The Wreath That Could Have Fed Haiti

Making my bed is like climbing Mount Everest. For those of you who think I'm being completely dramatic for the sake of the blog, I readily invite you to come and make my bed. I especially extend this invitation to anyone who has climbed Mount Everest. You'll see I'm not joking. You are responsible for your own travel expenses, hotel, food, etc. Also, you can't sleep on my bed when you're done making it. Sorry.

Guys, it took me forty five minutes to make my bed. I know what you're all saying, "But Cassadee, I didn't now you were mentally slow." I'm not, but I totally understand where you would get that from. In my defense, let me just explain how making my bed works.

I have one of those lovely beds that positions so that you can sleep sitting up, or with your feet up, or with your head and feet up and squish yourself into the bed like one of those cartoons. In order to make the bed, obviously, you have to level it back to its flat position. That's not the hard part. There's a button for that. With this bed, that's totally the equivalent of "there's an app for that." From now on in, I'm just going to consider any buttons on the bed to be apps.

My bed also adjusts to be really soft, or really firm. This is awesome for me because each day I go through different levels of pain. Some days I am in such pain that the only thing I can sit on and be comfortable on is a cloud. I haven't actually sat on a cloud, but I've sat on every other thing I could possibly get my butt on and it hasn't worked, so I think the only thing left is a cloud...and my bed. It gets almost as soft as a cloud. I haven't actually touched a cloud, but this is what I would guess a cloud would feel like.

Other times, I need the bed nice and firm or else it's too soft and I get stuck in it and can't get back out. I end up looking like a fish out of water, flailing, arms out, in an attempt to get upright. Then my legs finally just give up and I sit there helplessly, starving and fermenting in a pile of my own tears. This might be a tad dramatic, but there's been many a time that I've forgone doing something I wanted to do because it was just too hard for me to get up. And that's not being dramatic at all. That's being totally serious. I'm taking over for my grandma now that she's gone.

The second thing you have to do with this bed before you can make it is inflate it to one hundred percent firmness, or else you end up sinking into the bed while trying to get those damn sheet ends to go down around the edge of the mattress, never to be seen or heard from again. If you try to make it without inflating it, another problem occurs other than just becoming mattress munch. When you do decide to inflate it more on those days when you need it to be more firm, your sheets promptly pop off and slap you in the face like you're their bitch. Luckily, there's an app for that. Not for the whole you're their bitch thing, but for bed inflation.

Bed inflation takes about three minutes, so at this time you are free to do several things, which are including, but not limited to, pee, twiddle your thumbs, sing a quickened version of Taylor Swift's Mine, try to learn exactly one dance step and no more, or stare at the bed and yell at it for going too slow, therefore anthropomorphizing it. This is the only break you will get for the next forty two minutes and thirteen second, so enjoy it.

After the inflation has finished, it's time place the bed cover on, the one that protects the bed from becoming stained. Obviously, this piece of fabric comes from the manufacturer of the bed and is assured to fit. It only fits correctly if you're Lou Ferrigno. The bed is a thick bed. You literally have to pull this sucker over a pillow top, four inches of foam, and a bunch of other crap that I didn't pay enough attention to when they were assembling the bed. When you add it all together, you literally have a foot and a half of mattress you have to pull this sucker over on each side. Even though the cover fits on there, it will take you no less than fifteen minutes of yanking, pulling, crying, hysterics, short naps and frustration to get this sucker over all four sides and under the mattress. And if you don't get it the whole way over each side, the next time you make the head or feet higher, that sucker pops right off. You would think I was over exaggerating about all of this, but no. Ask Lou. He's on my payroll for exactly this reason. But don't tell him that. I've lied to him and told him it's for a documentary.

Once you've finally managed to get the cover on, you have to go through the exact same process with your sheets. But remember, now not only do you have to cover the mattress, you have to cover the cover, too. And you have to do all of this without wrinkling or pulling off the cover, because if you do either of these things, you have to take off the little bit of the sheet you've got on and start all over. If this happens, I highly suggest finding a pile of chocolate the size of Texas and eating it. Screw the bed. Eat your body weight in chocolate.

If you've managed to get through these two steps, congratulations! The rest of this should only take you about fourteen more minutes and some change. The next part is putting your blankets on. Now, if you're like me and always feel like it's six below even in ninety degree weather, you would sleep with a flannel sheet, a soft, fluffy cotton blanket, an afghan that could effectively keep every resident of Canada warm, and a comforter. Oh, and did I mention that my bed is against the wall and there's nowhere to move it to, so I have to crawl on said bed just to make it? Yeah, that would be an important thing to know.

By the time I get my flannel sheet on and centered, I'm ready for a drink, and I don't drink. The fluffy cotton blanket is easy, because it just fits on the top of the bed and doesn't require being tucked in against the wall. Putting it on gives me eighty two seconds to rejuvenate myself from the bewildering argument I just had with the flannel sheet. The afghan is another story. As I mentioned, it's big enough to keep every resident of Canada warm, so there's a lot of tucking, crying, and getting my foot caught it and tripping over it because there's a gaping hole in the one side of it thanks to the dog that is not Greta Hayley. That hole is the size of one person, so I guess technically it would warm all of Canada except for one person, but when put in that perspective, the hole really isn't that big. The comforter also isn't too bad, because it mostly just sits on the top and only about two inches tuck into the wall, but by the time I get to the comforter I'm already foaming at the mouth and dehydrated, so it really feels like I'm at the end of a triathlon.

You would think you were finished at this point, but you would also be wrong. You still have to place the pillows happily on your bed, reset the bed to the amount of softness you wish to snuggle into that night, and put it in a position that makes you sing Joy to the World. Obviously, putting pillows on the bed isn't hard, unless you have to climb on the bed to get some of them on because your bed is against the wall and you have six pillows. I would know nothing about any of that...

