The Unmovable Fudge and a Broken Bed!

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Our bed broke last night, which might not seem like that big of a deal, unless I tell you it was the middle of the night, we were sound asleep, when John’s side ended up on the floor.  I can tell you, from firsthand experience now, that having your bed make a loud noise and crash works better than any snooze alarm I have ever had in waking a person up.  The thing is the bed has been telling us something was wrong for quite some time, but since John’s motto has always been, “let’s pretend everything is fine until it isn’t,” it got ignored.  We have a great bed. It is comfortable, big, and does not squeak.  That may not seem that important unless you started out in your grandma’s old bed which made so much noise as you tossed and turned that I am sure anyone nearby thought John and I were a couple of sex starved teenagers with the mating habits of rabbits.  Well, recently our great bed has started to squeak. It squeaked when you got in it, it squeaked when you rolled over, it squeaked a lot, but the only thing that happened was occasionally John would say, “I ought to try and figure out what is going on with our bed,” and that was that.  Now, if he wants to take a look under our bed, he is going to have to hoist his side up.

 

The thing is over the years I have tried to stop nagging about some things that don’t get done.  Our guest bathroom door does not lock.  I can’t tell you how many times my friend, Rose, has tried to use the bathroom only to have Fudge and Vern barge in to see if she is giving out any hugs while doing her business. I now keep a heavy Santa door stopper in there and advise all guests to use it unless they don’t mind having the door opened by two noisy canines.  Last week our lights were so dim in the kitchen that I finally asked John to stop off at a medical store and see if he could get me a white cane so I could navigate my way around the stove and refrigerator.  It isn’t that I cannot change a light bulb, but the kitchen lights involve a ladder, special bulbs that I can never find in our house, and sometimes, I just feel like making a point.  He has known about the bed for quite some time because he has commented from time to time that something is wrong and he has heard me say to Hayley stuff like “just remember if the bed is squeaking, don’t come peeking….if grandpa gets cheeky, our bed gets creaky……oh goodness, all this squeaky makes old folks leaky ” and you get the idea.  Sometimes, the best part of my day is hearing Sister Mary Hayley tell me I am disgusting.  What can I say?  There has to be some perks to having adult children live at home.  

 

The other thing that has been happening at our house this past week is I decided to go through all of my clothes.  Sometimes I get these big ideas that I live to regret and I have been in the middle of “how did all these clothes shrink?” hell since Monday.  The whole process has convinced Fudge I am packing for a trip and she has been uncharacteristically clingy to me at night.  Normally she sleeps at John’s feet and he will sometimes complain that his feet were off the bed most of the night, but since I slept fine, I usually smile and say something like, “that’s too bad,” when what I really mean is, “better you than me.”  Well, this week, I have felt like a rock and Fudge is the barnacle attached to me. Several times I have gotten up because I couldn’t take it anymore and gone in the other room when pushing her off of me failed to work.  Fudge is only fifty pounds, but for some reason her size seems to triple when she is asleep and she has the ability to dig her body into the bed until she proves unmovable.  Then there is the stupid part of me who doesn’t want to disturb her sleep or misses her if all the pushing and pulling bugs her enough that she gets up and leaves.  I have been known to plead with her, “Fudge, don’t leave. I just need more room. We can work this out!”

 

Like most things that John ignores in the hopes that it will just go away, it almost always come back to bite him in his procrastinating butt. This is exactly what happened last night. That bed let us know that it was not going to be ignored in a big way.  The funny thing was when John’s side fell, he actually tried to get back in the sloping bed and go back to sleep.  Because he is a college graduate, it only took him a matter of minutes to realize sleeping on a slide could be hazardous to your health and before long I heard him say, “this isn’t going to work.” Luckily, my side of the bed was in pretty good shape and while John made himself comfortable in the guest bedroom, I convinced the unmovable Fudge to let me move her to higher ground and we all went back to sleep.  Surprisingly a slanted bed can be quite comfortable and I never once felt like I needed to set up some kind of rock climbing portaledge to remain in place.  In the morning the dogs and I piled in bed with John to talk about the events of the night and we quickly determined that a queen size bed would never work with two big dogs.  I figured it out about the time that Vern stepped on my chest to get closer to John and gave me the equivalent of a mammogram.  Today we pick up the pieces of our bed and try to put it all back together in the hopes that tonight we can be back where we belong pushing Fudge around for more space and sleeping on a level space. Fingers crossed!

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Christine, Thank you! Luckily the dogs do not sleep under the bed, but sometimes Vern sleeps next to it. I thought about that when it all happened. I complain about Fudge, but like my DD Megan says, "mom, you lift her up there with you." LOL Did I mention that Princess Fudge needs to be hoisted onto the bed :)

Karen, I remember you wanting JD up there with you. LOL Be careful what you wish for.....Love the literature you quoted. Thankfully, Vern prefers the floor. Our bed would have broken a long time ago if all of us slept up there. LOL John did get the bed back together and it stayed together last night. 

Bonnie, I did this just for your birthday :) Hope you had a great day!! The bed is fixed.

F, Sadly, the old bed is fixed and I do love my bed, however the next bed is going to be the one you suggested. I am glad I could make you laugh. 

Jane, John is a pretty good fixer. It just takes time :) I guess I should be glad he didn't find the broken bed comfortable sleeping or it would never had been fixed. LOL about Dave :) I still love him. The bed is fixed. 

[Jane, Guinness and Murphy]

Oh I sure hope John is better at "putting broken things back together" than Dave is.  I would have been out buying a new bed in one of those places where they deliver the same day and take the broken one away.  I've learned from experience that expecting that my DH could fix anything is a huge mistake.  I have lots of experience/proof of this.  I'm picturing this whole scene last night....I must say it's a pretty funny visual.  Hoping that the bed is back together and the four of you get a good night's sleep.

[F, Calla & Luca]

Good luck! The last paragraph had me in stitches. I have only a few words of wisdom, Adjustable bed and temperpedic mattress.

[Bonnie and Kona]

Laurie, I am counting this as my best birthday present! Thank you for posting a blog today. Yay!!! 

The joke at our house is Mike's system of car repair is "Let it go until it fixes itself". sigh.

What is it about sleeping dogs turning into stones in bed? They become immovable objects!

I hope your bed gets fixed today! Thanks so much for the blog!

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

Fingers and paws crossed here that you can put that bed back together again. Recently, JD has taken to sleeping with me, a new behavior which I suspect has more to do with being closer to the ceiling fan than to his loving mom, and although you would think there is more than enough room for one large dog and one smallish woman in a king-sized bed, it turns out that there isn't. It seems that in JD's mind, the most desirable place in the bed is the one I happen to be occupying. Or as it was put in one of my favorite pieces of literature:

"I cannot buy anything larger than a King size bed. I am very sorry about this. Do not think I will continue to sleep on the couch to ensure your comfort. Watch videos of dogs sleeping, they can actually curl up in a ball. It is not necessary to sleep perpendicular to each other stretched out to the fullest extent possible. I also know that sticking tails straight out and having tongues hanging out the other end to maximize space used is nothing but doggy sarcasm."

 

[Christine & Shelby]

Great blog Laurie! I was so worried that one of the doodles was going to be under the bed when it collapsed. This is one of my fears with Shelby who occasionally likes to sleep under the bed. Glad everyone is safe and nobody got injured. Again.... Fudge and Shlby seems so similar to me. My Shelby easily takes up 80% of our queen size bed... And I get 20%!