While this may not apply to your workplace specifically, you may get some important information from it in case of a zombie attack. You can never be too careful when it comes to the undead.
Zombie Attack Plan from the University of Florida (that’s dead now)
Try this instead (PDF)
About 9 years ago I realized I’d never spent the night in a motel / hotel room by myself and it bothered me. I’d eaten at a restaurant by myself. I’d seen a movie in a theater by myself. I’d traveled by air, train & car by myself. I felt that the next step to independence was to spend a night in a motel room by myself. I sort of obsessed on it for a few years. Then I forgot about it and moved on to other obsessions.
So when I found myself getting too sleepy to drive another 5 hours last week on my way to visit my relatives in Mississippi and stopped for the night in at the Comfort Inn in Chattanooga, Tennessee I didn’t immediately remember that I’d never stayed in a motel or hotel alone until I was sitting on the love seat of my room eating take-out from a nearby fast food restaurant.
I think the hotel is relatively new — the room was clean and didn’t have that “hotel room” smell that usually makes me wonder what underlying odor it is covering up. The window opened a little, so I was able to get some fresh air. I didn’t bother turning on the air conditioning — it was warm, but not that warm. I had a king sized bed, a spacious and clean bathroom and as far as I could tell, was the only person on my floor. I had a great view of the mountains as well. I slept well and awoke rested for the remainder of the trip. Breakfast, which was included in the modest price of the room was okay — I’d had better.
On the way back from Mississippi I was not sure I was going to stop along the way to sleep. Had I left my Aunt’s house earlier I might have made it all the way home that night, but when I got within 4 hours of my town I hit a heavy rainstorm. Since I hadn’t eaten dinner I thought it best to stop, eat and get some sleep. I again looked for a Choice Hotel — they’d always been reliable. When I saw that Salem, Virginia had a Quality Inn, I took the exit and checked in at the hotel. The front desk staff person was nice. She asked if I minded facing the pool — I said I didn’t mind and was checked into a room very close to the lobby. I didn’t go to my room right away, but got some take out food instead and brought it back to the hotel. I grabbed my overnight bag and computer from the car and headed to the room. The key didn’t work, nor did the second key I was given. Finally the front desk staff person walked to the room and was able to make the key work after a few tries. I didn’t plan on leaving the room until I left the next morning, so didn’t really worry about whether the key would work when I tried it.
The room smelled like a hotel room — that cloying sweet smell that resembles the smell some public bathrooms have. This room had two double beds and a very small, but clean-enough bathroom whose door would not open all the way. The room itself didn’t feel very clean and the carpet near the wall was noticeably dirty.
The room also had a sliding glass door which led to the courtyard which housed a swimming pool. I opened the door, but quickly closed it and tried to figure out how to lock and secure it. I was able to lock it and pull down a inadequate-looking security bar, but the J-shaped lock wouldn’t fit into its security holder. I fretted about this for a while, but ended up feeling semi-safe.
After eating my take-out food (standing up near the table — I didn’t want to sit on the bed and eat and was too lazy to pull the chair closer to the table) I got ready for bed. It was then I noticed the faint splatter of what looked like either dried blood or dried feces on the wall behind the nightstand. My mind immediately raced through all the slasher movies I’d seen in my youth (not that many, but one would have been enough) and tried to work out how the person had been stabbed so the blood would squirt on the wall between the beds. They would have had to been standing in front of the nightstand — maybe talking on the phone. I wondered if the body was somewhere in the room — I checked under the beds and in the drawers. No corpse. I actually hoped the stain was feces instead. In hindsight I think it might have been cola or root beer on the wall. The vending machine doled out plastic bottles, and a hand-written sign did warn consumers to wait a while before unscrewing the cap. I wasn’t thinking too clearly that night, however.
I did a little work then read some email messages on my cell phone. I couldn’t bring myself to shut off the light near the bathroom — I was still nervous about the security of the sliding glass door — so I tried to fall asleep with the light on. Surprisingly, I did fall asleep rather quickly.
