Musical Beds

So a few weeks ago I realized we would have several guests coming to town all at the same time. Which really excited me. I love people to come over. One of my biggest wishes is for people to come into my home and feel welcome. I hope they do. Anyway so I had to try and come up with a comfortable way to sleep all of our guests. There would be my parents, Jeff and Stacey and their kids, Mark and Amber and their kids and David, Megan and their kids, all for varying amounts of time. So I decided to push some beds together and arrange some things. I thought about having Rick help me with this but I knew he wouldn't be too thrilled. He doesn't like trying things out to see if they will work. He likes planning it out - measuring it, drawing it, figuring it on paper. I just like to try it, see how I like it. Well his way takes longer and I am impatient. My way takes a few tries to get it right and Rick is well... I could say lazy but that wouldn't be very polite or true since he is one of the most hardworking people I know when it comes to most things just not this kind of thing. Anyway so I decided I better just do it while he was at work and he would never even have to know.

So I started by moving Anna's bed into Ryan's room. Despite it weighing about twice as much as I expected that worked out ok. So then I needed a bed for Anna's room. I decided now was the time to pull that old futon we had been saving in the back of the storage room "just in case". So I tried to pull that out but discovered I had to pull everything out of the storage room to get to it. So got that done and then realized we bought that futon before we finished the basement and our finished basement stairs aren't' quite as big as they were unfinished. So it didn't' really fit very good. Well I didn't want to give up so I struggled with that thing for at least an hour. I made my boys and the neighborhood boys help me. We pushed, we pulled, we tried every different angle, and finally we got it up the stairs. A little touch up paint later the stairs looked about the same as when we started and all was good. Other than the scraped up walls we did have one other little tragedy. We had to have the futon about 1/3 of the way closed to get it to fit. It was a bit tricky to carry it in this position. The springs wanted to snap it open - about 1/2 way up the stairs the springs won - and my fingers lost. At that point I regretted asking the neighbor boys to help - I really wished they hadn't been there to hear my reaction to the futon snapping on my fingers. I've been expecting a call from the Bishop.

Anyway got the futon in Anna room and decided the futon mattress was a bit thin and not too comfortable. So I decided to put my mattress on it. After lugging my mattress over I realized a queen mattress didn't fit too well on a full sized futon. I thought it might fit better on the bed downstairs which is a full sized bed but it didn't have a head and foot board like the futon so I hauled my mattress down and swapped it with the mattress downstairs. That too was a lot of lugging that both my back and the pictures on the wall regretted. Anyway that worked out pretty good. So now I had a "king sized" bed in Ryans room, a full sized bed in Anna's room, and a queen sized bed downstairs and a box spring in my room. Time to pull out the extra long hospital mattresses in my storage room. They kind of fit on my bed with just about 6 inches hanging off both ends. I added the camping egg crates for extra comfort and called it good. Unfortunately the egg crates weren't quite as wide - they only went up as far as the pillows but I figured we could just sleep on two pillows and our heads would be at an appropriate height. Well the next problem I ran into was that queen sized sheets don't fit to well on two extra long twin sized mattresses. So I used two top sheets. We would soon learn that bottom sheets have that elastic on the edges for a reason.

Anyway when I got all done and was satisfied with our sleeping arrangements I was exhausted, dripping with sweat and my squished fingers were throbbing. It had taken the better part of the day. I knew that I really should change it all back since it was only supposed to be an experiment to see if it would work for next week, but the thought of moving it back and then moving it again next week was too much for me. So I decided to just leave it. I knew Rick wouldn't be too thrilled so I tried to be extra sweet and nice to him when he arrived home. I hoped to butter him up enough he wouldn't notice the beds. Well that was pretty stupid thinking really. How was he not going to notice that when he sat on the bed 6 inches of the mattress's was hanging off, or that unless he used two pillows his head sunk down lower than his body, or that his mattress felt like an egg crate. He was very nice about the whole thing - like I knew he would be. But I know it was a trial for him. I told him all about my day and the struggles I had making it sound as pathetic as possible and then sweetly offered to move it all back so he wouldn't have to sleep on camping mattresses for an extra week- I was careful to make sure he could see me icing my hand as I offered this. Of course he said no its fine. I knew he would - he is an amazing guy. He didn't complain once about the bed the whole 2 weeks we slept on it. He did mention a time or two how much his neck hurt and how exhausted he was but the two are probably not related - at least I hope not.