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If there actually is such a thing as purgatory, it probably looks a great deal like the Hampton Inn in Maumee, Ohio.

Don’t get me wrong.  The Hampton Inn in Maumee, Ohio, is a fine hotel.  It is clean and well maintained.  It has a heated indoor pool, a polite and friendly staff, and a decent hot breakfast as far as hotel breakfasts go.  There is a Five Guys just across the street now, for those so inclined.  We’ve stayed there a number of times on our trips back east, and we’ll likely stay there again.  It is, in fact, a hotel I would recommend to whoever happens to be in the Maumee vicinity and in need of hotel services.  Book with confidence, gentle reader.

But the thing about the place – about all such places – is that it is neither here nor there.  It is betwixt and between, a waystation somewhere on the route from where you were to where you are headed.  It is, in short, a placeholder.  It fills the gap on the map and provides a resting spot while you sort out your other business. 

Also, it’s reasonably quiet, so if you have some sins you’d like to contemplate you can do that in a blandly comfortable environment that won’t distract you from whatever conclusions you should be drawing, such as how you really wish you had the chance to go back and commit most of them all over again except that youth is wasted on the young and now all you want to do is sleep. 

I’m not sure what the theologians would say, but really – can you imagine a better setting for that sort of thing?  Someone should write a monograph on this, is all I’m saying.

We were there last night.

We had spent the previous week back in the Philadelphia area, hanging out with family and generally celebrating the various holidays that needed to be celebrated – Christmas, Christmas Eve (a far bigger holiday in my family), a couple of birthdays.  It was a grand time, and there will be a post or two about the week coming soon.

Now we are home, back in Our Little Town, where tonight’s low will dip into Brass Monkey Weather.  But the driveway is cleared of snow, the bags are in the house, the cats and rabbits are fed, and we have no plans for tonight beyond warm beverages, good books, and perhaps a football game or two, so we will remain cozy and snug in our own home.

It’s good to see family and friends.  It’s good to come home.

In between?

Well, it’s a fine hotel.