Last night after work, I cooked up a pork loin, macaroni and cheese and some fried apples – obviously giving the diet a break for a night. I also poured myself a glass of red wine, in hopes that it would help give me a better night’s sleep.
After we ate, Red Beard and I sat down in front of the computer to look at condo-for-sale ads. We initially looked at listings for Arlington, an urban paradise in Virginia right outside of DC. The area of Arlington attractive to us has quaint streets dotted with shops and restaurants that are within walking distance to the DC Metro. We quickly realized there was no way we could afford a large and lovely two bedroom in the area we wanted. We would, however, be able to afford a decrepit hellhole in that charming neighborhood.
So we started to look further out in Virginia. In search of places where there is a concentrated town feel (I’m all about the walking-distance-to-shopping-and-dining notion) we stumbled upon a locale that offers just that. We were intrigued. We looked at the listings, expecting that we would see marginally better deals than Arlington. We were so pleasantly surprised that I almost started screeching like an unhinged pom-pom girl at the winning touchdown.
I went to bed feeling excited about our future town. I fantasized about getting drunk and being able to stumble home, like the good old days in Manhattan. Except instead of staggering home to a tiny, roach-infested vermin pit, I would drunkenly trip over the threshold of my gorgeous town home.
Before we went to sleep, Red Beard told me, “I know you slept like crap last night – you don’t have to give me that much room in bed; we both fit fine… it’s just that when I’m falling asleep, I need a little space to stretch out.”
So I gauged a healthy-sized niche for myself in the bed, made sure Red Beard had room to sprawl whichever way he needed – and for the first time since I can remember – proceeded to sleep about as close to soundly as I’m capable of sleeping. I still got up to pee and rolled over roughly 9,000 times, but I feel like a human today, as opposed to the walking sack of doodoo I’ve felt like for the past week and a half.
In the comments, Maple Sugar wrote in part:
"After Thickie (the BF in question) and I shared a good giggle over the description of the bed-wrangling, he asked, 'What size is this bed they're in??' When I read the part about 'queen-sized', he looked bemused and commented, 'These must be large people.' Now, your desire to go on a diet notwithstanding, I can't imagine you're really all that big. And, while Red Beard might be Man-Sized, I can assure you that Thickie's not a small fellow (and no, he's not called Thickie for size reasons). I think it's just a matter of getting used to having a permanent bed-partner and adjusting your sleeping patterns a bit. It's taken us a while, but I think we've sorted it out."
Red Beard is, by any standards, a big man. He had to refrain from laughing like Beavis this weekend when Turkey’s fiancé Blondie absentmindedly grabbed Red Beard’s forearm, examined his hand and said, “Wow. You’re like a giant. Everything on you must be so… big.” Heh. Heheheheheh. Conversely, Red Beard describes me as Lilliputian.
Together, we probably even things out on the dimensions scale so that we are a normal-sized couple, and so I shouldn’t blame everything on the size of our bed. That said, I think that Maple Sugar is right that, “…it's just a matter of getting used to having a permanent bed-partner and adjusting your sleeping patterns a bit.”
This means that I need to start going to bed earlier, whether Red Beard is ready or not. He doesn’t need quite as much sleep as I do, plus he gets up an hour later than me. Of course after I get up, he doesn’t get a whole heck of a lot of additional sleep with my roaming the apartment slamming doors and drawers, but the fact is – I need more, yet I’m sleeping less. I need to take responsibility for getting more sleep if I need more sleep instead of magically hoping that it will just happen to me when I’m going to bed consistently later than I should.
The other part of the problem is that Red Beard and I are both light sleepers. If there were an Olympic Sport for nighttime tossing and turning, we would be the winning team. Every time one of us rolls over, the bed springs squeak, the mattress moves and the other is awakened - if the other was even asleep to begin with. So once we get our new place with an extra bedroom, we’ll put our squeaky bed in the guest bedroom and buy a squishy and silent king-sized bed so that the Olympic nocturnal rolling competition can at least stop being so god damn loud.