Blast from the Past: Part 3

So, this is the last blog I’ll re-post, but I still crack up at the memory of this, so I figured I would re-share it.

Also, I thought I’d give an update: I ended up writing to the W hotel, telling them about our experience (depicted below). I actually sent most of what I wrote in the post (which I later felt bad about because Joe told me it was kind of passive aggressive. I said I was just trying to be funny…and angrily vent my frustration…and maybe get free stuff.) That’s not passive aggressive, is it?

Anyway, they were quick to respond and the GM of the W in Atlanta called me within a few days. (They have a really great system if you ever need to complain about something, just go to their website. Very efficient.) He was very sweet and apologized and said he found my blog and read the post and thought it was funny. His flattery was enough to suffice and I no longer expected free stuff so I quickly apologized for my passive aggresive email and hung up the phone.

Hope you enjoy the repost, which I originally wrote on June 19, 2010 while wearing the complimentary robe and sitting in our room at the W hotel.

Thoughts on staying in hotels with children

I didn’t get the memo, but apparently when you have children, staying at a nice hotel with kids in tow is akin to showing up to the Apple keynote with your 2001 Dell, you just don’t do it.

We found this out the hard way at 2 am when our swagger wagon rolled up next to a Lamborghini at the W in Atlanta. The theme music from a Sesame Street segment started playing in my head, “One of these things is not like the other. One of these things doesn’t belong.”

Things were further put into perspective when the valet exclaimed, “oh shoot, there’s a baby in there! You got a baby!” Aaaand the icing on the cake was when Joe and his brother, Jon, went to check us in and told the front desk that we needed 3 cribs. The lady at the front desk said, and I quote, “This hotel only has 2 cribs total. I’ve worked here for 5 years and they’ve never been used at the same time. I don’t know if you’ve ever stayed at the W, but we’re not very kid friendly.”

Aww, snap!

In our defence, we booked this hotel using Starwood hotel credit points and all the other starwood hotels were booked up this week end.

But that is not the point.

The point is this: where DO people with kids stay if they need a place to stay after a long stretch on the open road? Don’t celebrities and rich people have kids too? Just beause I have a little tyke attached to my hip, doesn’t mean I want to give up the buttery softness of the Heavenly Bed.

Well, W hotel, we are here to stay for another 2 nights, so buckle up! This mama is gonna enjoy being in the lap of luxury, even if I have baby puke on my complimentary robe.

And as long as we’re being real honest, the house keeper is gonna be in for a shock because Miles won’t sleep in the same room if he can see us, so yes, that is my son in the shower. Boo ya!

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Posted by Catie at Saturday, June 19, 2010

Lessons on courage

A few days ago, I received this in the mail and I cried.

It is a copy of the handwritten journal my friends’ mother wrote over the 3 year period she battled cancer. My friend, Jane, sent it to me with a sweet note thanking me for walking with her during “the cancer years” of her mother. (I did so clumsily, with great intentions, as you can read here in a post I wrote a few days before Christy’s passing.)

In the front of the journal, Rogers, Christy’s husband writes of his decision to publish her handwritten thoughts:

“She may not approve, but I will simply have to deal with that later.”

That sounds like Rog, willing to take a risk, even if he might have to pay for it later. I know this because I worked for him (and Jane) day in and day out during the cancer years.

(I think it was a good risk, Rogers, I’ve received the reward. You can tell Christy that when you see her again.)

I remember with each diagnosis, he’d call us into his office and say, “I know we have to work, but to be able to do that, first we have to pray.” So, he, Jane and I would hold hands and cry and pray. And then we’d get back to work.

Rogers printed the journal as a tribute to the type of woman Christy was because she was extraordinary, courageous, ever faithful – even on the hardest of days.

Reading Christy’s journal, I learned courage doesn’t always roar it’s battle cry. Sometimes it writes it in a journal, knowing, that even after all this, she would not be destroyed and tomorrow would live greater, either on Earth or in Heaven.

Below, she writes, “Ps. 4: And so I can lie down & sleep in peace. Because of You, I am eternally secure.”

Later, after a painful bone marrow transplant and the discovery of cancer #3 (breast cancer, the one which ends her life) she writes, “Father of compassion and God of all comfort, please don’t let my troubles go to waste. Use them to shape my heart so that I can comfort others with the comfort you give me.”

I want that kind of courage.

In her final entry, shortly before her life’s end, she writes her last lines, “…and the kingdom of Kirven is at peace because the Lord their God had given them rest on every side.”

I wanted to post this to say thank you to Rog and Jane for letting me in on a life well lived. I love you guys.

Pictured below is my beautiful friend, Jane, at her wedding last June.

Thinking on This Today…

From Maya Angelou on Oprah’s Master Class:

“A statement by Terrence: ‘I am a human being. Nothing human can be alien to me.’

If you can internalize even a portion of that [saying] you will never be able to say of an act, of a criminal act, ‘Oh, I couldn’t do that.’ No matter how heinous the crime, if a HUMAN BEING did it, you have to say I have in me all the components that are in her or in him. I intend to use my energies constructively rather than destructively.

If you can do that about the negative, just think what you can do about the positive.

If a human being dreams a great dream, dares to love somebody, if a human being dares to be Martin Luther King or Mahatma Ghandi, Mother Theresa, or Malcom X… If a HUMAN BEING dares to be bigger than the condition into which he or she was born, it means so can you.

‘I am a human being. Nothing human can be alien to me.’ “

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone