Turning Over A New Sheet

Over the years (nay, decades) that we have been married, I had come to believe that Larry had no strong opinions about bedding.  Aside from his request that the bedroom not get too "flowery," I've been pretty much left to my own devices when it comes to picking out sheets, pillows, comforters, and the like.  So, when casting about for a solution to my latest midlife crisis, I didn't even think to consult him.

You see, for 21 years, EVERY SINGLE DAY, I made our bed.  I didn't mind.  I like making the bed.  Even the days when I was post-partum, I would get up, shower and dress, MAKE THE BED, and then lie back down on it with the baby.  If, by some strange confluence of events, the bed has not been made and it is already time to go to sleep, I first make the bed and THEN I pull down the covers and climb in.

A little weird, yes, but it makes me happy.  And Larry didn't care.

But after 21 years of this bed-making regimen, I began to suffer a type of repetitive-motion malaise.  I was sick of traveling to both sides of our bed multiple times to properly position the top sheet and the comforter.  I was sick of having to place it just so on the bed so it wouldn't get all squiggly and out of place by the end of the week. 

I needed my freedom.

So, once we got our new mattress, I placed a queen-sized fitted sheet on it and then I covered that with a down comforter encased in a duvet (from IKEA, of course).  Oh, how carefree I felt!  How liberated from the tyranny of overly fussy bedmaking! Instead of prissily tucking in the top sheet, I could just toss my duvet-covered comforter on the bed and walk away.  In the morning, instead of waking up in a tangle of pulled-out top sheet, I reveled in the feeling of the smooth fitted sheet beneath me and the crisp cotton-y coolness of the duvet on my cheek.

I was happy. 

And then Larry said, "Where's the top sheet?"

"We don't need one!" I told him.  "We have a duvet!"

"A what?" he asked.

"A duvet!  They use them in Europe - no one uses a top sheet there."

"This isn't Europe.  I need a top sheet."

"You're a guy.  You're not even supposed to know what a top sheet is FOR.  Besides, the picture in the mattress store didn't have one, either."

"What picture?"

"The big one on the wall, behind the sales desk..."

Cute? Yes.  Bed privileges? Never.

"The one with the woman sleeping with her golden retriever?"

"Yes!"

"Does this mean you're getting a dog, too?"

Sigh.  I've begrudgingly supplied Larry with a top sheet, but I refuse to pay any attention to it.  When I make the bed, I pretend it isn't there, its ugly, fussy self all bunched up on his side of the bed at the bottom.  I hates it and the domestic bondage it represents.  Myself, I look to the future, a future devoid of unnecessary household tasks and stifling bedding.  A future where I can emulate the culturally advanced Europeans who sleep free of the gagging restraint of extraneous bed linens, even if Larry does insist that it is nothing more than a symptom of creeping bedroom socialism.

But I'm not letting a dog on the bed.  Blecch.





[Puppy picture: Dog Breed Sites]