Finally, a place to rest my head.

[3278]

I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to tonight: for the first time in months - since we got our new house, actually - I get to sleep in my own home, and not on the floor. Ever since we moved in, I've just been sleeping on the hardwood floors, which worked just fine when I was younger: I was spry enough even after a night on the floor, and the sorts of girls with whom I associated liked me well enough to not mind where they spent the night. I've found as I get older, though, that several months of sleeping on hardwood takes its toll on my fragile old bones, and either girls don't like me as much as they used to or their standards of sleeping have gotten somewhat higher.

Of course, I didn't get "a bed." For one thing, those usually cost money, a thing alien to those of us in Michigan, who, since the economic collapse of our state, have begun trading exclusively in chickens, and I can't fit enough chickens in my car to buy a bed anyway. Plus, I am extremely anti-waste, and thus anti-new, at least when there's something old out there to use. So I've a used hide-a-bed - a genuine bad-ass Simmons from a time when apparently goldenrod was popular - in superb condition. It was owned by a doctor, and never used, then by a family of three, who apparently only used it to sire children - just the one, actually - and now owned by me. Most excellent.

Sooner or later, I'll have everything sorted out of boxes - what I really mean is, "sooner or later, I'll get the bookcases I've been promised," since 99 percent of my belongings are books - and I'll take some pictures of the old homestead. And one of these days, I might even have some friends over; no one's even seen the place since I moved in, largely because I didn't want to give people the mistaken impression that I own things, which one might understandably gain when seeing everything I own - won't all fit in the BMW, I fear, anymore - in one place.

And because having this thread ultimately be nothing more than people saying, "Uh, yeah, congratulations, weirdo," a question: what do you sleep on? What's the nicest bed you've slept on? The worst?

I fear my answers are brief: the best bed I owned was the worst bed I owned, because I've only ever - until now! - had one bed: the same single-size mattress [about four feet wide, and less than six feet long, which when you think about it, is as much a credit to my former girlfriends' tolerance as anything else about me] my parents bought when I was six, which I used for another decade or so after I'd moved out, with no bedframe or anything of the sort, just a tiny dirty bloody mattress on the floor. Frankly, a mint-condition hide-a-bed is a step up I never anticipated!

_
As a sidenote, I think people in the first world are weak. I'm not saying we should go back to disease-stuffed straw mattresses, and I'm sure as hell not saying we need to all sleep on hardwood floors, but the average citizen of the first world wouldn't spend a night sleeping on the floor, much less months, and it's not because they cannot, or because some terrible ill will befall them: it's simply because they will not, mired in decadence as they are. I cannot believe there are people who spend thousands of dollars on nothing more, ultimately, than something comfortable to sleep on. Comfort, I believe, is over-rated. Then again, I think sleep is over-rated.

[jo_alex]

I rent a place which has already been furnished with a couch. My landlord claims that the mattress on it is very healthy to sleep on and comfortable. I tend to disagree. But for the last 2,5 years that has been my bed. Most of the time.

The nicest bed I slept on was in Park Hyatt hotel in Tokyo - huge with a hard (my preference always) but oh so comfortable mattress. *longing sigh*

The worst - at my grandparents' house there are 2 soft couches, neither of them being a good choice for a night rest, but even worse is this armchair that you can take the pillows of and unfold it into some sort of a sleeping device.

And uh, yeah, congratulations!

[3278]

But for the last 2,5 years that has been my bed. Most of the time.

You mean when you're not out sleeping around, right?

The nicest bed I slept on was in Park Hyatt hotel in Tokyo - huge with a hard (my preference always) but oh so comfortable mattress. *longing sigh*

I would never waste the money to get such a thing myself, but some of these hotel beds are heavenly. When my daughter and I stayed at THEHotel at Mandalay Bay, the beds were each bigger than my car, and somewhere between "firm" and "cuddly," as if there was just enough padding to comfort you, and the rest of the bed was made of cement to support you. A delight. I kind of miss my days of sleeping in a different hotel every night.

The worst - at my grandparents' house there are 2 soft couches, neither of them being a good choice for a night rest, but even worse is this armchair that you can take the pillows of and unfold it into some sort of a sleeping device.

