Travel much? Read this book.

Posted by random olio

Some of you may be staying in a hotel right now. You might be on a holiday vacation, or maybe visiting your family. You might also have an upcoming trip to a warmer place so you can get away from the snow or rain for a few days. Or, maybe it is a regular part of your job to travel for work and spend a large amount of your week in a hotel. Have you ever thought about how your experience at a hotel has to do with how often you open your wallet? I just finished reading the book: “Heads in Beds: A Reckless Memoir of Hotels, Hustles, and So-Called Hospitality” by Jacob Tomsky. Definitely a clever name for a book.

It is a raw memoir of the life of a hotel employee. A book that sheds light on the inner workings and guts of a hotel. It also discusses how the way you treat a hotel employee may have a direct effect on how you are treated, but in ways you might not expect. Are their actions due to how the corporate hotel chain requires their employees to treat you? No hotel is the same. Or does the service you receive have more to do with how much you are willing to fork over from your wallet? One of my favorite excerpts from his book is this quick story from when he worked at a New York City hotel:

“Speaking of area codes, one of the most wonderful tools at my disposal is putting a guest into a certain room on the twelfth floor. What is so punishing about this room? Nothing by the look of it: a decent room by all accounts. However, if I put you in room 1212, your phone will not stop ringing with wrong numbers. Why? Well, a surprising number of guests never seem to learn that from every hotel phone you have to dial out. In general, to place any call, one must press 9 prior to dialing, local or otherwise. So all day, and believe me, all night, idiots dispersed through the building will pick up their phones and try to straight dial a local number, starting with 1-212. Whatever they press after that matters not because they have already dialed room 1212, and 1212’s guest will constantly pick up the 3:00 a.m call and hear the loud mashing of other numbers or some drunk guest saying, ‘Hello? Hello? Who is this?’

What time is it? Why are you calling me? Who is this?

I’d like to order the Szechuan chicken please? Excuse me? Is this Happy Family Palace’?” page 197

Wow. That will definitely make me think about how I treat the employees at hotels. There are many more experiences he shares, as well as tips for how to navigate the hotel world, whether for personal or business. In its own way, hotels are a world of their own. Tomsky shares how desk agents, bellhops, doormen, housekeepers, and management work together, how they have a system of their own, and how it works and sometimes does not. The tips he shares are snapshots of what travelers can do to navigate around hotel policies, and alert them to things they should be aware of when dealing with hotel employees.

If you do not read his book, then you will want to be on your best behavior, plan and connect with the hotel ahead of time, and be sure to open your wallet and tip for the best service. If you do not, beware and proceed at your own risk.

Dear Santa,

Posted by random olio

Dear Santa,

I hope you are staying warm on your sleigh. When you get to Portland, be sure to wear a bright yellow slicker, because it has not stopped raining since the beginning of November. We will make sure to keep the chimney open for you. We called a chimney sweep last week to make sure it was all clean for you. They said that it is in tip-top shape for you, so we will wait to build a fire until Christmas Day.

Since I try hard to be good and eat healthy, I did not leave you any cookies this year. Just a green smoothie, full of spinach and protein powder as it will give you the energy you need to make it to all the other houses on your list. If you do not like the green smoothie, there is some egg nog in the refrigerator. I made sure I had back up reserves just in case.

I do not have anything on my Christmas list. I hope instead that you bring toys, jackets, and presents to any children that are in need this year. I hope you escalate them to the top of your list. Also, if you could find a way to comfort those families from Sandy Hook Elementary School. I guess if I did have something on my list, that would be what would be on my list this year. I was good this year, I promise.

Be safe. Until next year.

-tami

A little salt water with Silent Night…

Posted by random olio

Why, oh, why does hearing a good rendition of Silent Night make me cry? I am not one to cry too often. Yes, sometimes a television show or a movie will bring tears to my eyes, sometimes music does too. It is rare though. It is usually when the emotion felt moves me or gives me goose bumps, and the water flows to my eyes.

The emotion I feel is often the memories that fill my thoughts. Even as I write this the salt water is filling my eyes. I think of many Christmas Eve nights when we would go to a local church as a family. When I say as a family, it means my father joined us. Christmas Eve was really the only time of year we all went to church together. It was not our regular church, just one that we knew had a Christmas Eve service. It was a different type of evening. We got dressed up and my father was at his best. He loved Christmas. It brought out the best in him. The Christmas music, the lights, the tree and decorations. Lastly, the Santas. He had a thing for different types of Santa decorations (and I have to say some of them freaked me out). Maybe a better term for some of them was Father Christmas.