I awoke to a woman’s voice and checked my phone to see what time it was. I thought I’d overslept and the woman was calling a child. The clock on my phone read 3:15. The woman called again, and just as I realized she was saying, “Sir! Sir! Excuse me Sir!” I heard a loud knocking sound from the hotel hallway. I thought the woman was talking to someone in a room close to mine and was knocking on the door. The knocking continued and I wondered if she’d mistaken my room for one that held a man. I walked to the door, calling out, “Who is it”? More knocking, more insistent this time. I asked, “Who is it? What do you want?” Just more knocking. I then realized that I could peek out through the peephole to see who was outside knocking on my door. Since I didn’t have the foresight to grab my glasses before I went to the door, all I know about the person knocking on my door was that it was a man in a long-sleeved dark tee-shirt with writing on the front. I said, “I don’t know you. Go away!” The knocking stopped. The telephone rang. I answered the phone, but no one was on the line.
At this point I was really frightened. Isn’t this when the killer often strikes in slasher movies? I thought maybe he’d gone outside and was going to break into the room through the sliding glass door. Maybe he was already in the room, hiding behind the draperies that covered the door. I hung up the phone and was about to call the front desk when it rang again. This time I shouted, “Who is this? What do you want?” At first there was no answer, then a woman’s voice asked me if I had another guest in my room. I said I did not, but that a man was knocking on the room door. She explained that she just wanted to make sure that he didn’t belong in my room.
I then heard her outside again, asking the man which room he belonged in. He mumbled that he didn’t know.
I came close to packing up and leaving right then, but was more worried about what was outside the room than what might get inside. I turned on the television and then climbed back into bed — sure that I’d not sleep a wink anymore that night. Again I surprised myself by sleeping for a couple more hours — waking to the sound of my alarm clock at 5:30 am.
I didn’t shower, having seen Psycho several times, ate a quick breakfast (better than the Comfort Inn’s was) and checked out. The front desk staff person, a man this time, asked if everything had been okay. As I began to list the problems, he said, “Oh, I understand you had a little problem last night. So sorry about that. Sorry for the inconvenience.” I replied that I’d been very frightened and he said that the man was found sleeping in the hallway and was drunk or high. He then went on to say that they were concerned about security, but there was nothing they could have done to prevent that — the lobby couldn’t be locked.
So, I’ve had two vastly different nights staying in a hotel alone. I don’t think I’m going to look forward to doing it again anytime soon, thanks to the incident at the Quality Inn of Salem, Virginia.
Those of you who read my blog or are my friends on Facebook or read my tweets or talk to me in person know that this has been a rough summer / year for me regarding my relationship with my daughter. For many years Clare and I were uncommonly close — she told me pretty much everything about her life and we did things together more than I think the average mom and teenage daughter did. Suddenly, and I cannot pinpoint exactly when it happened, Clare stopped sharing things with me and chose to hang out with me less and less often. I knew that this was perfectly normal behavior and that I was lucky to have had the close relationship with her for as long as I did, but it still felt like a slap in the face. I still felt like I was breaking-up with someone. I didn’t handle it well.
This summer was the worst — she was rarely home between 2 pm and 1 am and slept until at least noon most days. Again, I knew this was normal behavior — after all, this was the last time she’d see her friends for a while. On top of that she began working at a part time job and started seeing a young man she’d met through some friends. I felt like one of the parents in the Peanuts cartoon strip. Never seen and only heard as an indistinguishable and annoying noise.
So, dropping her off at college yesterday shouldn’t have been a traumatic experience for either of us. She was clearly ready to try out her wings and I was ready to not wake up at midnight wondering where she was and who she was with and when she was planning on coming home. I’d long since stopped saving up things I wanted to tell her — little tidbits from my day or thoughts I’d had about something I read — because by the time we were able to talk whatever I wanted to say lost its importance to me and rarely seemed of interest to her anyway.
