God, I Love Hotels

Meets all my basic needs

I am in a room at the Holiday Inn in Saratoga Springs, New York to visit my son during Parents' Weekend at Skidmore College. I find there are few things better than a hotel room and time on your hands.  This room meets all my basic needs. It has a coffee maker, it has a microwave oven, it has a refrigerator to store my orange juice and water, it has a flat screen TV, it has wireless. Plus, this room is huge. There is a workout room one floor away where I did the StairMaster yesterday and might do the stationary bike today (unless that bike hog is there again). There is room service. I just treated myself to breakfast in bed--granola, fruit and milk. The total was $8.50 including tip. 

Parents Weekend offers the maximum time to spend enjoying yourself and your child. I get up early, he gets up late, So for four or five hours I get to do some of my favorite things, read and drink coffee in bed (without the nagging feeling that I experience at home that I should jump up, put in some laundry, unload the dishwasher or start doing the bills), write, watch TV with full control of the remo, workout without leaving the premises. There is an assortment of wildly Technicolor trees outside my window. It's heaven.

I used to call business trips the working mother's vacation. This stay reminds me that I don't have to be at a luxury hotel to be happy. The gifts of time and freedom work in a variety of venues.

Here's what I really came to see--my thriving son, now a senior, music director of the Skidmore men's a Capella group, the Bandersnatchers:

Private performance for the visiting parents (Peter, right)