We took the kids for an overnight adventure for March break and opted to once again stay in a Junior Suite.
The Junior Suite works well for our family of five, ahem, in that there are two queen beds and one pull-out couch.
The kids spend most of the drive to the Junior Suite discussing sleeping arrangements, often negotiating things like, “I’ll be nice to you for the duration of our stay if I can sleep on the pull-out, left side,” (but they didn’t use words like duration or pull-out–more like “I won’t hit you or tell people you are really a troll doll if I can sleep on the side furthest from the door where the bad guys can get us.” Or, “I’ll be nice to you if I can choose the show we watch from the bed, me on the left, you on the right and you share three french fries with me if in fact, we do have french fries.”
Deal.
Of course by the time bed time rolls around, the Junior Suite which had so meticulously been laid out to accomodate our rather organized family of five becomes a living nightmare before anyone gets under any covers. (sheets only, no hotel bedspreads)
After a series of negotiations the Junior Suite was ready to have Hanna and Ellie and their three shared french fries on the pull-out couch with iCarly on the t.v. The first queen bed would be for Mommy and Chloe who has never slept in a big girl bed and therefore needed a parent to keep her from falling out (or stealing anyone’s fries). Daddy would through no fault of his own, sleep alone in the giant, queen sized bed anticipating the greatest sleep of his life.
What really happened?
Hanna and Greg shared one queen bed. Liz, Ellie and Chloe shared the other. The pull-out couch sat made-up and totally empty. Junior Suite!
Between the hours of 8:45pm and 4:15am I was kicked, told to “Stop it Hanna!” more than seven times, slapped in the head and considered turning my body so my feet would be on the pillows next to the girl’s heads but this might only give Chloe the idea to play with ten piano keys for toes and fuel her midnight madness to carry on that much longer.
I looked at the bedspreads tossed on the floor. The bedspreads I remove immediately the second we walk into any hotel room. The bedspreads that had been piled in a heap in the far corner near the garbage can, that if any skin-on-bedspread contact was made would require an immediate de-lousing.
I looked at the pile of soft, probably non-fatal if slept on bedspreads and thought, I could just climb on the mountain and sleep as though in a dog bed. Key word–sleep.
Then I started to think of songs that reminded me of lying down and sleeping.
“Lying in my bed I hear the clock tick and think of you.” (Cyndi Lauper) Except in my scenario, it was the heater or the AC unit kicking in and out that I was hearing Time After Time.
“Lying beside you, here in the dark.” (Journey) Except it wasn’t really dark Journey, because there was a light from the parking lot that no matter how hard we pulled the Junior Suite curtains, that light was somehow finding a place to shoot laserbeams directly at my eyeballs. And it wasn’t so much that I was lying beside anyone so much that they were either lying on top of me or I was wedged under and around them.
“Lying here with you so close to me….” The understatement of the decade Lady Antebellum.
“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger!” Kelly Clarkson. You said it sister!
