Thursday, March 19, 2009

In which I fix something wrong with the world...

DRASTIC CHANGE NEEDED! IMMEDIATELY!

What's got me cranked up tonight? Well, let me back up to last night.

I have a cat. She's a stunningly beautiful cat and I love her to absolute pieces. But she has a delicate constitution, the poor princess, and last night she had a teeny tiny upset in her teeny tiny tummy and urped a big gigantic nasty thing on my bed, right by my pillow.

Laundry time.

I usually don't undertake changing my sheets late at night, but it was Absolutely Necessary. Oh, I hate changing my sheets. And why?

WHO CAN TELL WHICH WAY THEY GO?

A king-sized bed is not a square, but I'll be dipped if I can figure out which is the shorter side of the sheet, especially when it's crinkled up on the ends with the elastic. I started marking the bottoms of the sheets with a big B--I am big big big on saving myself unneeded grief--but of course, the set last night had no such B, or it washed out or something.

Wrestle, wrestle, wrestle the sheet into place, only to see that I have apparently gotten it wrong as one corner pops off and I have to start again. So I do. This time there's a huge wrinkle across the middle, and the corners are poking up like tiny cloth mountains, and I know, I just KNOW, that as soon as I plop onto the bed, they'll snap free and I'll be back at square one--trying to make my bed, still, as dawn's early light creeps over the horizon because no matter how I try, I cannot get it right.

I was not happy. I was sweaty from all that exertion. And why? I have yet to get a mattress pad and sheets that actually fit a real bed--they're all just a teensy bit too small, so they spring off the second you go to the other side to deal with THOSE corners.

Do sheet manufacturers sit in their offices and chuckle all day long, thinking of this as corporate short-sheeting?

There has to be some better way. I mean really, they're sheets! We're not talking about, oh, a Large Hadron Collider or something that has scads of little parts that can go blooey. If a bailout goes to a sheet manufacturer, I want it tied into a promise that they'll clearly mark the bottom of the sheet and give us that extra inch we need to keep the sheets in place.

(And I know about the bed garters--had some. But the point isn't that I can buy something else to fix the sheets. They should make them right the first time!)

Sigh. Sheets. So complicated!

3 comments:

Barbara said...

I have plain white sheets from Martha Stewarts silver line (four silver stars on the package), they're cheaper than high end sheets, they're durable, soft and most importantly they're deep! I have a deep pillow top and these fit wonderfully!

Kacie said...

Yes--it's a real challenge to find sheets that fit a deep pillow top, but Bed, Bath, and Beyond carry some in Egyptian cotton that are just flat-out yummy. But I still use the garters. No way they'd stay on without them...

Janet Spaeth said...

So what you're both telling me is that I need to quit buying sale sheets at bottom-of-the-barrel stores? Guilty as charged!

And you're both right, Barbara and Kacie. Put my money where the body goes.

So I hereby promise that I will never again cheap-out on sheets.

Thanks!