Bad Day 16--The Perfect Amount of Fluff

I think I have too many pillows on my bed. I know, you are thinking, how can you have too many pillows on a bed? There are never enough pillows. Unless you are Husband, who right now is thinking, "Finally!" You see, it all has to do with the not sleeping. I keep thinking that the reason I cannot sleep must be due to the fact that my bed is uncomfortable. And believe me, we have had some uncomfortable beds.

See, we lived in Asia. For years and years. And many Asians think that the harder a bed is, the more healthy it is for you. I went to a museum in China with my Chinese teacher, and she showed me what a pillow in ancient China is like. And for those of you who have not been to China, this is what an ancient pillow is like: it is a rock. No, actually, a rock might be more comfortable because it wouldn't be carved into the shape of a person and be all lumpy. Since I can tell that you don't believe me, here is a picture of a Chinese pillow:



See what I mean about the rock? Once we went on vacation and stayed in a hotel on a Korean island that is famous for its volcanoes. This hotel is famous in our family for two things. First, the microwave turned out to be a dishwasher, thus making our microwaveable meals really hard to heat up. And second, it had the world's most uncomfortable pillows. Yes, even worse than the stone Chinese pillow. These pillows hurt. I hardly slept all night. In the morning, I opened up the pillow to see why it was so awful, and I discovered that the stuffing was made of rocks. Yes, actual lava rocks. It is supposed to be good for your health and keep you from overheating. I'm not sure how overheating is worse than not sleeping at all for even one minute, but there you go. If the pillows are made of rocks, you can imagine what the beds are like.

Now I know I have lots of friends in both China and Korea who do not sleep on uncomfortable beds, but that is because they are smart and they buy their own. When you live overseas because the government has sent you there, they buy the beds for you. And they buy them the same way that they buy everything--they get them from the lowest bidder, and because nobody else in the world would buy those beds, they get them very cheaply.  So I have for years tried to make up for the uncomfortable beds by adding more pillows that are not made out of rocks. I have tried all kinds of combinations and types and fillers and covers, and I have come to the conclusion that it's not the pillows, it's the mattress. So when we came back to the US, we bought a king-sized memory foam mattress. And I was right, it was not the pillows. I LOVE my mattress. I love it so much that I never want to get out of it, ever. (OK, that may have a little to do with my depression because Husband is in Afghanistan.)

And now, because my mattress is so comfortable, I don't really need so many pillows. I currently have eight, which is so many that this morning, I had trouble getting out of the bed because there were so many fluffy pillows in the way. So I'm thinking of getting rid of one or two. I mean, what's the difference since I never sleep anyway? I swear this week had more than one Tuesday.

This family in New York is having a worse day than me. They came home to find their house ransacked by a family of bears, and then the bears did it again the next day! The worst part wouldn't be cleaning up the mess twice, but knowing that bears know how to enter your home when the door is locked! So thank you Bearsville, NY, for reminding me how happy I am to live in an area with no bears. Because I'm not all certain The Dog would have been much help in this case, unless one of the bears looked like Hello Kitty.