8) Monkeys and Cat Piss and Jesus… Oh my!

The ride out starts off with your eldest son forgetting his favorite cup at school. You do a U-turn a few miles up the road and send him back into the school, your car filled with luggage, plants, stuffed animals, snacks and a big orange cat. You’ve got a 5 hour ride ahead of you and it’s getting late in the day. You hope that this isn’t an indication of how this trip will go…

You were a bit nervous about driving up with the kids and the cat and a packed to the max rental car all on your own. Once you get on the road though… you wonder why you were nervous about that?

The kids are great, the cat settles down, and thanks to the blind spot detectors on the car mirrors, the jungle of plants in the front seat has no longer become an issue. Your kids take turns in the back playing DJ. They use your phone to play songs on YouTube. The four of you sing along.

The long ride is mostly uneventful. When you finally reach your destination you find out that you’re roughly 90 minutes ahead of your husband. You tell the kids to sit in the car with the cat while you go check into your adjoined rooms.

The hotel is nice, clean, and the desk clerk is friendly. Unfortunately though, your adjoining rooms (as booked on a popular booking site) are not adjoining. You and your husband’s room is on the third floor, and your three kids all ten and under have been put on the fourth floor. There’s no way to fix the problem so you all decide to hunker down in the one room on the third floor. No problem…

You get the kids and the cat from the car, you all head upstairs to your room, and then because there’s a pool and you’ve all been crammed in a car for hours, you tell the kids you’ll take them swimming. It’s bedtime but… you’re the adult and you get to make the calls: pool it is.

The water is chilly, the sky is pitch black, the kids yell and scream and splash and then you all play a game of Marco Polo before heading back to your room, dripping wet and exhausted. You and the kids are all packed on the fold out couch watching the Barbie movie when your husband and dog finally make it to the hotel.

The rest of the night is uneventful. Your daughter sleeps on the pull out couch, your sons on the queen bed next to yours. You are asleep the second your head hits the pillow. It was a good first day on the road.

The next day however… not a good day. What should have been a five hour drive becomes an eight hour drive. You’ve been routed just outside of Atlanta. Exasperated after crawling on the highway for literal hours you tell your children that if you ever say, “I want to move to or around Atlanta,” that they should immediately beat you to death and run away because that’s not your mom, it’s an alien who has taken over your body. You will never live anywhere near this god forsaken traffic.

There’s stops at Burger King and Dunkin Donuts, the last two hours of the drive are spent on a quiet and desolate road, completely devoid of modern conveniences like gas station bathrooms and rest stops. Your middle child pees on a dumpster outside of a weird strip mall filled with tractors and gun stores.

When you finally make it to the next motel in North Carolina, just ten minutes down the road from your best friend’s house, your husband has already been there two hours. He briefs you on the room situation… it’s less than ideal. When you booked the room the pictures showed a gorgeous pool surrounded by lush gardens, and a cute two story motel. You assumed that you were getting a room similar to the first one you stayed at… you needed a pet friendly motel that could sleep five people (you ordered a pull out bed when you used that booking site to rent the room). What you walk into though is far different. There is no pull out bed. There are two beds squeezed into a room that hasn’t been updated since it was built decades ago. There are questionable repairs, barely enough space to accommodate two of you, let alone five people, a dog and cat.

But the room is already paid for… you’re on a budget, and leaving now would be a lot of money down the drain. So you decide to stick it out. It’s not long before there is a knock on the door… cats are apparently NOT allowed, despite the online listing saying they were. The motel owner does his best to be accommodating but says that the cat isn’t allowed out of the tiny crate I’ve been using for travel.

Begrudgingly you take the cat down to your best friend’s house. She’s got a spare bedroom and said that he can stay in there… her own cat has the run of the house. When you get back to the motel an hour later, your husband informs you that all of the plants (that you couldn’t leave in the hot truck for several days and had moved just in front of your door) had to go. The motel owners were annoyed, told your husband to move them somewhere else. You hope none of the motorcycle gang hanging out on the premises has a penchant for potted plants.

