With a Couple of False Starts (Part 3)

If you haven't read the first parts of this story, Part 1 is here and part 2 is here. 

Fast forward a couple of hours of my stewing, feeling like I'm losing ground on all the gains I've made in my health, knowing there is no way I can drive like this and we can't stay in an RV park because none are open (and the RV is still too much of a mess to drive). I'm sitting in the car where it's warm, my son next to me, because I've gone beyond my capacity yet again  and I'm so completely spent. I'm looking on my phone for deals on hotels in the area - I remembered even seeing a couple near where we adopted Pendleton, our cat. And here's a photo of him because he's adorable: 

 

I find a site online where you can book hotels at a lower rate than they generally book for. I booked a place nearby, only 3 miles from the apartment (and therefore the RV). I learned in that process that generally you can call the hotel and get an equivalent rate straight through them if you just mention that you saw this lower rate online. I made sure they took pets. I booked it online and off we went. 

Only when we got there an hour later (wrapping up some things first), they didn't have our reservation. After some back and forth and full on panic (non-refundable reservation + depleted nervous system + brain fog), they discovered that our reservation was actually for the 18th. Somehow in my brain fog and exhaustion I'd booked for the 18th thinking it was for the 3rd. WTF, how that happened I don't know, but I'm looking at you, Mercury Retrograde. 

It got sorted. We got a room. We weren't being charged for the 18th. We took ourselves and everything we needed inside, my husband got us all situated and then went back to the RV to do just a bit more inside. 

The hotel was not ideal. It didn't seem that clean. There was candy on our room floor when we went inside. There were chemical smells. Sort of subtle but too sweet, too much like a plug-in air freshener, which are the most toxic of toxic - those and perfumes/colognes. We searched the room and nothing seemed to be specifically making the smell. There was a bathtub where I could take a bath and the bathroom seemed clean. We bring our own bedding to hotels, so we pulled off the hotel bedding and put ours on. We watched cable - they had all the kids channels my son likes, so that was okay.

The chemical smell seemed to get stronger the longer we were there, and when I laid down to try to sleep, all propped up with pillows, I had a panic attack and was crying and having suicidal ideations (symptoms of a reaction to chemicals). My husband, I don't know if my angels were in his ear or what, but he didn't know how to help me and then all of a sudden he just started massaging my feet (like he sometimes does to help my plantar fascitis). 

I immediately calmed down and was able to fall asleep. The room got too hot during the night, from the heat kicking on at random times. Lots of door slamming noise throughout the night, waking me each time despite having a fan running near my head. And Pendleton the cat would not relax, so he kept me up all night, then decided I should just get up already around 3 AM. Which I did, because I had given up. 

I tried taking a nap for a bit later in the morning, but it didn't work, and I was as groggy as ever - and today we were going to drive. 

(to be continued)