8/1/21
Yesterday, the elder of my two daughters and her amazing boyfriend rented a moving van and picked up all the furniture pieces from the "Papa Bear" storage unit that are too unwieldy to move in our cargo van. They drove them up from Fredericksburg to Baltimore and unloaded them all to the correct rooms and then dead-headed back to the U-Haul place near where they live. I am grateful to have such helpful relatives.
The pre-eminent piece was our bed. I slept in my own bed again last night, the first time since around mid-April, around 14 weeks. During those unhoused weeks, we did get to sleep in a bed sometimes: for the 2 1/2 weeks we mooched offa my sister-in-law and her husband, my brother, and the one night stay-overs every two weeks in "Base Camp" (a bedroom in my daughter's house), and those two days at the motel near Colonial Beach. So there were some breaks in the "get down on the floor to get into bed" routine . . . and the "bugs can crawl right over you with ease" torment . . .
Sleeping in a bed is more than the nice mattress, the sheets, the room to move around, the closeness to your mate.
The getting in and out of the bed is so radically easier.
While I slept on an air mattress hoisting me 2 inches from the floor, I kept holding onto the idea that I was become more nimble every time I got out of bed at o-dark-thirty to go pee, having to position myself just so and then roll over onto my knees, which I positioned onto my soft furry slippers to keep from injuring my ancient knees (well one of them is really circa-2016, isn't it? All titanium and plastic, innit?), and then grabbing onto my excellent camping chair to get the leverage to stand up. I was getting more nimble, but I was also injuring my knees on a regular basis, making them ache. Being 70, I am trying to care for my creaking infrastructure and not do myself a mischief. A real bed helps that enterprise tremendously.
My heart goes out to all the people who are getting evicted at this very moment - some of the "15 million people in 6.5 million U.S. households" according to an article in Reuters today. (U.S. COVID-19 eviction ban expires, leaving renters at risk.) I have some sense of what they will be experiencing, if they are unlucky enough to have no relatives to mooch offa but lucky enough to have camping equipment.
I'm counting my blessings.
Yesterday, the elder of my two daughters and her amazing boyfriend rented a moving van and picked up all the furniture pieces from the "Papa Bear" storage unit that are too unwieldy to move in our cargo van. They drove them up from Fredericksburg to Baltimore and unloaded them all to the correct rooms and then dead-headed back to the U-Haul place near where they live. I am grateful to have such helpful relatives.
The pre-eminent piece was our bed. I slept in my own bed again last night, the first time since around mid-April, around 14 weeks. During those unhoused weeks, we did get to sleep in a bed sometimes: for the 2 1/2 weeks we mooched offa my sister-in-law and her husband, my brother, and the one night stay-overs every two weeks in "Base Camp" (a bedroom in my daughter's house), and those two days at the motel near Colonial Beach. So there were some breaks in the "get down on the floor to get into bed" routine . . . and the "bugs can crawl right over you with ease" torment . . .
Sleeping in a bed is more than the nice mattress, the sheets, the room to move around, the closeness to your mate.
The getting in and out of the bed is so radically easier.
While I slept on an air mattress hoisting me 2 inches from the floor, I kept holding onto the idea that I was become more nimble every time I got out of bed at o-dark-thirty to go pee, having to position myself just so and then roll over onto my knees, which I positioned onto my soft furry slippers to keep from injuring my ancient knees (well one of them is really circa-2016, isn't it? All titanium and plastic, innit?), and then grabbing onto my excellent camping chair to get the leverage to stand up. I was getting more nimble, but I was also injuring my knees on a regular basis, making them ache. Being 70, I am trying to care for my creaking infrastructure and not do myself a mischief. A real bed helps that enterprise tremendously.
My heart goes out to all the people who are getting evicted at this very moment - some of the "15 million people in 6.5 million U.S. households" according to an article in Reuters today. (U.S. COVID-19 eviction ban expires, leaving renters at risk.) I have some sense of what they will be experiencing, if they are unlucky enough to have no relatives to mooch offa but lucky enough to have camping equipment.
I'm counting my blessings.
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