The importance of understanding priorities, logistics, and the impact of wind
This weekend in 50-somethinghood, we drove to visit our son at college.
I had confirmed that our “hotel of choice,” a Courtyard Marriott, had rooms with king beds available.
There is a highly rated inn that we’ve been wanting to try, but they are always fully booked. I took a shot and gave them a call and got lucky—they had rooms available. The only catch: no king beds, only queens.
In all our years of travel, bed size and room logistics have always been a chief concern when booking vacations. As a family of five, I was always running through the options…two queens vs. one king, two twins with a pullout couch, guys in one room, girls in the other, pretty standard stuff.
This weekend, there were two of us. One bed was all we needed. But surprisingly, bed size was still front and center.
Was it more important to sleep in a king bed in a cookie-cutter hotel chain and protect my sleep, or to try the beautiful inn and get up close and comfortable with my husband and his CPAP machine, and risk two nights of crap sleep?
There is a critical element that needs explaining. We’ve got a dog; his name is Charlie, and he is a bed bully. He is constantly draping himself across my husband's legs or wedging his fuzzy butt right in the middle of the bed, legs stretched, monopolizing prime sleeping space.
I’m 56. Sleep is extremely important to me. It’s one of my favorite exercises, and I’ve become very protective of ensuring a successful 7 hours and the bed real estate it requires.
We’ve got a king bed, and the thought of sleeping in a queen was a BIG deal. Even without Charlie, the bed hog, I like my space. I prefer not to have the whirring of the CPAP in close proximity. I like to be able to turn my little reading light on at 3:00 a.m., pile a few pillows up to prevent too much light from making its way towards my husband as I deal with my early a.m. wake-up, fall-back-to-sleep sessions.
I decided to risk it all and give the inn with a queen bed a shot, and I can say that we did quite well on the sleep front, although that would not have been the case if Charlie had been with us. If we had brought Charlie, it would have been ugly.
We had a wonderful weekend. It was great to spend time with our son. The inn was beautiful, and I wouldn’t hesitate to book a queen room if a king isn’t available.
But there was some rather strange weather that first night.
I was on the verge of sleep, in that dusky, almost-there space, when I heard the wind pick up. All of a sudden, it was really windy outside—completely out of the blue, hurricane-type winds. And then it stopped, just as quickly as it had started. Poof, no more wind.
In the almost-asleep state I was in, I thought to myself, maybe it’s aliens. They came down, landed, and then disappeared. Just like that—gone. That’s how it happens in the movies, isn’t it?
I must have drifted off to sleep, because about 25 minutes later, the wind picked up again, straight out of nowhere, and I thought, maybe the aliens are back.
And then somehow my brain broke through, and I thought, nope, not aliens. He took the CPAP off. Again.
