Yes, Size Matters!

Since I'm one of the world's shorter people, you wouldn't think I'd be such a sizist, but I am. In fact, I think it's safe to say that the majority of the time, I think big is better. There's one place where this does not hold true, however, and that's in bed.

No, it's not what you're thinking. I'm talking about the bed itself.

The bed my husband and I are currently sleeping in was a gift from my sister in law. She was moving back east and didn't feel like hauling her brand new, very expensive bed cross country with her because she had one there already. I'm sure she meant well, and I know my husband was thrilled at the time, but the truth is I have never liked king sized beds. They're just too damned...big.

My brother, who happens to be a whole foot taller than I am, (genetics, what can I say) thinks they're great, but if I'm sleeping in the same bed with someone, I want to know about it.

As it happens, I'm a light sleeper. The kind who always knew when my kids were awake even when their bedrooms were on the other end of the house, or on another floor. Which is a handy trait to possess when one of your kids is a sleepwalker. But during the last six months, my husband could've gotten up and left town while I was sleeping and I probably wouldn't have known until the following morning. I swear that damned bed is so large I can't even hear him snore anymore.

Call me perverse, but I like his snoring. And, no, my kids don't understand that either.

Part of the problem is conditioning. Over the course of the past several decades my husband and I have gotten used to sharing smaller beds. Much smaller beds, in some cases. When we first got married our bed was a single twin mattress perched 8 feet above the floor on a barely-larger-than-the-mattress sized platform. With no rails. I insisted on the outside because I move around less (a lot less!) and I'm the lighter sleeper. If I would have had to be worried about my husband toppling out of bed, I'd have never gotten any rest. 

Even after we graduated to larger beds, we kept our cling-to-your-own-edge habits pretty much intact. Even so, we were always able to maintain physical contact with each other while we slept. I like that. A lot. Lately, I haven't been getting much of that and even my husband has begun to complain about the fact that, no matter where we start out sleeping, by morning we've gravitated apart.

Of course, we've both...uh, grown some since those early days, and I don't mean taller. I doubt we'd both be able to sleep all that comfortably on a twin mattress now, although at the time it was nice and cozy. Nowadays, I figure a double bed is great for a couple; a queen size bed is perfect for a couple with cats or small children; but there's only one thing that's going to make this gargantuan mattress bearable for me and that's a really good sized dog. Or possibly a menage, I guess...but let's not go there.

Luckily, as it happens, I now have such a dog. His name is Tatanka, which means Buffalo--a very apt name, as it turns out. He's sweet, he's funny, he's good natured, he's the living embodiment of the phrase Immovable Object. I swear it's easier to pick him up than push him.

At six months he's already sixty pounds and I know I probably should be making him sleep on his own bed...but he does such a great job of taking up all that horrible extra empty space that I just can't bear to do it!

Now, if only I could keep him from trying to sleep in between us, I'd be a happy camper.