We’d not read the dropping-off-your-student-at-Sarah-Lawrence-College information — Clare read it but most of it didn’t register with her. I think I just didn’t want to think about it so didn’t see that we were actually supposed to arrive at 8 am for a day of orientation etc. We saw that she’d be able to move into her dorm at 11 so shot for that time of arrival. We also didn’t anticipate an accident on the New Jersey Turnpike that caused 15 miles of stop-and-go traffic. We got to the school around 2:30 and annoyed school officials handed Clare her registration materials and room key. Not a good way to start out at college. Lesson learned — don’t expect your teenage child to read important registration information. I’m not sure we actually got the information ourselves — I think Clare got it in an email from the school.
When we finally got to the dorm, her roommate was waiting for her outside. Clare’s known her roommate for most of her high school years, if not longer. She showed us to their room — on the lower level of the dorm. I was shocked to see such a dreary room considering the price we are paying for the school (now officially the most expensive college in the country). There was one dim light in the room, not counting the lights by the girls’ mirrors. The beds were metal with plastic covered mattresses. Sarah’s bed was already made — she’d arrived on time — but Clare’s looked so depressing. We unpacked the truck (full to the brim) and brought her belongings into the room she’d call home for the next year, at least.
Clare and Sarah had to go to a mandatory meeting so Sarah’s parents, Dean and I stayed in the dorm and tried to fix the room up a bit. I didn’t want to do too much because I knew Clare would want to make the room hers, so I simply made the bed. Sarah’s parents set up a bedside table they’d just purchased and Dean put light bulbs in the colorful lamp that Sarah brought. Those few changes made the room much more cozy.
The college had the day tightly scheduled with meetings and a set “Goodbye” time. We were scheduled to say goodbye to Clare between 5 and 5:30. She came back from her 4:30 meeting at 5:15, commented on the bed being made, then told us it was time to say goodbye. She looked, to me, a little more unsure of herself than she had all summer — more vulnerable, but perhaps that was me, projecting my feelings on her. I certainly was not feeling strong, but she’d earlier begged me not to cry and I didn’t cry. We hugged her goodbye, snapped a few photos and left.
The crying didn’t start until we stopped for dinner at a service plaza on the New Jersey Turnpike where I sat in a stall the ladies room and shed the first tears of the day. I’d been thinking all the way back how I’d not really prepared her for this day. How I’d neglected to read the registration day information, how I’d forgotten to buy her laundry detergent. How I’d not insisted we shop for some dorm things together even though she was adamant that she and Sarah would do it. I worried that she’d not get enough to eat since her meal plan didn’t include breakfast (her choice). I kicked myself for not buying that mini fridge for Clare because I was upset that she’d not found the time to go to Costco with me. By the time we’d reached the service plaza I’d pretty much decided I was the world’s worst mother and I felt bad for Clare that she had me as a mother. That is what I cried about in the ladies’ room.
When we got back home and went to bed I cried for myself. I cried because that always awake inner ear that mothers have would not be used to listen for Clare anymore. That if she needed me and called for me in the night I’d not hear her because she was 4 hours away. I cried, remembering the infant we brought home from the hospital a little over 18 years ago. I cried because I felt that part of my soul was now elsewhere.
I also thought about some of you — you who’ve lost children or wanted children and were unable to have them. I thought how selfish I was being and that she was only in college — a natural part of growing up.
Is suspect that the next few days will be rough, but I’ll eventually get used to her being gone. We’ll see her in two months if not sooner, and she’ll be back for Thanksgiving (although, if my friends are correct, won’t stay home much when she’s back).
Clare’s grown up to be a remarkable young woman (despite my shortcomings) and I’m very proud of her. I’m just in a new stage of parenthood with her. And of course, we have two more years before our son goes off to college. Wait until that blog post.
Clutch Cargo Lips 