Tall Motel Beds--Form Over Function

Here's a picture of the bed in the Comfort Inn where we stayed last week in Marion, NC. There's a trend in motels now to make the beds tall--maybe to save the backs of the housekeepers, who have to make dozens of beds every day. However, I'm paying to sleep there, and even though I'm tall (5'8"), I cannot get in and out of the bed (and I need to do that 2-3 times a night). Sitting on the bed (like to put on socks) is NOT an option. I pulled the desk close to the bed for perspective. The desk is 29" tall--the bed is a couple of inches taller--so imagine trying to sit on the desk, then swing your legs up to lie down on it. I asked for a stool and all the inn could offer was a booster seat (it's on the floor by the bed). Also note the pillow--dollar bills are 6", so the pillow must be 8" or more--they look great at the head of the bed but are impossible to sleep on. I bring my pillows when I travel by car (not an option on flights).

Here's a quote from a site that popped up when I Googled standard bed height: "The average bed height today is about 25 inches. At this height, your feet can reach the floor when you're seated on the edge of the mattress."

This bed is at least 31".

One other really weird thing--there are no towel racks. Not one. The linens are stored on shelves below the bathroom counter, and there's no place to hang them when they're damp. We prefer not to get the room cleaned every day and to re-use the towels, so we've been draping them on chairs.

At breakfast Saturday there was a couple with their two children, a boy 5 and a girl 2-1/2. I asked the couple if the kids could get up on the bed. The father answered, "No, I have to lift them up every time. They get down by sliding off. Our daughter sleeps between inflated cushions that keep her from falling off, but we were concerned about our son rolling off the bed in his sleep, so we put pillows on the floor on his side."

Sigh.

The above was written 6-13-15; since then I've corresponded with Choice Hotels, the company that manages Comfort Inns. Their response was boiler-plate CYA, and they obviously will not deal with the tall beds. In response, I sent them this link: https://adata.org/factsheet/accessible-lodging

Note particularly:

To improve accessibility of places of lodging, best practices include:

• Ensure beds are of an accessible height (recommended bed height is between 20 to 23 inches from the floor to top of the mattress).

For my next out-of-town stay, I'm booked at the Hampton Inn in Brevard, NC, which also has tall beds. I don't really need a handicap room, but that's what I've booked, because it has regular height beds. Thus, if others follow my solution, there will be a dearth of handicap rooms.

As for pillows in motel rooms, again it's the motel's choice to put huge pillows on the beds--they look so nice, those fluffy pillows on those tall beds, but are impossible to sleep on. I wish the president of Choice Hotels had to sleep on one of those pillows.

That's a "before" photo of a pillow in a motel in Nashville, meaning before I operated on it and removed the excess cellulite:

That's the stuffing I removed (after carefully opening a seam on the pillow). Then I had something I could sleep on:

I of course replaced the stuffing before we left, and repaired the seam...the good night's sleep was worth the trouble.

Ah, well, I've accomplished nothing other than to get these issues off my chest. Now I go back to work, and will sleep this evening in my 25" tall bed on my 50-year-old feather pillows. Lovely.

In de Stilla de night

Stilla, Our Odd-Eyed White

She was a flea-bitten mess when we got her from a farm in northern Orange County, NC, in 2003. Our first day with her was spent mostly at the vet. She was seven weeks old, barely weaned, and weighed all of 2 pounds. Two of the other cats in her litter--both white--were deaf. Her odd eyes--one blue, one gold--saved her hearing; in this photo she is about five:

For years when I left the house, I sang "Bye, girl. Talking 'bout bye-i-i girl." Then upon returning home, I sang walking up the ramp to the back porch, "Hi, girl. Talking 'bout hi-i-i girl." Opened the door, and there she was. Whether she knew the difference in the "Bye" and the "Hi," singing to her gave me enough pleasure to justify it.

We killed her yesterday. Had her put down. Put her to sleep. Euthanized her. Committed pet-icide. Watched while a kind veterinarian gave her a lethal dose via a needle inserted into the only vein they could find. Saw her eyes glaze over as I sang her away, cheek to cheek, "Bye, girl..." This time it was she who was leaving.

She had a lovely bed. 

But any open bag was an invitation she accepted over and over.

I used to teach a writing class on Tuesday evenings; one of my students had allergies. About half an hour before class, I'd start trying to get Stilla into the laundry room (where her litter box and food awaited her). She'd run wherever I wasn't. From the kitchen into the hallway. Then as I got to the hallway, back to the kitchen, then the living room. I'm chasing her all the while, calling, "Stilla, damnation, it's Tuesday." Eventually I got Jean-Michel to help me catch her, then deposit her in her room. One Tuesday evening we're about to go through this ritual, frustrating for all involved, and as soon as I say, "Stilla, it's Tuesday," she sedately turns and walks into the laundry room. From then on, no matter what day of the week it was, if we needed her to be shut off in the laundry room I'd call out, "Stilla, it's Tuesday!" then watch her run into the laundry room. No chase. In her own inimitable way, she won.

In the fall of 2014 we were gone for five weeks. Our cat sitter visited Stilla regularly, kept her litter box clean, played with her, etc., so she wasn't abandoned. But upon our return, she stayed by my side for several days. This photo shows her at my elbow as I worked, and her naps on my desk gave me a good excuse not to deal with the stacks of mail that had accumulated in my absence.

And for about a week after our homecoming she slept with me at night (unprecedented)--in this photo I'm reading while scratching her belly; she fell asleep and stayed there until my hand went to sleep, too, and I had to disturb her.

For several years we had a portable humidifier in our living room, a water tank on wheels, maybe two feet square. After some trial and error, Stilla discovered that if she ran and jumped onto it, she could ride it for several feet across the floor. Jean-Michel didn't believe me when I first told him about this game, but one morning at breakfast he got to witness our cat turning our humidifier into a carny ride. (Never got a photo of it...)

Her most steadfast post was in the window of our laundry room, where we'd installed a board above the dryer for her to sleep in the sun. I wish I had a better photo, but am glad I at least have this one.

The thing I admired most about our odd and odd-eyed Stilla was that everything she ever did was on her own terms.

'Bye, girl. Talking 'bout bye-i-i girl.