That night you listen to doors slam, the smell of cigarettes wafting through the door, your pets pacing the tiny room nervously, and you get the distinct feeling that the motel owners are pissed you’re there.

The next morning your suspicions are confirmed when your husband asks the motel owner (the wife) for more towels. She tells him that the two we have are enough. He tells her that there are five of us. She rolls her eyes and in the most hostile fashion that one could give someone a towel, she hands him one before stomping off. Later that day she yells at you all for cooking in the room. You were most definitely not cooking in the room. You weren’t even eating in there…

When you head into town for breakfast your husband spots a plume of dark smoke wafting through the trees. You ask your kids what they think is causing the smoke… without hesitation your middle child says, “Must be from someone was cooking in their motel room.” This kid is funny as hell.

You take the kids tubing. Your husband stays behind but you go with your best friend and the three kids and not even 40 feet in your middle child flips his tube and starts panic screaming… you and your bestie run to him. She loses a sandal in the process, you lose your favorite pair of lounging shorts and sunglasses to the river. You manage to slam your tailbone into a rock and she’s pretty sure that she may have broken a toe or two. What was supposed to be a peaceful float down the river has turned into the most stressful, hectic shit show you’ve ever experienced on a tube.

By the end of the river run, you and your friend are exhausted, she limps through the dusty, rock filled parking lot, one missing shoe… and tells you that she’s all done taking kids down rivers. You think of your missing shorts and sunglasses and your bruised tailbone and your kids panic screaming every time they fall off a tube or float out of sight and you vehemently agree.

That night you get back to the motel. The owners watch you through curtains. You feel so unwelcome. The mood is hostile. You and your husband have already talked about leaving a poor review… there were plenty when you later looked it up… wondering if the hostility was a “you or them problem,” and are quickly convinced after reading lots of, “very rude owners,” that it was a them problem… but… that didn’t fix your current problem… the hostility and unwelcomeness you were experiencing.

You notice the wife out by the garden. You watched her clean rooms all day. She runs the motel with her husband but he’s not cleaning rooms. It’s all on her. You think of what a hard life that must be. You empathize with her and the towels… she’s the one doing all that laundry, folding all those towels… you suddenly have a soft spot for her. She’s watering the plants. It’s dusk and she’s finished her work and you can relate to this love of plants and gardening, this is her release, her time after a long hard day of backbreaking work… this garden is your in.

You yell to her from the balcony, “Your garden is absolutely beautiful,” and it is. She stops watering the plants, spins around in the dusk and you actually catch her smile. “Oh… uh… thank you…” she seems taken aback by the compliment. And when two old guys on chairs mention that she’s always working in her garden, you make sure she can hear you when you say, “Well that’s very apparent because her garden is stunning. She’s got an amazing green thumb.”

The next morning she’s at your door with two more towels.

You eat at delicious Italian restaurants, you float in a gorgeous lake with your best friend and three kids. You hike trails, you tour the little town, you buy your kids candy and ice cream. And when it comes time to leave the motel with the once hostile, now kind owners, you instead of leaving a one star review, leave the woman one of your precious potted plants and a thank you note.

They tell your husband on his way out, as he hands them the plant and thank you note, that your children are the best behaved children that have ever stayed there before. You all leave on good terms and you feel like you may have learned something there… bees with honey as the saying goes. You feel proud of yourself for making a shitty situation into a teaching experience for your children and a learning experience for yourself. Empathy, kindness and compassion go a long way.

When you leave your best friend’s place in North Carolina you have two more passengers… her and her cat. Now it’s five of you and two cats, and a shit ton of plants (minus one) barreling north up the highway headed for northern Virginia. Your husband gives you the address of the next hotel, says that there will be two adjoining rooms for the six of you, that it’s pet friendly and even includes breakfast.

After a long drive you reach the hotel shortly after your husband. He’s waiting out in the parking lot… You can see the stress on his face… “Listen… if you don’t want to stay here…” he says as you hop out of the car and stroll up to the room… it’s gross. There are pieces of weed on the table, someone at some point was probably rolling blunts and while you’d be a hypocrite to complain about weed, you are way more concerned with the fact that the table hasn’t been wiped down. There are someone’s beard whiskers on the sink. There appears to be a large and very questionable stain on the bedframe… the walls are gross. You tell the kids to sit on the beds and keep their shoes on in the rooms at all times.

