pain in the neck...

i have a pain in my neck...not a metaphor, but actual pain...

the kind of pain that pulls my shoulder up to my ear a la quasimodo and requires a mega dose of advil to get through the morning...or whiskey...

this happens every once in awhile...usually due to stress...and although i haven't felt particularly stressed as of late, i have to believe that a woman in my position always has some level of stress percolating below the surface...reserve stress, if you will...you know, just in case i get too comfortable or too content...

so i believe that in addition to the permanent underlying stress, i came to this particular episode of pain largely by sleeping in wingman's bed...possibly the most inhospitable bed known to man...well at least to me...

first of all, the pillows are all wrong...those big soft fluffy marshmallow pillows the lord of the ring and the boybarians favor...but the absolute worst kind for my neck...you lay on the pillow and your head sinks all the way to the bed and you have a confining wall of fluff on either side of your face...

absolutely no support and claustrophobia while sleeping...you might as well attach a weight around my neck and throw me down a well...

and the mattress slopes...it was the duke's mattress before wingman's and too many years of parental snuggling on one side has made it slope...no matter how many times it gets flipped, it's like sleeping on the side of the matterhorn...

plus then there's the matter of wingman...hot and sweaty and actually sleeps better while sleeping on my neck...plus he shouts out and hits occasionally in his sleep...

i know it sounds bad, but i assure you, it's much much worse in person...

and the only reason i was sleeping with him was because i'm still dealing with our bed (cat pee) and we can't hear him in our temporary (although becoming less so with the passage of time) sleeping quarters downstairs...

so what we would do is put him to sleep in his bed, then move him downstairs with us when we were ready to go to sleep...then we would all three try to sleep on a smallish futon, until the duke would come down to snuggle...then we'd urge the duke back up to his own bed, or if we were too tired we'd let him in bed with us...

this was not working so i decided just to sleep with wingman in his bed, thereby making the futon a bit larger for the lord of the ring, who is recently feeling a little under the weather, and curtail the duke's nightly snuggle run...

as a result, i woke up in wingman's bed feeling not a day over eighty...it takes me a good five minutes to get out of bed all the while wingman is literally shouting

"food! food!...dit up, mama!"

again, it really is much worse in person...

the duke's bed isn't much better...last night i was just settling in for the nightly story when i encountered old pee (his) that he did not previously alert me to, and throwup (cat)...

apparently now that the cat doesn't have access to our bed to pee, she has taken to throwing up on the duke's bed...

damn cat...i know she's old but apparently she didn't get the memo letting everyone know i'm halfway to crazy and she's just tip tip tipping the balance...

at least the duke's bed is more favorable to my neck (if not my olfactory senses)...but only slightly so as there is the duke to contend with...in his sleep he's like an octopus...a really bony and sharp-angled octopus...the kid who barely lets you touch him during the day wraps himself around you and won't let you go at night...

and he's hot and sweaty and even without the pee smells like kid...and if you don't know what *kid* smells like, well then you're lucky...

so i get the bed cleaned up and get the book read and get the duke tucked in...and make a vow to lock the cat in the basement...

the kid beds are bad, but the futon downstairs isn't much better...i mean, it's a futon...it's a futon and i'm not in college or even in my twenties...i'm an actual adult woman who's been through two full on weddings and a divorce and who nearly died TWICE while giving birth!...not to MENTION that thing at the border!...i have seen some shit and i DESERVE far better than a FUTON to sleep on!!...

the only thing going for it is that it that the cat hasn't peed on it...yet...

oh, and just guess who gets to sleep next to the wall?...a wall that is made up exclusively of unfinished wood boards?...a wall that perhaps would do well in a place such as, oh i don't know, abu graib?...

so now my neck is shot and i have a mountain of bedding to wash...not to mention the rest of the day's tasks...meanwhile, of course the boybarians are both well rested and as vivacious and usual...

at least this morning i didn't wake up with splinters in my arm...it really is the small stuff to be thankful for, huh?

yeah...if only i could find the cloud i could tell it where to shove it's silver lining...

you know, i never thought i'd look *wistfully* back at the time i drank too much and passed out next a friend's dog and feeding dishes, but man, now that was a good night's sleep...

x.