Fancy McFancypants

We got to stay last night on D's company's dime at the Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn, which is quite the fancypants place. It's this massive spa and resort right outside the town of Sonoma, and it might be the nicest place I've ever stayed. (Well, okay, maybe the nicest I've stayed in since I was nine and got to stay in the Helmsley Palace in New York City with my mom on a business trip. Although, now that I'm thinking about it, the Helmsley did have an inordinate number of homeless folks begging for change and sleeping on the front steps, so that might lose it a few points.)

But anyway, the Fairmont. For starters, they give you a complimentary bottle of wine in your room, complete with real wineglasses. (No plastic hotel cups for those who can afford 400+ bucks a night for a room!) And there were slippers and super-soft bathrobes in the bathroom -- Nicer than the 15.99 Target bathrobe I have at home by a long shot! The room was also stocked with a stack of Wine Spectator magazines, lovely peaches-and-cream scented bath products, and real metal travel mugs so you can take your morning coffee (or your free wine, I suppose) to go -- brilliant! Oh, and they give you the New York Times as your morning paper. None of that USA Today crap that you usually get at hotels. (Side note: D always says that USA Today is the newspaper for people who don't have the attention span for TV. SO TRUE! I always feel about 30 IQ points dumber after reading that drivel!) Plus, the beds are enormous and fluffy and oh-so-comfy. Let me just say, I am all for brilliant white comforters on hotel beds. I'm sure that they are just as filthy as tacky 1980s polyester floral comforters, but something about the bright white makes me feel like they MUST be clean. Surely I'd be able to see if they weren't, right. (Why, yes, Internet, I DO enjoy fooling myself. Let a girl keep her illusions once in a while, won't you?!?)

In the end, though, I'm not sure how much I liked the reality of sleeping in the lovely bed. It was so huge that I kept losing D way off in the wilderness. And it was one of those anti-motion mattresses (you know, like in the commercial, where they put the glass of red wine on the bed and then drop a bowling ball next to it), so I couldn't feel that D. was there even when he shifted in his sleep. All night, I kept on waking up, missing him, and reaching an arm or a foot across the bed, just to reassure myself that he was still there. So, the Fairmont bed gets big props if I were sleeping alone, but I think given the choice, I'd curl right back up with D. on the little twin air mattress in our tent in Big Sur. There, we slept curled into each other's bodies, sharing a sleeping bag and two comforters, each of us rolling over when the other did. On that tiny little mattress, I actually knew he was THERE. No small thing when the one you love usually sleeps 600+ miles away.