Travel update

This was a slowly-escalating and very eventfully quiet week.

Our drive to Beast's parents' house was nice, including a good night at a hotel that he had noticed was going downhill on previous business trips to that area but seems to have turned around.

Upon our arrival at Chez G&G, he fixed their steps (lowering them and making them three instead of two), installed two cupboards in the newly-created laundry room upstairs, and generally fixed up some stuff that needed doing. I helped Grandma put stuff into the cupboards and we had a nice dinner of leftover ham.

The next few days were nice family time and everything went very well. The Gs are getting older, and we had some frank but somewhat somber discussions about that stuff, but nothing maudlin or morbid. Some TMI about their marriage, but...oh, well.

Last night we went out to eat at a very very nice restaurant. Before we could order, my brother called Beast's cell to let me know that my mom was hospitalized the night before. She's had another stroke (I think we're in double figures now). So we'll probably be moving her to a nursing home and I'll probably have to head back to Colorado this month.

We didn't get back to our hotel room (Grandma smokes and they used to have cats, so we just stay somewhere else; it's easier all the way around) until after 11, where we found that all of our stuff had been moved, rearranged, and rifled, including Beast's company computer and my toiletries. It was beyond creepy, and in all the many hotels and motels I've stayed in all over the world, I've never experienced anything like this. Sparky has used the word "violated" and that nails the feeling perfectly. We all threw away our toothbrushes, unable to stomach the thought of putting them in our mouths....

So we're fighting with the hotel about it: the owner called us back--eight hours after we checked out!--and then when Beast got upset about this being referred to as an "inconvenience" and the owner's inability to deal with reality (he asked if Beast wanted the maids "taken outside and beaten"), the man actually hung up on Beast. Twice.

And then my sister called--the one who lives near my mom, but who is here for the birth of her first grandchild, due January 14--and through a very chopped up phone line (I hate cell phones) said that my niece is in the hospital and it sounded like she said that she lost the baby. They were going to call us back in an hour or so on the land line. Anytime now.

We've unloaded the car and are ready to hit the road again in case we need to go to the hospital. I don't know who knows what, and I need to call my mom again today (I talked to her last night; she sounded ok), but I don't want to tie up the phone line. We also need to call G&G.

Beast has been on his cell doing a police report on the events at the hotel yesterday, and with the credit card company--he had receipts in his work bag, and I can't find my credit card, though that is unrelated to the hotel situation.

I can't even figure out what to do.

So I'm blogging.

If you're the praying type, I'd appreciate you sending up a few smoke signals for my family.