Grrrr. Howl.

TERRIBLE night of sleep last night. I blame ... my broken bed, and my dog.

Last night was the third night I've had to sleep in the guest room because my bed is a piece of crap from Ikea, and it's broken. And I can't fix it. I believe I briefly discussed this in my last post. Basically, Ikea beds (or at least, the one we have) do not use box springs - instead, the frame has these wooden slats, like so:

*photo found here*

And, in fact, this is the exact bed that we have (but wow, that's a small bedroom, eh?). But anywhoo. Those damn wooden slats!!! There are two, um, slat thingies (sets?) - one for the left side and one for the right side. Oh, and they don't actually secure or attach to anything because THEN you wouldn't be able to easily take the bed apart and put it together somewhere else, apparently. However, the slats themselves are all stapled (yes, stapled) together to a flimsy piece of fabric so that, when one falls, half the rest come with.

SO. The slats constantly move around and are generally crappy in every way. And when they move around, they come dislodged from their happy place and fall into the floor. Because there is basically only one millimeter of overlap.

The slats on the left side of the bed (Matt's side) are notoriously easy to dislodge. Like, if you sit on the bed, the mattress will plummet into the ground. Not fun. I noticed a dip (seriously, there is a visible dip) in the mattress a few days ago and decided to attempt and fix it. Basically, half of the slats on that side of the bed had fallen into the floor. I spent what seemed like hours fixing it, thus somehow causing a bunch of slats from the RIGHT side of the bed to fall into the floor. So, I put the mattress down, went over to the right side of the bed, and spent another 4 hours fixing that side. Thus causing the slats from the LEFT side of the bed to fall. And repeat. Repeat. Repeat until I was thisclose to bursting into tears in a feeble Iwantmyhusbandtocomehomerightnowsothathecanfixthisgoddamnbed type of way.

But instead of having a breakdown, I angrily made up the guest bed and slept there for the night. The next morning, I woke up to discover I had somehow pulled something pretty painful in my back/neck region - likely from constantly propping up the mattress with my right arm. Boo. So the next day, I didn't try to fix the bed because my back/neck hurt.

And then yesterday, I just didn't want to deal with it, so I went right back to the guest room. But here's the thing - for some reason, Oscar doesn't like to sleep in the guest room with me. So, I've been a little lonely. And yes, I know that's absurd, he's just a dog, and I'm asleep. But somehow, it matters. Last night, he spent a few minutes curled up on the bed with me before hearing something suspicious outside. He sprinted into the living room and started howling. "NO!!!" I shouted, to no avail.

He never returned from the living room and I fell into a very fitful sleep. The guest room and bed are insanely comfortable, but for some reason I just have not slept well there. Something about it just not being MY bed. So, when he woke me up by howling, it seemed like several uncomfortable hours of sleep had gone by. Surely, it was morning, right? I ran into the living room and said "Oscar, NO NO NO!!!! SHHHHHH!!!!" He responded with a growl of unhappiness. I returned to the guest room and looked at my phone ... it was only 1am. Argh.

Back to sleep, kind of. Tossed and turned and had crazy dreams. Then, the howling. AGAIN. Please note that Oscar hardly ever barks/howls/whatever, and especially never at night, so this was really weird. I yell NO NO NO again ... look at my phone. Only 3am. The last time it happened was at 5am and at that point, I just got up.

The plan for this evening is DEFINITELY attempting, yet again, to fix the stupid bed. I don't want to sleep in the guest room anymore ... apparently both Oscar and I sleep much better in my bedroom!