And This Was Just Monday

On the road, start of a 3-day road trip. Plans were made last-minute, stress resulted in two of the previous nights shorting me to two hours sleep each. That may be the cause of what happened that day. Or should I say night, because both occurred after we got to the motel in Tucumcari. (By the way, great pillows there. Sleep issues solved ... sort of.)

First, I was way too polite. It didn't even occur to me until later that what was said thoroughly earned some snark in return, and of course several possible ways of doing it. We had checked in, unloaded into the room, and decided nothing we'd packed would quite do for supper. I made a MacDonalds run. I couldn't raise an appetite for more than a small ice cream cone, which I ate before driving away. Rich decided he was willing to try their new green chili double cheeseburger. (He liked it.)

So when pulling in back to our parking spot at the motel, a guy standing in an open doorway next to the spot, seeing me emerge with my pocketbook and a wee MacDonald's sack, for some reason felt entitled to say, "We all deal with our stress in different ways."

It shouldn't have ended there. Next morning I thought how I could have given him the slow look up and down, letting my contempt register, and asked him what was his coping mechanism for being an asshole. A bunch of other possible comments as well ran through my now thoroughly offended brain. But, of course, I didn't. Darn!

As soon as I reached the room, I changed into pajamas and hit the sack. I dimly realized the panel discussion on the TV had Rachel Maddow on it, verified that is was MSNBC, and found how marvelous the pillows were.

Zonk!

A ringing sound woke me. Could it possibly be time to hit the road again already? Didn't feel like enough time. Maybe hit the snooze alarm for 20? But I didn't remember asking Steve to set an alarm for this morning. Oh wait, he wasn't even in the room, he'd already flown into MSP well ahead of us. Fast as those thoughts flickered through my befuddled consciousness, I heard Rich telling me it was my phone (across the room), fetch it, check that it was Joan calling, bring it to me, and allowed me to open it and answer before she hung up. An hour experienced in 11 seconds!

If that 11 seconds jammed in all that, the two minutes which followed were like swimming through cold molasses. Joan informed me she had my remote. Uhhhhh....OK.  She clarified my TV remote, and it was now safely in her house. Uhhhh.... What? She went inside the house and picked up the remote off the table and took it home? Why....? She finally went on to inform me that it was in just a little envelop outside the front door, so small and flat she almost thought it hadn't been delivered.

OHHHH, now I got it! That remote! The one we had been using was starting to flake out, several favorite keys no longer responding. For a bit, a harder touch worked, then hitting a particular corner was necessary, then pushing it to one side while pushing, then.... nothing. Nada. I had just ordered a new one ($16.) the day before we'd decided to leave, and was to be delivered the evening of the day we left early morning. I had asked her to please swing by and rescue it from potential porch thieves. Now it made sense, enough that I managed to thank her.

That was immediately followed by an apology for bring too zonked out to understand what she'd been saying, followed by blaming my sleep deprivation. She promptly ended the call, unlike our typical half hour plus conversations.

My head returned to its pillow, and I was dimly aware that Rich was still watching Rachel before sleeping the rest of the night. I knew I owed Joan an explanation, and she'd get it the next evening. When I'd had a more appropriate amount of sleep, of course.