Once upon a time (this past weekend), we went to Charlottesville to totally engorge ourselves on presidential stuff and all things 18th century. And to see beautiful scenery. It’s very convenient that all these presidents lived so close to each other. It must have been something in the water. The upstream water.
We had a great weekend, and maybe one day when I’m not so lazy, or overwhelmed, or intimidated by this blog I might start posting the pictures of all the things we’ve been doing lately. So for right now I’ll tell a quick story.
We stayed at the Doubletree Hotel, which is a pretty shi shi la la hotel. The inside looks like one of those places where if you have to ask the price of something then you can’t afford it. We only paid $60 (thank you last minute “name your price” Priceline deal). Perhaps that’s why we got the special room. We, of course, didn’t know it was special when we checked in.
We spent all day out and about and didn’t get back to the hotel until late in the evening. We went through the bedtime routine with the girls, without much yelling and raucousness, and then slept until about 6:30 or 7:30 when Ashlyn decided we’d all had enough shuteye. This is a Monday morning, by the way.
We were almost done getting ready and were about ten minutes away from vacating the premises when the hotel phone rang. “Odd,” I thought, “we’ve already gotten the bill slipped under the door. I bet this is one of those errant wake up calls where the staff accidentally calls the wrong room. Good thing it’s 8:30 and everyone’s up by now, hehe.”
Me: Hello?
Groggy voice on other end: Is this room 826?
Me: Yes…
GV: I’m your neighbor and I live here throughout the year and I was just wondering when y’all are leaving because you woke me up early this morning making lots of noise and I even heard your child bang on the door and I have medical issues so I was just wondering when you were planning on leaving…
Me: Well, I’m so sorry to hear this and I don’t think my daughter beat on the door, but I’m sorry if she did. Fortunately we’re leaving today so we won’t be bothering you anymore.
I must stop here and let you know something. It was very hard for me at this point in time to not be completely offended and be rude to this person. I was blown away by the fact that she thought we had been loud. That was actually laughable, because for us this had been a quiet trip. Granted, Ashlyn tends to scream when she isn’t happy about something, but that didn’t actually happen very many times while in the hotel. I guess she doesn’t know our history though and couldn’t be grateful. The door she must have heard our child kicking was the door that adjoins one room to the next. And she WAS NOT kicking it. Our suitcase was right next to that door so I’m sure it got banged, but Ashlyn doesn’t go around beating or kicking on doors or walls. Yet. It was all I could do to try to be pleasant and say nice things to her.
GV: Well, you technically don’t have to be out of the room until 12 noon and that’s a while from now…
Ok lady. Are you kidding me?! You’re kicking us out of the adjoining hotel room with 3 hours to spare when I’m already telling you we’re leaving today!?!?
Me: Ma’am, we’ll leave when we’re ready. Bye.
I was dumbfounded, but not quite speechless. If she could hear the noise we were making earlier than she definitely heard me talking about how if someone lives in a hotel room then they have got to expect to hear noise from guests every once in a while and who was she to call another guest and ask them to leave and why didn’t she call the front desk to complain first and there was no way any of us were beating on the door and did she want to see what loud and obnoxious could be? Du, the levelheaded one in this instance, had to calm me and Reagan down. It seems that she’s picked up my penchant for not wanting to take crap from others.
As I turned in our key cards the clerk asked the perfect question, “so, how was everything?” I was able to explain that everything was great until this morning when we were asked to leave by the lady who lives in the hotel and who just happened to be next door to us. I found out that she indeed has done this to other guests and the hotel has asked her not to. Why they don’t put her in a corner room I don’t know.
So, I learned that I definitely have a ways to go in automatically responding in love to criticism. I at least didn’t lash out at her. But don’t think I didn’t play the scenario out in my head several different times where I told her off. Or beat on the wall. Or memorized her hotel room number to call back at odd hours of the night. Ahem. I need to deal with that as well. One’s thought life can be the death of his/her happiness.
The End
Not So SAHM 
we especially enjoyed this one. keep it down, would ya?
I love my honey…short fuse and all 🙂
Funny! I was in Rochester NY a few years ago on a biz trip during some kind of teen entrepreneur convention. The normally quiet hotel was bedlam.
I FINALLY got to sleep only to be awakened by hotel mgmt at the door. (Seems my neighbor had said I was making too much noise. Me? I WAS ASLEEP!! And before that, the only noise had been me padding back and forth to grab a cool drink and the TV which was turned to the lowest setting it could be where I could still hear it) I think she heard some of the noisy teens returning to their nearby rooms and just couldn’t tell where the noise was actually coming from.
That — or she was just psychotic.
Aaggghh! We just can’t win 🙂
To top this off my elderly next door neighbor asked me yesterday if I would not let my girls draw with sidewalk chalk on our shared sidewalk. She said it was like graffiti, but then admitted that it would wash away in the rain. This one hurt my feelings because I think that’s being a little nit picky (especially when she admits that it will wash away) and my girls love drawing with chalk. I’m wondering if it had to do with the content of the drawings though. Reagan wrote a couple of words out, one of them being “Jesus”…and this lady is Jewish. I don’t know if she was offended or if she really doesn’t like sidewalk chalk. Oh well, such is the life in close-quarter living.
Hi, visiting from BPOTW. You are a far better person than I. I totally would have started making noise and being obnoxious in retaliation for her call. But i’m evil that way. :p
Good example of why we travel in an RV! When we kick the walls, the neighbors can’t usually hear us ;>));
Seriously — you were very patient with this lady. And also your kids are lucky to have the opportunity to travel with you.
Here’s to better neighbors next time.
Wow. On one hand I’m proud that she went to you first instead of going over your heads…however, I imagine that she just did that because the hotel staff knows her and knows what her standard of noise level is. I don’t care that she lives there…she has no right to tell another guest (who’s no more or less special than she) to leave. I think if I were the hotel management, I’d consider asking her to leave for being a nuisance to the other guests if this happened regularly.
That’s amazing – I wonder why the hotel staff don’t ask the woman to leave. It’s pretty antisocial, and surely is bad for repeat business!
Good on ya! You did good!