I never liked Santa…

In any case, whenever, we would sing Silent Night during the Christmas Eve service I would look up and there would be tears in my dad’s eyes. I never felt brave enough to ask him what his tears meant to him, but somehow I have inherited this same trait from him. For some reason, Silent Night reminds me of the Christmas Eve service, writing my letter to Santa, leaving him cookies and egg nog, and knowing that my dad would be writing a note back to me. It was part of the story, part of our tradition, it made life feel more normal. Even if we did not often have many gifts under the tree (one year I remember getting only a picture frame), somehow the service, letter, and egg nog/cookies made it all feel more normal.

Why is it that the holiday music we only hear for a few weeks a year pulls such strings in our hearts, and unravels memories that go so deep? Is there holiday music that brings the wave of salt water to your eyes?

Oh, and that picture above, it is one of a few. I guess Santa freaked me out.

Do you have Teeter Totter days?

Posted by random olio

Some days I feel like I am on both sides of a teeter totter. (I am chuckling to myself because when I typed that the first time I wrote teeter tooter.) Do you ever have those days? One second you are incredibly positive and grateful. The sun is out and the air is clear. You are happy. Then moments later all hell breaks loose and you are grumpy and frustrated. It is pouring down rain and cold. You feel dumpy.

Ever happen to you? It is not the norm for me. Just sometimes a random day when like a flip of a light switch things change in a moment and everything is turned upside down. Which is worse on a teeter totter: getting stuck on the bottom, or getting stuck up in the air? For some reason, I remember as a kid not liking getting stuck in the air. It meant the person sitting on the ground had all the control. If they stayed down, it meant you were stuck up in the air. Sometimes that was fun, but other times it sucked. Is that what it is like when you have a teeter totter day? When you get the bad news that knocks the wind out of you, it feels like being stuck in the air? When you feel that you are oh so close to that next thing, and then it is snatched away from you so fast you do not even see it happen?

How do you get out of the air? Usually the individual on the ground either has to let up on their heavy hold and let you have a turn down on earth, or you have to change partners. Which makes me think that on those tetter totter days I either have to let go of the heavy hold I have on what I want, or I have to change gears. Look at the situation in a different way. Find the good in each moment. Even in that moment where what I wanted flew by before I could even tell.

What do you do in your teeter totter moments?

The sound of her voice…

Posted by random olio

A few weeks ago, I finished reading “Tiny Beautiful Things” by Cheryl Strayed. She is the author that wrote “Wild” which is about her experience hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. “Tiny Beautiful Things” is a compilation of many “Dear Sugar” advice columns from The Rumpus. At times these columns tore me apart. Like this excerpt from one of her columns:

“It will never be okay, and yet there we were, the two of us more than okay, both of us happier and luckier than anyone has a right to be. You could describe either one of us as ‘joy on wheels,’ though there isn’t one good thing that has happened to either of us that we haven’t experienced through the lens of our grief. I’m not talking about weeping and wailing every day (though sometimes we both did that). I’m talking about what goes on inside, the words unspoken, the shaky quake at the body’s core. There was no mother at our college graduations. There was no mother at our weddings. There was no mother when we sold our first books. There was no mother when our children were born. There was no mother, ever, at any turn for either one of us in our entire adult lives and there never will be.” Page 98

One of the few photos I have of just my parents…

Tears in my eyes. Reminders of the many events and milestones in my own life that I experienced motherless and fatherless. No parents at my college graduation. Or my wedding. I have yet to sell a book, or have a child, but if I ever do, my mom and dad will not be present. Yes, you can tell me they are there in spirit. That will be true, but it does not replace the feeling and the wonder of what it would be like to see their face, to have them hold me, or to tell me they are proud of me. Nothing can replace that. You might also say to me, but how do you know if you would still be close to them? How do you know if your relationship would exist in a way that you would want them there? I would tell you I cannot answer that. I do not know. So instead I have the anticipation of what it would be like. It is like having a dream that you have over and over again, but you always wake up at the same time. So you never really know what happens. You never get to that place in the dream.

Strayed lost her mother at a young age, and after losing her mother, her stepfather (who basically raised her) stopped all contact with her. In a different column Strayed shared a poignant reminder for me:

“I haven’t had parents as an adult. I’ve lived so long without them and yet I carry them with me everyday. They are like two empty bowls I’ve had to repeatedly fill on my own.” Page 307

This is how I have often felt. My mom has been gone for more years than I ever spent with her. It has been 18 years. She died when I was 16. While she will always be a part of my life, there are days when I struggle to remember what she looked and smelled like. The hardest part is that I can barely remember the sound of her voice.