Motel living not so bad

T here is no better way

to test your strength, endurance and sanity than to live in a motel room for several weeks. In between my move from Clovis to Tucumcari while my new house gets its final touches, my motel stay is going on three weeks. At least there are roughly 575 to choose from up and down Route 66. And at least it’s not one that keeps popping up in police reports.

Nevertheless, it’s been a challenge. Now I know how the old woman felt who lived in a shoe. It gets even better when you have company — namely a boyfriend who is coming with you on the Tucumcari move. There is no better way to test a relationship.

I need not get into the crampiness of it all, how socks look when draped across the armchair due to lack of dresser space or how many times we’ve almost knocked each other over moving from the desk lamp to the wall. But I will take a moment to mention it gets especially tense when one party enjoys late-night TV while the other is intent on her beauty sleep (not to mention names).

We are also learning the tricks of eating exclusively off of paper plates, using breakable plastic forks and boiling an egg in the microwave. The latter likes to explode.

OK, the maid service is a high point, perhaps one of the aspects that is keeping me sane. I may live in a motel but at least I don’t have to clean a motel toilet.

I also must remind myself of prior motel stays, as this overall situation is really not new. No, I will not count the week-long sojourn in an adobe hut on the Gulf of Mexico during a yoga retreat. If you want to put me there for weeks — or even months — I’d really have no problem.

But in between apartments back in New York City, I got a very good lesson in hotel living. So good, in fact, it continues to give me nightmares.

In New York it’s even more of a challenge because they have residency laws that force hotel dwellers to move out at the end of each week. Sure, you can move back in, but you cannot stay in the same hotel for more than six consecutive days or they have to file for a different permit or something. It adds a whole new dimension to transient living.

You are also forced to get used to some New York hotel things. Please note we’re not talking about the Marriott here.

In most older hotels I could afford, the toilet is down the hall, right next to the bathtub, which is wont to get flooded by a senile old man who just happens to be on your floor.

You are also subjected to loud yelling from the upstairs, downstairs or next-door neighbors, rats that enjoy dancing up the shower drain and blood on the walls that did not necessarily come from a splattered cockroach.

Perhaps this Tucumcari motel is not so bad at all — as long as I find a way to disable the TV and master a way to boil an egg in the microwave so it will not explode.

Ryn Gargulinski writes for Freedom Newspapers. Contact her at 461-1952 or by e-mail:

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