and we have no power. i tried applying online and i am so glad i did, because about an hour later, i received an automated call telling me i qualified and to go online for a list of approved hotels. i was never more happy to see my hotel on the list, lemme tellya. lol it has been one of the few bright spots in this whole thing.

**my room looks just like this, seriously**

i have to remember to plead my own case here about my health, and why i'm staying in a hotel to begin with. the heat and lesser sanitation can really trigger various arthritic attacks, particularly the psoriasis. i can recall how ill i became after 3 days of suffering post-rita. i read that centerpoint said today that most people would not see power restored before next thursday, so that's almost another week now. i know that people survive 3 weeks without power up north in the winter, and if that makes me a wimp, then my bad, i admire them, they win.

**at one of the local parks here**

i do believe i could survive that long without a/c up here, though. i've been walking outside here in the afternoon and haven't even sweated. there is a cool wind here, even at 3 in the afternoon. that is non-existent at home unless there's a cool front or something. and it's humid but much less so than on the coast.

this is my 8th day here and the honeymoon is slowly wearing off. as wiped out as the road trip was, i was happy for the variety. i'm still happy with my hotel, as lodging goes. it's just getting old. i miss the air conditioned little life i had. at my own house. i want it back. i want to smell my normal life, too. i miss my rocking chair. and reggie. and my coffee pot. and my constant cable internet. i even miss hubs, believe it or not. lol he's working on his new job project now 7 days a week, since his quality of life is better at work right now. we talk a couple of times a day on the cell, and exchange accounts of our boring daily adventures.

well, i guess i needed to get all of that out. i was going to include some politics, but although i have been keeping up with it all, it's just not that front and center on my radar right now. i talk often with many of the other ike evacuees at the hotel and we all feel like the rest of the world is passing us by. we've all had our routines and lives disrupted and held hostage by the electric company, the roofing company, the construction company, the insurance company, fema, etcetera. all we can do really is sit and wait. so i try to be more patient, once again. pretend it's a vacation. pretend i'm in some control...