Well. Canada. Vancouver, to be precise. I always think that I’m going to a very benign place that could have been America had the proper butterfly been smushed by the proper dinosaur during the Jurassic Period.

But it is never that benign place. I am always surprised to find that it is indeed a foreign country (and my next place of residence should W. get re-elected).

Mr. Husband and I did it up ultra deluxe cheap-ass style. “But it’s a remodeled HoJo,” I said to myself, flipping through the “Inexpensive” hotel section in Frommer’s. “But hydrogen is sooo floaty,” said the makers of the Hindenburg.

It turns out that HoJo’s definition of “suite” is something smaller than my bathroom. The downtown area we stayed in is…gentrifying, to put it nicely. Parking was, of course, non-existent, and required frequent trips to the meter. Which involved stepping over people who decided even to forgo the 8-dollar-a-night YMCA that was down the street. Or stepping around very friendly hos who wanted to pat my daughter and tell me how cute she was, every time. And the way our room smelled, man. I thought that someone had sprayed some of that very aggressive ol’ lady perfume, you know, like Giorgio or Red or Liz Claiborne or something right before we checked in.

“Well,” I told Mr. Husband, ever optimistic, “we will leave the window open and have some dinner and come back and it will be gone.” After eating and hitting Chinatown, which is one-stop shopping for pressed duck, bamboo ear cleaners, and psychotic amounts of Hellooooo Kitty tchochkes (confession: I barely restrained myself from buying a overpriced Sweet Hamu pen with a little jewel dangly, oh God, how I love Sweet Hamu) we returned to our room. It still reeked.

As it turned out, there was a secret “air freshener” somewhere in the room, and housekeeping wouldn’t divulge its location.

“Oh my Jeazus,” said Mr. Husband.

“Me too,” I said. We looked at each other and nodded. After six years, you do not need to discuss a hotel walkout.

“I’ll get our money back,” he said.

“I’ll pack up.”

The Ramada (motto: “36% Better Than Howard Johnson’s”) across the street did us a little better. You could, if you chose, swing a dead cat around in it, and the smell was closer to Old Potpourri than Scary Grandma.

On a POSITIVE note (this is the only place I will say ANYTHING positive in this whole story) the Aquarium kicked the llama’s ass. And, HOLY FUCKING SHIT, there is a store in Vancouver called The Gay Mart. The name alone beats the fucking gaylordy pants offa Seattle’s The Pink Zone. I’m sorry but it’s true.

When we came back we got caught up in a Brazillian vortex of epic proportions, involving various hotel-induced credit card freezes. I went to the bank, clutching my birthday checks that were about to be converted into food.

Me, at the grocery store bank branch: “Gimmie some damn money.”

Antoine, “Personal Banker,” quietly: “Uhhh…did you realize you’re overdrawn?”

Me, expecting to hear some trifling amount: “How much?”

Antoine: “Uhhh…A hundred and fifty.”

Me: *whimper*

I left, without groceries, to meet with my accountant. After many phone calls, we figured out that both hotels had frozen money in our account, leaving us shit out of luck. My accountant drove us back to the store, to demand my birthday money back from Antoine.

My Personal Banker told us to “bounce” a check to the grocery store. “Oh, I’m sorry,” said Antoine, “but they just came to pick up the checks. I can’t do anything for you. I suggest you write a check, if you’re certain those freezes are going to fall off.”

So the hotels have a vice grip on imaginary money for FIVE DAYS, even though we didn’t even STAY in one of the hotels, and the other one was paid in full, in cash when we checked out.

The moral is to buy a yurt and never go anywhere, and burn your own feces for fuel. This is one of those nights where I wish I could resurrect fucking Franz Kafka and fuck his fucking brains out, because he was such a genius, you know what I mean?

In Other News

I am twenty-five today.