Motown bargains and a fortunate memory loss

I’m not sure if it’s the skyrocketing unemployment rate or the fact that Detroit is in the midwest that makes our money go so much farther here. It makes us conscious of how high the cost of living is back home.

For $69 a night we have a palatial room at Courtyards by Marriott. It even has details like a second sink outside the bathroom so that two people don’t need to share.



After we took out dinner from Whole Foods’ salad bar last night, I asked about refrigeration and they immediately wheeled in a small refrigerator at no extra charge.



There’s a gym on the second floor and a small indoor pool on the first. The bedding is ENTIRELY changed for each set of new guests, so you don’t have the feeling of cuddling up to someone else’s comforter.

One of the few giveaways that this is not a 5-star hotel is the leaning floor lamp.



We had another day of various loop tapes with my elderly mother-in-law. But it occurred to me there is a silver lining in all this memory loss. About 10 years ago, she experienced a huge personal slight by her other son’s family that resulted in a schism, a wound that looked like it would never heal. But today she asked if M was still seeing S, the woman he has been married to for 25 years and who was the cause of all the unhappiness. She seems to have totally erased their marriage and definitely the incident that happened at their daughter’s bat mitzvah. Unfortunately a lot of good memories have also disappeared, but this is definitely one that needed to go.