Open Letter 7

Dear Old Clayton Inn:
OK. I get it. You're an old building. Old and quaint. The paint is peeling in the bathrooms, the wood paneling aches with 1970s quaintness, and you're cashing in the "old" to make some new dough.

BUT.

When I request a queen-sized bed? And you tell me that you've reserved me in a room with a queen-sized bed? Don't hand me the key to room 105 with a so-very-obvious double bed. My husband is over six feet tall and he takes up an entire double bed and leaves me with square centimeters.

Yeah.

I understand that unless I'm paying $500 or more a night for a hotel room (which I've never done but dream about often), I should expect squat for service or amenities, and absolutely no butt-kissing. In fact? I don't want butt-kissing. Butt-kissing makes me nervous and uncomfortable. And soggy. But could you maybe set a few bucks per nightly reservation, per guest, aside for some new mattresses? I think every square inch of my back became personally acquainted with the springs in the ten-year-old piece-of-crap mattress we spent two nights on top of. And? My over-six-feet-tall husband? Remember him? He tilted the bed at a 45-degree angle. I spent most of the night hanging on to my edge of bed just to keep from falling on top of him. I beg you, go to Mattress Warehouse, somewhere, and buy some decently-priced pillow-top mattresses. I'm sure you can get a discount seeing as you'll need to buy more than one.

Thanks,
Sore and Cripping Around Suburban Atlanta


Dear Tallulah Gorge State Park:
Damn. I don't have the words. Absolutely gorgeous? Amazing? Mother Nature is just showing off? You took my breath away. Just one thing. One itty-bitty, little, tiny thing.

Holy Mary and Mayonnaise Packets! Over 600 steps to the gorge floor?!? Really, really, really (Are three reallys, really enough?) steep steps? Really? And your web site and on-site signs describe them as "very strenuous?"

Bullshit. I call bullshit.

Going down the steps, just down, made my legs shake like I had just had the shit scared out of me by Linda Blair backwards crab-walking down my stairs.* And then? I had to park myself at the bottom of the gorge, pretending interest in the schmucks attempting to cross the rocks without wiping out in the water, while my legs calmed down before I had to convince them that they had to walk up all 600-odd steps.

Yeah.

I think you need to change your information regarding said steps from "very strenuous" to "OMFG! LOL! YOU ARE GOING TO SWEAT BUCKETS, PISS YOURSELF, AND DRINK GALLONS OF ICED TEA WHEN THIS IS ALL OVER! And then? You're going to curse us for the next two days while you gimp around your house. Have fun! It's pretty! Love, Georgia State Parks."

Thanks,
Gimping Around My House Because My Calf Muscles Are Burned Out

* Gad, I so wish that would happen. Does anybody have her phone number?