Motel Hotel Economics

So…let’s talk about how I’m holed up inside a motel in Newark, Delaware that smells faintly of “I used to smell like cigarette smoke back in the 80s when smoking in hotel rooms was the shiznet but I have been sprayed repeatedly with an ozone-like substance in order to eradicate the film of carcinogenic smoke that has layered my walls and carpet” the day after Christmas watching “The World’s Strongest Man” on ESPN, shall we?  It all started off innocently enough — after spending a delightful pre-holiday weekend and Christmas Eve with my mom, I headed up to the all-American town of Middletown, Delaware on Christmas Day to celebrate Santa’s burgeoning stomach, rosy red cheeks, and frostbite-repelling white beard with T. Rex and her family.  Numerous portions of ham, scalloped apples, vegetables, flaky biscuits, baklava, grandma’s cookies, wine, and caramel apples later, I was fit to be Santa’s replacement.  Lacking the proper equipment to strap down my breasts, augment my chiny chin chin with some delightful white hair, or learn how to fly reindeer on short notice, T. Rex and I took our protuberant bellies to the only hotel in all of Christendom (okay, well, all of Middletown) — the Hampton Inn. 

The Hampton Inn was a perfectly delightful place to spend the night — what better way to aid the body in digestion than some free Internet access, Mountain Dew from the vending machine, and a Paranormal State marathon on A&E, which taught me that 3 a.m. is the optimal time to contact evil spirits, since it is the inverse of the time of Jesus’ death (which apparently happened at 3 p.m.).  Evidently, the man not only died from our sins, but he founded the first wireless spirit network.  Yet, despite my crash-course in paranormal communications, I found $120 to be a bit steep for a King-size bed in the middle of sleepy and sparsely populated suburbia.  Methinks that the Hampton Inn Middletown is profiting from being the only game in town as well as the fortuitous location across from the WaWa gas station , which was the only place in all of Middletown open, nay, practically spilling First State residents out of every glass door pore on its edifice, on Christmas Eve.  Seriously, I haven’t seen a place that busy since I watched live footage of a Black Friday stampede at Wal-Mart.

Yet, I must admit that the Hampton Inn is to the Bellagio as the Sleep Inn in whose ozone-scented room I am currently residing in typing this lengthy blog entry is to the El Cortez Hotel and Casino — one left turn down the road to Sketchville.  Sketchville was not my intended destination for tonight.  No, indeed, after spending a day lounging, relaxing, and doing abso-fucking-lutely nothing, me and 9 pounds of holiday ham were set to travel back down I-95 to D.C. tonight.  Yet, the second that I hit the highway, I was awash in a rainstorm and 30-mph traffic.  It seems that everyone and their brother, sister, niece, and nephew was heading back from the New York area in separate cars, descending upon the beltway in a wash of steel, headlights, and rubbernecking.  I forsaw a 2 1/2 hour drive turning into a 5 to 6 hour nightmare of road rage and high blood pressure, and turned tail back to Delaware in search of cheap lodgings.  And so here I sit in the $69 Sleep Inn.  It ain’t all bad.  The vending machine has diet Dr. Pepper, and the floor and bedspread have the good decency to have enough color and pattern that if I toss my ham and cookies when I wake up to head back to D.C. at 4 or 5 in the morning, it’ll blend in.  Still, it’s not exactly the best establishment for a romantic, post-holiday tryst.  Unless I’m picking up one of the Lube Express proprieters; in that case, it’s just right.