They came from the bed

Luckily, the Porter Three survived their trip to Lamar. This, despite the attempts of motel owners to enlist creatures to suck blood out of our unsuspecting bodies.

What the heck am I talking about?

Bed bugs.

BED BUGS!!!

Yeah, you heard me. BED BUGS. Creepy, nasty, crawling creatures who live to suck the life out of weary travelers at strange and stinky motel rooms. The words of the racist/patriotic American-owned motel owners came back to haunt us when we pulled back the sheets to discover a most horrifying sight that would make even the most hardened "Dateline" investigator with a black light faint to his knees. That was the moment when I told Phil, "We are not staying here. I think that is a very obvious understatement."

Here are the things we discovered in just one hour's time at The Motel de Creepies:

• bed bugs
• possible blood on the mattress
• suspicious yellow stains on the walls, remarkably urine-like in color
  
• air conditioner held onto the wall with duct tape
• large mold colonies on the ice cube tray in the refrigerator
• room smelled like a trucker drank PineSol, then peed it onto the walls
  
• bed bugs lived there long enough to have an entire life cycle then DIE
  
• window barely opened and seemed to have never been opened, preventing us from escaping
  
• pretty sure something died there (other than bed bugs). Dead hooker? Are there hookers in Lamar?
  
• possible peephole above the bed - spying hole to see trucker-on-trucker love?
  
• same wallhanging as American-owned motel, which aptly depicts some sorts of ruins
• part of the roof threatened to pull off at any moment in the crazy winds outside

Needless to say, we got the hell out of Dodge, er, that motel.

For the next few hours, we drank coffee and scratched our skin to the state of bleeding at the local McDonald's. Even though we were not personally infested, just the thought of bed bugs made us want to take a cheese grater to our outsides.

As the winds of Lamar whipped around us and sent paper, plastic, hopes and dreams scattered to the far corners, we marveled at how no matter where we went, we could not escape the astrophysicists in that town. Again, they were EVERYWHERE. The only place they didn't show up was to the Elks Lodge that night for Phil's comedy show. I guess if Phil and Bryan Kellen had added more cosmic ray jokes to their sets, we would have been flooded with nerds.

So, I stated previously that you should never bring kids to a comedy show. I wrote that just hours before I broke my own rule. Let's change that rule to say:


Do not bring kids to a comedy show UNLESS a motel room you are staying in is infested with bed bugs and forces you to either spend the evening chatting up McDonald's employees or attend the Elks Lodge comedy night.


How's that for a caveat? Amos had a great time watching his Daddy perform. Every time I asked Amos, "Where's Dada?" he would point to the ceiling. I finally figured out that Amos was pointing at the speaker in the ceiling directly above our heads. He could hear his Daddy's voice booming over him, but we were in the back of the big hall and too far away to see Phil clearly. Amos, therefore, is a genius. Take heed, nerds.

We drove as fast as we could to get out of Lamar that night. Alas, I did not wake up Sunday morning in Lamar, as sad as I'm sure you know that made me. Instead, I spent Mother's Day in the comforts of my bug-free home, smelling freshly picked lilacs from my backyard obtained by my dear spouse. Phil was also kind enough to put together a gorgeous photo album of our lives with Amos since he was born. Phil, therefore, is a genius and deserves a good romp in the sack.


Next up: The Lamar Days Parade with pics! I will not disappoint my new cosmic friends from Brazil.