Skip to content

I’ve been meaning for weeks now to blog, but one thing or another -- academic responsibilities, looming deadlines -- got in the way, as did my bed. I’m not suggesting that it literally blocked access to my computer, for that wasn’t the case. Rather, the arduous, time-consuming process of finding a new one distracted me from all else.

Princess and the Pea by Edmund Dulac
The Princess and the Pea by Edmund Dulac. 1911. Source/Wikipedia

After years of dutiful service, my bed recently gave up the ghost. It made the most peculiar noises when I lay down my head; sagged where it shouldn’t and, as the mattress coils increasingly lost their elasticity, had an alarming tendency to zing my body in all the wrong places.

And still, I slept on -- or tried to -- ignoring the multiple advertisements online and in the press that touted the virtues of luxury firm, luxury cushion firm, plush firm, cushion firm, extra firm, firm and classic plush mattresses. I’m not easily daunted, but when it came to purchasing a new bed, the plethora of options did me in well before I even factored in the bottom line.

Complicating matters was the not inconsiderable matter of having to throw things out to accommodate my latest purchase. Over the years, numerous books and publications, including nearly twenty years’ worth of Gourmet magazines, had taken up permanent residence in my bedroom, along with some personal files and an assortment of trinkets that, for some reason, never made it into either a filling cabinet or an interior shelf.

I thought the occasion might furnish an excellent opportunity, a good excuse, to engage in a spot of domestic archaeology. On paper, it certainly was; but reckoning with the accumulation of stuff (Should I hold on to it? Throw it out? Give it away?), turned out to be far more emotionally demanding and time-consuming than I had anticipated.

Eventually, I cleared my end table of this, that and the other thing; threw out many garbage bags of stuff and then ordered a mattress (firm) and all the trimmings.

It arrived the other day and the only fly in the ointment is that it’s so welcoming and comfortable that I don’t want to get out of bed.