Middle of the night musings

You'll be happy to know that my cold has progressed to the runny nose, wet cough stage. Actually, I am rather glad, as it kept me from a truly rude awakening.

I should explain why I'm sitting here, wide awake at 3:13 a.m.

The bedrooms in my old flat (bear with me here, this is relevant) are tiny, as they were wont to be when the house was built in the early 1920s. Family life was lived as a family, not in separate, palatial en suite bedrooms stocked with dozens of electronic toys and a mini bar.

So when I moved in, twenty plus years ago, it was with the bedroom set of my youth, all maple early-American fun, featuring a lovely, twin bed as the centerpiece. My desire for a new set, with a queen size bed, was at odds with the reality of the size of the room. So I never replaced it.

Fast forward to condo life, where the the bedroom is bigger than the vice president's office at work. The little twin bed looks a bit off sitting in all that space (a friend actually laughed when she first saw it - it may have been that at the time, the queen-bed width shelf the previous owners had mounted on the wall above their queen size bed was still up, making the contrast in size rather obvious). The bedroom set is on the list to be replaced, but many, many things are above it on that volume.

Back to why I'm up this early late early.

The bedroom set is sixty plus years old. Four wooden slats rest between the rails, with the box spring and mattress resting on those. The slats were originally cut by my grandfather, out of left over/recycled one by three and a half inch tongue and groove paneling.

He supported a family of six through the Depression; thriftiness was a way of life.

So...I have a bit of a sentimental attachment to those slats, odd as it may sound.

They are, however, about half an inch shorter than the entire distance from the side of one rail to the side of the other. While I sleep soundly, I can be pretty restless, especially when I'm sick, as I've been for much of 2013. The slats tend to shift a bit under those conditions.

Yeah, I haven't been vacuuming very regularly the last several months, so I've not been checking to see if any of the slats have worked their way loose. The floor has a wonderful, deep carpet, so I don't hear them fall. If three of them work themselves out, the box and mattress will eventually slide through the rails with one injudicious turn of the bed's occupant.

Fortunately, I woke up about twenty seconds before it happened (thank you, nasal congestion).

No harm, no foul. It's been over five years since the last time I'd been unceremoniously dropped eight inches in the middle of the night, but I know the drill. Fight my way off the newly diagonal bed, pull off the mattress, lift up the box spring and replace the slats. Drop the box, maneuver the mattress back on the bed.

It wasn't until all this was done - and I was wide awake - that I realized this bedroom is big enough to simply drag the mattress onto the floor, go back to sleep on it and deal with it in the morning. Sigh. So I'm wide awake...

Maybe I should start looking on line for a new bed...