It's official: I'm a snob.

I have found the point in my life at which it is no longer fun or fashionable to sleep on people's floors and stay up all night. I can no longer deal with bug-infested houses and am hyper-critical of other people's housekeeping skills. When I stay overnight at a friend's house, I expect guest towels, dammit, and the impression that the toilet won't explode or crumble into a pile of rust if I flush it. Oh yeah, and it'd be nice if the people in the house did flush once in a while, because, EW.

This epiphany came over the weekend, when I flew to Atlanta to visit friends. I have a number of acquaintances in that area, and it's nice to make a single stop, get updates on everyone's life in 48 hours or less, and whisk back home to the loving embraces of my cats and husband.

I make this pilgrimage about twice a year. The excuse this time was one couple had a baby girl in March. The Baby turned out to be sweet and cuddly and has a truly impressive set of lungs. The rest of the weekend was not as enjoyable.

I stayed with EarthMommy and Redman. They have a 3-year-old, a cat, and 2 roommates living in the basement. EarthMommy had informed me she had steam-cleaned her carpets. What she conveniently omitted was that she'd had to because her son had brought in fleas from the back yard, which then took up shop on the cat and carpets. I've been in flea-infested houses before, and from personal experience, it sucks. I'm plagued with the never-ending feeling of tiny things biting and crawling all over my skin, even when there isn't anything there. Plus, I was terrified one of the little hitchhikers would travel home in my luggage or hair and I'd infest my cats and apartment with the fuckers. Sleeping in that was fun.

Sleep was another thing. The guest bed I was used to using had devolved into the guest mattress and box spring on the floor. I was a mere 12 inches above the fleas, and those fuckers can jump up to 3 miles. Yeah. So. There I slept, on the rare occasions I was permitted.

EarthMommy and Redman do not sleep, per se. Their bed is used mostly for sex and clothing storage. On average, they go to bed around 3 am and get up at 7 am when the Toddler wakes them up. I, on the other hand, consider 11:30 to be horribly late and only grudgingly rise when Alarm Cat wakes me at 8 am for his feeding. During this trip I didn't make it to bed before 2:30 or 3 am, was woken by the phone when one of EarthMommy's lovers called to say good night, and had to be up by 7:30 am to get in the shower before anyone else, or I wouldn't get access to it until noon, what with the roommates primping for work.

Though I whine about my fortune, I felt worse for the roommates. These two don't like each other much, they're stuck in the basement of a flea-infested house, and the hot water heater in basement has leaked for the last 2 months. A replacement water heater has sat in the garage for the last 6 weeks, but Redman hasn't gotten around to installing it. Unless you stand above him with a sharp pointed object and whack him repeatedly, he tends to forget stuff he's told to do. So the roommates empty the quickly-filling buckets and hope they don't overflow before the they return from work. One of the roommates is moving out in the next week, partly because she doesn't like the other roommate but mostly because she can't stand EarthMommy and Redman's lackadaisical attitude towards home maintenance.

And thus, I became a snob. I long for guest towels and a clean bathroom. I yearn for parasite-free rugs and bedding, and a refrain from leaky plumbing. I want a hot breakfast when I awake, hotter tea, and slumbering under thick comforters on soft beds in an air-conditioned paradise. I'll settle for a Holiday Inn.