Things I Do, Hotel Edition.

So, hotels. *dry heaves* Pardon me. So, hotels.

It doesn't matter whether it's a nice hotel or a crappy motel. I've been to some gorgeous resorts, and I've been to some really shitty places. My reaction to them all is the same: horror, terror, and disgust.

• The blankets. The very, very first thing I do upon entering our room is either tear the damn thing off altogether, or fold the duvet and blanket all the way down, and then fold the top sheet over it all or part of the way. There is no way that duvet or banket is going to touch my flesh at any point during the night. (If I notice in the night that my husband has pulled it up over him, I will mull over a trial separation outright yank it back off him. Sorry, honey.) Neither will I sit or lounge upon the bedspread during the day. The top blankets get folded all the way down or thrown off. If we freeze in the night? Tough shit.

• I lift the top sheet and look all the way down to the bottom to make sure there are no unexpected, er, surprises.

• Then I flip over the pillows, because the duvet has been folded over them.

Although I realize that making the bed in this fashion also means that the duvet has touched the other side of the pillow, too. Lose-lose. :( I say a lengthy prayer to the Patron Saint of Headlice (and a quick one to the Patron Saint of Spooge) and hope all goes well. The one thing I cannot bring myself to do is bring a blacklight to a hotel room. I would never be the same. At the least, I could never travel again; at most, you'd have to commit me.

• The very next thing I do is attack everything with Clorox wipes. Everything. The bedside tables. The dresser. The dresser handles. The doorknobs. The closet doors. The tub. The toilet seat (even after disinfecting it, I still put down toilet paper on the seat before I use it). The toilet handle. The sink faucets. The phone. The alarm clock. And the remote. Oh God, the remote. I've even been known to disinfect it, and then still put it in a plastic bag. Just think how many people using that bed have just finished making filthy nasty deviant sweet sweet love and then upon completion, reach for the remote to find a nice program on the tee-vee to relax to. Just think.

• The suitcases never touch the carpet or the beds. They go up on a fold-out luggage rack, if possible, or I put a towel under them. This is common-sense advice, and word is spreading.

• The carpets. First, I will not walk in a hotel without my shoes on. I even take them into the bathroom with me so that after I've showered, I can stand right on the bathmat and put on my socks and shoes.

• The drinking glasses! Ye gods! I would sooner drink from a drinking fountain* than use one of those cups. At least not without a long, hot scrubbing. You KNOW those things aren't sanitized, even with those "nice effort, thanks for trying" plastic covers over them (that aren't sealed in any way). You KNOW the maid has just finished wiping down the toilet before giving those glasses a brief rinse. You KNOW they are festering with The Herp. Bygones.

*Just kidding, no I wouldn't. Drinking fountains are positively swarming with nasty bacteria and viruses, not to mention the occasional birdshit. And even though the water arcs away from the spigot, think of how water dribbles from your mouth right back down onto that spigot. So the water is arcing, yes, but arcing OUT of a spigot covered in nastiness. But I digest.

• Showering is a tough one. I usually feel dirtier after showering at a hotel than before. After washing my feet in the shower, I re-wash my hands right then and there. Then, when exiting, I touch the shower curtain at the very tip-top, as high as I can reach, where other people haven't touched immediately after washing their own assholes.

And I lose my damn mind when the shower curtain billows in, touching my body, conforming to it, vacuum-sealing to it, like white on lice, no matter what I do. You know that's happened to you. It is horrifying.

But, you know what? Even after all of my attempts to clean and disinfect, I still touch everything with a Kleenex, Howard-Hughes style.

Because all the Lysol in the world couldn't kill 
what lives in a hotel. And I don't just mean in Room 237.