eor

I don't think I'm sleeping very well because our mattress is kind of broken down and contains more hills and valleys than the entire state of South Dakota. Realizing this makes me think of the expense of buying a mattress (and why do they always sell sets when your box spring never wears out?). It also makes me think of the bed as an object, which I rarely do. I usually view the bed as a proxy for oh, blessed, beloved sleep.

Our current bed is the embodiment of optimism. It encompasses optimism on so many levels it's almost varnished in symbolism. Well, maybe not, but it is all about optimism.

For many years we had slept on a collection of bedclothes on the floor; first of various apartments, then on the wonderful soft carpet of our condo in Portland. To actually purchase furniture was a statement of our joining the world of adults who behaved like adults at least occasionally. It was a statement of success, to be able to afford to buy furniture. It was a statement about where we were going in the future.

The choice of how big a bed took much consideration. The last "real" bed we had was a single. Sleeping on the floor we had gotten used to using as much space as we required, but furniture is cumbersome and not easily expanded or contracted.

The decision to purchase a king sized bed implied certain conditions:

We weren't going to be moving ourselves, we would pay someone to move our stuff when we moved.
We would live in places large enough to hold our additional stuff.
We somewhere in the back of it all thought it might be necessary at some point to have a bed big enough for more than two people.

We were in a new place. We were going to meet new people. Our current successes were bound to continue in all aspects of life.

Since that optimistic time: