Now that folks are traveling again, I am ready to join the fun. In fact, I’m planning a trip.

I can’t wait till I’m in a hotel again, with clean towels I didn’t have to launder and enough washcloths. I go out for a walk and almost trip over the same uneven part of the driveway that I always almost-trip over. I won’t miss that.

I come back in and realize, darn, we really must get that living room light fixed. I make myself a cup of coffee and realize — I have just used the very last clean spoon in the house to stir the coffee. Even fast-food plastic silverware would at least be clean.

At last, we are heading down the New Jersey Turnpike to our hotel in Maryland. I can’t wait to get there. Except…is it possible the distance has grown longer since I’ve been away?

I wished for fast-food plasticware, but I don’t even use it — now with the pandemic still a factor, we eat everything while sitting in the car, and pretty soon I am wearing a Jackson Pollack of ketchup, mustard, and whatever drips out of a taco, down the front of my shirt. I can’t wait till we reach the hotel and I can change.

Ah! The hotel. At last, enough room to stretch out on a king-sized bed, with crisp fresh linens and puffy pillows, not the almost-bricks that our pillows at home have somehow become.

And an actual bedside lamp for each of us, attached to the wall so I can’t knock it over. This is the life.

We pull closed the curtains — they actually close! — and sleep like babies.

As our week-long visit wears on, things become slightly less magical. It turns out the nightstand has only one outlet, so I must choose between charging my phone or running the CPAP machine, which keeps my breathing uninterrupted all night. I must give a slight edge to breathing. How do I have both at home anyway? Oh, yes, that extension cord my husband ran under our bed. Hmm. I’m missing it now.

At home, we have two bathrooms, but in this hotel room, my husband and I must take turns. When I finally get my turn, I notice — there is no trash can in here. Who designs a bathroom without a trash can? (The answer, of course, is: men. Men who can think of nothing more urgent than throwing away a Kleenex.) So we must argue over whether the room’s single trash can should live in the bathroom or out by the desk.

“What if I have to throw away a tea bag? Or a Kleenex?” asks my beloved.

It’s two more days of bickering before it occurs to either one of us to just ask for a second trash can.

Thanks to the pandemic, we must request any housekeeping visit at least 24 hours in advance. Which leaves us with the problem of recycling our towels. There are just not enough hooks for all the towels that need to dry in this place. I sit in the armchair and lean back — into a damp towel.

“Who put that here?” I demand crossly.

“You did,” says my husband, gleefully. He’s only happy because he’s off the hook — literally.

We have people to visit — the whole reason we came — but I can never remember where the car is parked. “Kind of makes me homesick for having a driveway,” I grumble.

“What? The one you keep tripping on?”

“It’s a case of two evils,” I grump. “Don’t make me choose!”

By the end of a week, we have grown very tired of bickering over where to put wet towels, and the trash can and the extension cord.

“I can’t wait to get out of here and get home,” I say to my husband one day.

“You’re in luck, because we’re scheduled to go home tomorrow,” he replies.

At last, we walk back in the door of our lovely home. I turn on the living room light. It sputters, and goes out.

“Damn that thing!” I yell. “I hate it! Why are we even here?”

We go upstairs and flop on our bed. “Ouch, you just hit me in the eye,” my husband complains.

“I’m sorry, I got used to flopping onto a king size bed.”

“In one week?”

“No. I got used to it in the first hour. But these pillows — can’t we call the front desk for new ones?” I ask, before remembering where we are.

“At least there are enough trash cans,” my beloved points out.

“And enough hooks for towels,” I reply.

At that exact moment, the hook falls off the wall, towel and all hitting the floor.

“Think of it this way, Judy,” counsels my life’s partner. “It’s just our house’s way of saying, ‘Welcome Home!’ ”