The second room absolutely reeks of cigarette smoke. The smell is so overpowering that you start to gag and have to leave the room. You were told by the motel owner that while cats were allowed, they had to stay in their cages to preserve the cleaniless of the rooms. When your best friend lets her cat out and the cat pisses all over the floor you for a split second worry about being charged the $250 fee the owner said you’d incur if a pet soiled the space… until you both burst out laughing… knowing that the cat piss was not going to be noticeable over the thick stench of cigarettes…

You decide to stay… it’s one night. Although the rooms are gross, the bed linens are fresh and clean (the only saving grace and non-negotiable you have at this point). That night as you and your best friend sit on the back steps of the neighboring gas station, taking long drags off the two joints she expertly rolled, you joke about how you’re much more comfortable staying at her place… a cabin she’s renovating that currently has no running water, toilet, or shower… over the current motel you’re staying in. You’re both laughing at the situation, the nastiness of the motel, and how you’ll never stay at this chain again… that your husband was right about them… you’re thankful he booked these shit hole rooms.

When you walk back to your rooms, you notice a small monkey in a cage in a neighboring room’s window. The next window over is platered with Jesus photos. “Jesus Christ,” you say to your friend… you’re both laughing now. What a shithole this place is. And that would be an understatement.

In the morning you step out of the room, you can’t get out of there quick enough and are already packed and ready to leave by six am. You’re immediately assaulted by an unfamiliar smell. You can’t quite put a finger on it. It’s something you’ve never smelled before… but yet you can almost place the smell. You ask your best friend and husband… they say it’s the smell of filth. And while judging by the motel it wouldn’t be hard to accept that as the answer, you never once smelled that overpowering, all encompassing stench in the rooms. Outside it’s thick enough that you feel you can swim through the humid, putrid smelling air. What the fuck is that smell???

It doesn’t take long to discover the source. You head down to the Dunkin Donuts just a block up the road. It’s hard to eat breakfast with that stench. The food takes on the taste of the air. You choke down half a bagel and egg sandwich. Your best friend eats the other half, your kids who don’t seem to notice or care about the offending odor happily eat bagels and donuts in the back seat. And then you see it… a huge truck carrying animals headed for slaughter. Then another truck… and another… they’re everywhere. There’s a fucking slaughterhouse right by the motel. That smell… that fucking god awful smell… you can’t get out of that place fast enough.

You finally make it, early in the day to your new town. You’ll be staying at a hotel there for two nights. Tomorrow is your walkthrough, you’ll get to see inside your church for the first time. And the following day you’ll close on it and move in. They’re forecasting heavy rain on move in day… but you’re staying positive and decide that the rain will be a welcome break from the heat.

You and your husband wind up getting into town at almost the exact same time, him in the 26’ Uhaul packed with all your worldly possessions (at least the ones that made it in the truck during the frantic dash to fill the truck before your neighbors came in and scooped up your left behind items), and you in the car with your best friend, three kids and two cats (less than enthused about each other’s presence). You decide to meet in front of your church, you want to look at it before you head to the hotel for the night…

You’re feeling a bit uneasy as you look at her in the glow of the setting sun. She’s huge though not quite as large as she appears in photos, and she definitely needs a lot of work. Maybe you fucked this up? You thought seeing her would soothe all your worries… but instead you’re nervous all over again. “What the fuck did we just do,” you think to yourself, not wanting the kids to overhear you.

You take a deep breathe, put the car back in drive and follow your husband to the hotel… hoping to god that there’s no monkeys in cages in windows, or questionable stains on bed frames, or the stench of cigarette smoke and cat piss that you can’t quite smell over the slaughterhouse…

“Jesus Christ,” you say out loud… the white Jesus posters plastered all over the bedroom window of the sleazy motel still fresh on your mind.