One of the benefits of traveling in an RV or with a trailer is that the bed we sleep in is our own, a known quantity of comfort and firmness. Sleep is welcomed because there are no anomalies to distract somnolence.

Our stay in The Dalles was improved by the upgraded room we received, couch, small living area, and fireplace at no charge. The adjacent restaurant was a truly “downhome” place with peanuts in buckets on the tables and empty shells brushed onto the floor by waitresses as they served. The prime rib was enormous and tender, the green beans cooked but still crunchy, el dente.

An afternoon of driving, an excellent meal, followed by quiet reading in front of a fire should have produced a pleasant sleep. It did not.  Why do hotels insist on furnishing beds with an item that is half sheet and half quilt sewn together? I’m not even sure what to call it. I do know that it leaves me with a choice of not using a cover (which means trying to fine tune the furnace to a point where one can sleep with out undue perspiration, assuming one can even get the thermostat to function) or using the sheet/quilt (“Shilt”,Queet”?) and reducing the uncompliant and previously mentioned thermostat to an artic level. My night alternated between periods of sleep and periods of games on my Kindle in equal measure. At some point, just after the third freight train heading west, signaled of course by the standard attempt at “Dixie” or some such melody, on their horns as they rolled by the intersection just out our window, I nodded off for an hour of sleep.

I am an early riser, rested or not and 4 AM is when I got up, to spend three or four hours reading and trying to make coffee on the in-room maker quietly, to not wake Lydia.

We spent the day driving northeast across the Palouse to Spokane. My brain was numb. I was not good company across the openness that calls for conversation to fill emptiness of the rolling plains.  We listened to CDs of Christmas music and my mood improved and I held on to that feeling through a warm and welcoming evening with our daughter’s family. Ultimately though, fatigue won out and we called it a night.

Our bed that night was in an excellent hotel, the kind where you keep bills in your pockets for all of the tips expected. (I confess I am not altogether comfortable in such surroundings. I am a latent country boy at heart and, while I appreciate the effort, I really can open doors for myself and, given one of those fancy brass carts, haul my own luggage.) The bed was enormous. Perhaps Gothic in style it required a bit of climbing to enter. Now Lydia and I are not tall people. In fact, we’ve both shrunk an inch or two as we’ve aged. I have never been tall and, given the continued diminishment of my stature, I am perhaps overly sensitive to anything that makes me feel like a kid. I resent chairs in which my feet dangle above the floor. I grind my teeth when the booth at a restaurant places my chin mere inches above the tabletop. That said, once having scaled the bed, we sank into a downy softness much like feathered quicksand. I can live with a soft mattress, but the accompanying feather pillows had a way of folding in the middle allowing the sides to creep up around my face as though I was the rich, but sickly uncle being quietly finished off by a greedy nephew.

We’ve been here two days now. I had the feather pillows replaced with something firmer; foam I believe. It didn’t help though Lydia sleeps quite well.  I can only assume that it’s not the beds; it’s me. It’s an issue I’ll explore, apparently on a nightly basis.

I’ve rattled on about this silly issue all but ignoring the splendid time we are having with Heather, Chris, and family. Our visit has been refreshing, as is every time spent with children and grandchildren, seeing how they are building their lives and making their way in the world. We’ve visited over bowls of steaming chowder and shared a wonderful Christmas dinner of lamb and baby potatoes. A beautifully carmelized crème brulee topped it off. Our grandkids opened presents, sat quietly and read, and learned to play cribbage. It felt right.

So why focus on sheets and pillows? I don’t know. I just must be tired.

 

 

 

 

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