So I'm back. Exhausted. Not so much from the activity of Parents' Weekend, but from the fact that I can NEVER sleep in hotels. No matter how lovely and comfy the room is.
First night we were in bed fairly early as the Queenager had a paper to write, my mother was jet-lagged and I will grab any opportunity to lie in bed not doing laundry. Unfortunately, the family in the next room had the same idea, so all 42 of them lay in a bed right next to my head and talked till about midnight. I couldn't even bang on the wall in righteous annoyance as they weren't being particularly raucous. The walls were just paper thin. Add to that the fact that the room seemed to have heat but no air-conditioning, and you have a very uncomfortable room. I woke up medium rare.
Cue lots of cover up for the under eye bags in the morning.
There's a lot of construction going on around my daughter's campus at the moment. Apart from the fact that they are allowed to start banging at 7am during the week (What the what?), when they were supposed to be quiet at the weekend, most of the enormous pieces of machinery were clanging in the wind, - all night. At first I thought it was thunder, but then I realized it wasn't actually thundering. I even got up and checked the weather thing on my phone. Not a cloud in the vicinity. And of course once you know it's a noise that's not part of nature, and not supposed to be happening, you just stay awake reminding yourself of this wrong. Or is that just me?
Anyway,
..we had a lovely time with the Queenager and we're now getting lots of sleep in Chicago.
I'm just envisioning all 42 of those family members huddling against the wall, chatting earnestly, as you try to cover your ears with the pillow! We were on the road for 6 weeks during our home leave this summer, and my strategy for sleeping through hotel noises, outdoor noises, strange house noises, random conversations, and way-too-early birdsong was to lull myself to sleep with a dull and lengthy audiobook on my iPhone - preferably one that I'd heard before. The earbuds combined with the reading do a nice job of muffling sounds, and a nice, slow book will act as a soporific. I'm sure you enjoyed your time with the Queenager despite your lack of sleep - hope you'll be caught up on your rest soon!
ReplyDeleteThere is nothing quite as bad as missing much-needed sleep - I can see that the noise around campus from 7.00 will go down like a house on fire with those students - Mine doesn't get up until 12 at the earliest, most days!
ReplyDeleteRest up, enjoy that nest-space and have whatever fun you can wherever you can find it, lovely Expatrice x
Ugh! Hotel and other strange noises! I discovered that a few glasses of wine help blot those out quite well.
ReplyDeleteEarplugs! I never go away without them.
ReplyDelete