A word here about making beds in the Martin household.
Our bed has six pillows. Nancy and I, except on rare occasions the dog is permitted to join us, as during a thunderstorm, are the only occupants. We use one pillow apiece. Zoe does not use a pillow at all. The other four pillows are there purely for decoration. When I asked Nancy why we are required to have three times as many pillows as we use, she responded that the headboard is a type that needs additional pillows.
The guestroom's headboard is also evidently of this sort because it also has six pillows. Two of these could never be mistaken for actual pillows at all being diamond-shaped and upholstered with a shiny fabric, that while pretty, does not tempt one to rest one's weary head upon it.
Before retiring for the night, we must carefully lay the pillows on the floor, and then in the morning we must reassemble them on the bed. These pillows, being multicolored must be placed just-so, to create what I confess is a not-displeasing layered look.
I suppose the idea is to create an image of sumptuous opulence like a sultan's palace where harem girls loll about all day eating grapes and being fanned by eunuchs. The problem is, when you get in the bed, you discover all you want is the usual allotment of pillows, the angle from head to shoulder blade being sized to accommodate precisely one.
This extra-pillow syndrome seems related to the disease that compels some people to place out bowls of plastic fruit. Doesn't it look delicious? Don't you feel welcome, with this tantalizing bowl of fruit offering itself to you? No one was ever taken in by one of those plastic apples, but the cluster of grapes was strangely realistic to touch as well as sight; does there live a soul who didn't squeeze one in the hope that real actual grapes had smuggled their way in among the fake ones?
Thank goodness in our house this infection is thus far confined to the bedroom. What if couches were stacked with surplus cushions that had to be removed when sitting and carefully rearranged upon arising? Guest towels, fancy embroidered monstrosities that even guests are afraid to use, thank heaven, are absent from the Martin abode, but imagine if the toilet "required" three rolls of toilet paper, two of which were unusable for the traditional purpose and had to be carefully set aside and then rearranged each time you went to the bathroom.
There is still much to be grateful for in this world.