Couches can be so bad! Sometimes they're great, if they're the right configuration, and it's like sleeping with someone next to you if you're not fortunate enough to actually have someone sleeping next to you.

[Just Pete]

My current bed is one I built myself (all except mattress). It's a king-size monstrosity that stands 32 inches high, so that my wife needs a step-stool (which I built from the leftover wood) just to get in it. It's basically a platform for the mattress - I wanted to get rid of the crappy box-springs that I was using on a standard metal frame, so that my bad back could get some support.

It is, without a doubt, the most comfortable bed I've ever slept on. The massive storage space underneath is a plus.

I also recently added a headboard to it, also completely home-grown, that stands 6-feet tall. It's upholstered (matching curtains on the window!) and is absolutely gorgeous. My bedroom looks like one of those nice hotel rooms you mentioned.

[3278]

I've been collecting for a while the materials necessary to build myself a bed from a television antenna - you know, the big three-sided kind that comes, conveniently, in four equal lengths - but I keep putting it off until I know what size mattress I'm going to end up with. When I buy, dog, I buy for life.

[Ancient History]

I like the floor, though when it comes to cement or bare tile I prefer at least a blankie as a mattress.

[Liniah]

Well, the entire time I lived at my parents' house until...I went to chicago, I had a single bed. The same one for every, and it was SO comfortable. I slept in a crappy old bed at college. Anchient. Don't want to think about all the nasty things in those mattresses. I bought a brand new single bed at one point in Chicago, and then ended up selling it a few months later when I moved. Veed and I actually shared a single bed for a while in Denmark. Then we got a used bed...at least twice used, and not in fantastic condition. When we got one of those cussions that goes over the top of it it was a lot more comfortable. When I move (hopefully soon!) I will sleep on a sofa bed that's older than I am until Veed gets here and is ready to go bed shopping. He really wants to get an extra long bed because he is too tall for regular sized beds. That's going to be our wedding gift from my parents.

[UncleJoseph]

I have never been totally satisfied with any surface I've slept on. I always wake up with significant back pain and/or cramping. My current $1500 mattress and box spring combo (about 4.5 years old) was a colossal waste of money, although my wife likes it a lot. I think I'm better of not sleeping most of the time, with respect to back health.

[Van Der Litreb]

Since Lin and I are currently on separate continents, my bed is, quite literally, too big. So one half of it now holds a collection of various books, comics, pen and paper, half a dozen pillows I don't know where else to put, and a pair of not-quite-dirty-enough-to-need-washing jeans. Snuggling up to a pile of books on discourse analysis isn't quite the same, though.

[3278]

Yeah, that's what I did for a while when I was borrowing a queen-sized bed from a roommate: used it as a table. Then girls come over, and you're like, "Uh, let me just get these dirty clothes and food wrappers and this computer off the bed. Wait, where are you going?"

[Jeff Hauze]

Dude, there's such an easy solution for that problem Module. Seven years.

[3278]

I find that solution completely unacceptable. After 7 years, I'd fuck you.

[AtemHutlrt]

Like 32, until 2 or 3 years ago, I was still using my childhood mattress, which had degraded into a state resembling Willie Nelson's guitar, complete with giant gaping hole. From the hole sprang the innards of the mattress, which were more interested in pulling me into their void of despair, and poking me relentlessly with sharpened springs, than helping provide me with a comfortable night's rest.

When my fiance and I moved in together, we were given a full size mattress which, I believe, had been alive for the Kennedy assassination. It was very old, very saggy, and, to this day, can be found in our guest room.

When we bought a house this summer, she insisted on a new mattress, which we got for, if I recall, around US$200. It's pretty comfortable, I guess. It rests on the rod iron bedframe from her childhood, which was shipped by her father from Oregon at tremendous expense, cus it's heavy as fuck.

The most comfortable surface I've slept on was at my mother in law's home last weekend; it was two big fluffy couches pushed together.

[3278]

Interesting: the most comfortable surface I've slept on was you, Atem.

No, that's not where I was going to take that joke, originally, but I am at least a little scared of you.

[jo_alex]

But for the last 2,5 years that has been my bed. Most of the time.

You mean when you're not out sleeping around, right?

I could claim that I meant when I'm not travelling, you know.