The Pill-grimage

Now that I have taken myself off of birth control pills, they are one less thing I need to worry about taking. As it turns out, it is one less hassle for my husband too.

That is because there was that one time when we were traveling in France when we moved from Normandy to Versailles, from hotel to hotel, when I rummaged through my toiletries kit and couldn't find my birth control pills. Of course, being the calm, cool collected person that I am, I went into a full on panic. What would I do if I didn't have them? This was just the beginning of a ten week vacation? I remember the changes I went through when I went off them in law school. They weren't pretty, and certainly not what you want happening on your vacation.

So, I back tracked in my mind to figure out how I could have left them in the other hotel. I remembered leaving the whole toiletries bag on this dinky little bedside table. The table was so dinky, that at one point the whole (of course open) bag fell over. I thought I had gotten everything that fell out, but now I was convinced that the pills had somehow slipped under the corner of the giant bedspread unbeknownst to me.

What to do? Well, first I got on the phone and of course only got French speaking people back at the old hotel. Pas de probleme, je parle francais. So, I launched into my only adequate french and kept repeating the phrase "boite des medicaments" which I was sure meant box of medicine. Finally, I got some cleaning lady on the phone that said, yes, she had found a "boite des medicaments" in one of the rooms. Parfait, I would send my husband on the over two hours journey back to get them.

Yes, that is right, hubby, worth his weight in gold, or contraceptive pills, went off at 9 pm that night, for the long drive back to the first hotel, without any knowledge of how to speak french, and prepared to straddle the front seat at several points to pay the tolls in our English drive car, at the French toll booths (obviously on the passengers side). The curious thing about that piece of it was that I had just commented earlier in the day as we were driving that it would be very hard for a driver to drive an English drive car all alone and pay the tolls. How perceptive of me.

So, of course in the middle of the night, I get the call. No one at the desk knows anything about the "boite des medicaments" and the cleaning crew doesn't come on until 7 am. So, they gave him a free or really cheap room for the night.

The next morning two very important things happened, and one logical thing did not.
1. The "boite des medicaments" turned out to be a box of gauze pads,
2. I found my pills buried in the bowels of my toiletries bag in a section I swear I never use, and 'fessed up,
3. My husband did not kill me when he drove back the over two hours to Versailles.