Ornamental Pillow People

One might think that two relatively bright, aware, sensible people, married for 20 years and thus combining their relative brightness, awareness, and sensibility, would not repeat the same mistakes over and over and over. But we do.

We ordered a bed online. We know better. We have tried assembling furniture in the past. Many times--as our household interior bears witness, replete as it is with various wonky, wobbly chairs, desks, and tabletops. We are not handy people. We are not mechanically inclined. We have no practical function whatsoever.

We are now sleeping on a mattress on the floor.

Yet this return to a kind of grad student sparseness has occurred in tandem with a leap into bourgeois luxury. We have become Ornamental Pillow People.

It wasn't intentional. Keith, for one, hates ornamental pillows. Art is fine--he has no trouble spending money on paintings or photographs. Because art has a point--you look at it, you enjoy it, you're challenged by it, whatever. But the point of a pillow is to sleep on it. An ornamental pillow? No point.

I'm more ambivalent. I've always really been rather awe-struck by people with ornamental pillows on their beds. They're like the People Who Live in Our Magazines. But I dunno. Life seems complicated enough, without having to arrange a complicated tower of pillows on the bed every morning. Plus I nap most days. That means building the pillow pyramid twice every day.

But after two decades of connubial bliss, we decided to graduate to a queen-sized bed. (I worried about the implications of this move, I'll admit. Does it mean there's a growing distance between us? Are we no longer close? Actually, it just means we're both sick of being squished by the kitty.) Anyway, a new mattress means new bedding. And on overstock.com, I found this great deal on a rather attractive "12-piece bed-in-a-bag". I'll admit, I'm not a good shopper. I didn't really pay attention. I mean, 12 pieces. I just assumed, gotta include sheets, right? Comforter = 1. Blanket = 2. Sheets and pillowcases = 6. God knows what else = 12.

But no. No sheets. No pillowcases. Instead, lots and lots of Ornamental Pillows. I feel like a miner when I go to bed now--it requires much tunneling and shoveling just to find the sheets. Keith refuses to do the pillow mining. He just inserts himself into the mass--with the result that I come into the bedroom and it's like an episode of Doctor Who: alien pillow-shaped life forms have swallowed my husband's head and are munching their way down his torso.

Still, we're trying. Why can't we be Ornamental Pillow People? We're people. We like pillows. And heck, we're largely ornamental.