Dallas Humidity, Hotel Rooms, and Spanks

Y'all. April nearly killed me. I am so tie-erd! As I reflect over the last month, I have to think that sometimes you just need a good belly laugh. Happy Teacher Appreciation Week.

You know those videos on youtube about how to remove rings when your fingers swell? Well. That happened to me with a pair of spanks in a hotel room last month. 

First, lets contextualize the setting: 

You know Dallas, right? The humidity? It's so bad that when you get out of the shower and dry off, you're still wet and feel like a glazed donut. It's even worse if you have a roommate in the hotel room. You get dressed with the bathroom door closed while the steam mimics London fog with the heat of the jungle. That way, you can modestly protect your roommate from your physical imperfections - even though you are suffocating. 

So I'll just leave that there to soak in for a while.

I'm presenting that day, so I want to look all smooth and svelt. After the shower, I ripped off the hefty priced Dillard's tag from a full bodied compression Spanks undergarment. Remember, it's hot and sticky in the bathroom jungle. I'm more like a Donut Stop glazed donut that's been left in a hot car at this point. As I step into the contraption, the thing starts to roll. By the time I get it over my hips, that ligature tightens up worse than a lasso with a come-along. My love handles are now shelves. I try to unravel the twisted elastic, but the layers have turned into a single solid form of carbon that is now digging into my flesh.

I start to panic. I wonder if there is a way to use my scarf like the dental floss they use to remove rings from swollen fingers. I could wind it around my waist and then slip the offensive garment back over my hips. No. Noo. That won't work. I'd have to ask my roommate to bring me the scarf from my suitcase. I might even have to tell her why I needed it.

This thing is making it hard to breathe and I can feel myself swelling above and below the ligature. I'm reminded of those women that used corsets until there was only room for intestines and the spine. I think I might die. 

I know that some animals have been known to chew themselves from claw traps. I haven't been to yoga in months, so I know there's no way I can get my teeth down there. What the heck am I going to do? It's getting hard to breathe.
I glance over to the bathtub where the hotel razor sits because, you know, airplanes. Do I really want to slice off a hundred dollar device I haven't had a chance to wear? I have a daymare about taking it back to Dillards to explain that Spanks, Humidity, and Fat are faulty design combinations, demanding a full refund. SMH. I need a new plan. Did I mention how hot it is? 

I could ask my roommate for help? I imagine her reaction - she'd die of horror. Or laughter! Back to the razor. I try to slip my fingers under the roll and end up snapping my gut like the boys used to do with rubber bands in elementary school. That stings. So I start to rub the razor on the black chain and realize that the blades are too wide to miss my skin. I'd have to saw off part of my belly to get to the fabric. I'm turning a strange color of white/red/green. 

Powder! My roommate has a tub of bare minerals makeup. I could take that little poof and see if it helped reduce the friction - but I consider the surface area and realize there's not enough in 3 tubs to do the job. Damn, it's so hhhhooooot! 

By this point, I'm sweating rivulets that slog the fabric. I remember what happened to my moccasin laces when they got wet on a camping trip when I was six and hyperventilate. I reach for the shower cap to use for a paper bag and realize that's a bad idea too. There's no way I'm going to get out of this now. What if I used the hair dryer on cool to soak up the sweat? I fumble to get the dryer, but it slips from my hands. As I bend over to pick it up, I'm struck by an invisible Heimlich maneuver and gag. 

My roommate knocks on the door. "Are you ok in there?" 

ERMERGERSH! "Um. Ok. Just so hot in here. Gonna crack the door a bit..." 

What am I going to do? I imagine myself giving the presentation with that roll cinched around my waist. I have a jacket that could hide most of the... ew. I can't think about that. I'm not sure I could walk, much less talk coherently with this anaconda squeezing my intestines. It starts to cool somewhat and I dab at the sweat from the morning's exercise. I sit down on the edge of the bathtub and think. 

High school. Never ever has high school been the answer for me. But this idea shows promise: we'd lay on our backs to zip our jeans! If they were really tight, we'd use the coat hanger to pull up the zipper. Maybe that will work. 

You know hotel bathrooms can be small, right? To lie down, I have to duck my feet between the toilet and the tub and lay down with my head at an awkward angle by the door. Remember, the door's cracked open a bit, so now my head is in a vice between the hinges and the bathtub. So here I am, pressure relieved and parts displaced somewhat from gravity, blindly picking at this solid, sticky tootsie roll to find some kind of edge to the fabric. Perhaps, I can ease away a few threads at a time. 

I practice yogi ujjayi breaths to reduce the circumference of my girth, pulling and stretching, teasing the edge with one hand and pulling the roll hopefully with the other until...the strap unrolls and I can get my thumb in the loop to pull the rest free. But that dad gum thing is still so tight! From my torso to my thighs I look like a solid tube of skinned knees by the time I drop kick that thing into the trash. 

I hope the maid was my size. Correction: smaller.   

As teacher appreciation week closes, I'm reminded of how tired you probably are. I hope my gift to you has been a laugh or two. Hang in there, keep working - you are doing hard things, but great things for our kids.