With your pillows happily placed and your body slowly giving up, asking you to just leave it there to die, you actually get to lie down on the bed. Don't be fooled, though, because the bed will not be comfortable when you lie down, because it is fully inflated and not on a setting that makes your body happy. Your body will immediately whine and insist you remove it from the bed pronto. Ignore it. It's just being a pansy. In order to deflate the bed to the proper mushiness, you have to be lying on it, because it deflates different without your weight. It takes about a month and a day after you hit the button indicating where you would like your bed to deflate to for it to actually do it. You might think this is enough time to take a nap, but you'd be wrong. Just when you're starting to gloriously drift into sinking slumber, you have to move over and adjust the other side.

When you're done doing that, all that's left is adjusting the bed to a position where your head and your feet are low enough to not comically squish you between the bed until you're snug as a bug in a rug, but up enough that you don't feel as if you're being stretched into submission. Luckily, there's an app for that. You can favorite your position and it will go back to that with a push of a button. This is little consolation when you realize it's the middle of the day, you've just spent forty five minutes making your bed, you're sweating like a pig, and have to take another shower and a nap just to continue on with your day. And all you did was make your bed. Gees.

I love my bed, though. It's become like family to me, complete with all the yelling, crying, swearing, frustration, sweating and defeat. Then the next day you forget about all of it and love it again. This lasts about a week, until you have to deal with something else stupid that it's put you through, and then you go back and repeat the process. With a twenty year warranty on this bed, I have more time to complete this process than I would if I had a kid right now and it went off to college after high school. When you think of it that way, it's a little disturbing. If I don't have mental issues now, get back to me when those twenty years are over. If you can find me. I can't promise I won't be in room 333 of a sanitarium.

Speaking of family, I love mine. I don't have family around here; it's just my mom, Aunt Bev and myself. But my great-aunt and uncle, their kids and their families all live down south. I am living in the wrong place, you guys. Luckily, I have Facebook to remind me of all the antics that occur when you have one teenager who just started college hundreds of miles away, who is close to her two younger, teenage cousins, the funniest uncle in the history of the world, who throws spitballs in restaurants but can be scary strict, and a great uncle who is also my grandfather's brother and easily the funniest man ever.

Today, I was scrolling through my Facebook feed and found a picture of my fourteen year old cousin dressed up like a redneck and smoking a cigarette. She's fourteen and her dad is the hilarious but strict one. I clicked on the picture to make sure I was seeing it right, confirmed I was, and then started scrolling the comments to see if there was clarification for this before I told her dad. Yeah, I know, I'm one of those adults now. Two comments down, the older cousin who is in college left a very angry, finite post about how she was going to tell her dad she was smoking. As I continued through the comments, I found little cousin reassuringly trying to calm big cousin down, and tell her they were fake cigarettes and her dad already knew. It was a picture from Halloween. I breathed a sigh of relief that I didn't have to have that awkward conversation with her dad from thousands of miles away, and then swiftly concluded that, if I ever see her doing something like that again and she can't explain it, I wouldn't tell her dad. I would so totally tell my grandpa's brother and let him deal with it. Yep, definitely one of those adults.

Also in the family realm, it was mentioned by Miss Zoe that the stories of Aunt Bev's and my mom's adventures are sorely missed. I apologize, but they just haven't brought out the wacky lately, probably because I haven't been with the two of them collectively for awhile. I will check some word documents that I started to write for this blog and saved for later, and see if I can drudge up any of their adventures, but for now, I've got nothing. Zoe also mentioned that one day she wants to meet my mom and Aunt Bev. Since I'm sure she's not the only one, I will give you all the same words of advice I gave her.

Bring your crazy hat and prepare for catastrophe.

I was going to sign off here with a funny little quip about Greta Hayley, but another notable conversation occurred while I was writing this, and I just can't pass it up. The Greta Hayley quip has been moved to the new bottom of this post. The new bottom is like the new black, which is the new pink. Didn't we just go over this the other day?

There was an article on AOL where a woman was asking advice about how to go about retrieving the $350 she was ripped off by Linens and Things. I felt bad for her for three point eight seconds, until I clicked on the link and read that she paid $1,055 for this wreath and the $350 was a restocking fee, mainly because I wondered who in the hell would spend that much on a wreath. I immediately told my friend that, and I quote, "This is so fucking bitchy, but it almost serves her right because she was dumb enough to spend that much on a wreath." Yes, that is so fucking bitchy, but at least I admit it.

This is where things got confusing. As I was reading, she worded her reason for returning the wreath as such, "it's a ten foot wreath and it didn't fit in my space." Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't they usually tell you how big something is on the website you're ordering it from? My friend brought up that maybe there were no sizes on the website, but I have two issues with this. One is that, if that were the case, this lady spent that much money on not a monster wreath, but instead what she thought to be a regular sized wreath, and how insane do you have to be to do that? Two is that she said she bought it because it was extra large. I will relay exactly what I said to her upon telling her this.

"I am so confused. All I know is that the lady who answered her problem in order to help her was so nice. I would have been like, 'Lady, if you not only have over a thousand dollars to spend on a wreath, but are dumb enough to, then pay extra for shipping to you and to send it back, I'm afraid the help you need goes so far past that of which I could provide. Thank you and goodnight."I would be terrible at giving advice. I would get fired and lynched immediately after, but at least I know this. Dear Abby, watch your back. I'm coming for your advice column.

In all seriousness, guys, she did get her money back, but that's not important. There are people starving to death on the streets and this lady is spending over one thousand dollars for a freaking wreath. What is wrong with people?

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go trim the hair from between Greta Hayley's toes so she doesn't keep slipping on it on the floor and falling on her tush. True story.