I have to make my bed everyday…. and I mean I literally HAVE to do it. I simply can not leave the bed unmade. I detest seeing the bed unmade and I can’t get into an unmade bed in the evening without making it first (even if I’m staying in a hotel or something). I don’t know what it is but I am compelled to do it. I feel indescribably uncomfortable if my bed is unmade… it’s not dissimilar to the feeling I used to get if I went to work without any make up on. It’s that feeling of something being not quite being right or not quite decent or proper…. a very unsettled feeling that remains with you.
If I’m down with the flu or home sick for some reason – I will make my bed and go rest on the lounge instead. I’ve had maybe a dozen rather invasive IVF surgeries which frequently caused severe abdominal discomfort that naturally required several days of convalescence… on these post operative occasions I would get up and very slowly and painfully (it might take me 20mins) make my bed and would then go couch for the day. Even when the Small Child was an infant keeping us up all night, I would have to make the bed first thing and could not manage to nap when he did during the day. After the last car accident I spent several weeks feeling like I could hardly move yet – I still HAD to make my bed and would set up camp in the living room instead.
I can’t sleep in … EVER (well not without heavily over-medicating myself) and when I wake up I am usually so pained from laying down still for several hours (if I’m lucky) that I have to get up as soon as consciousness returns. It’s the pain that drives me out of bed as soon as I wake, so there’s never been laying around in bed on the weekends to read the newspapers or having a lazy morning. I very very rarely go back to bed during the day to lay down regardless how crap my back feels or how tired I am…. though God knows I’d probably benefit from it. Sigh… it’s just not in my make up to do so.
Anyway, I’ve noticed since my last car accident that making the bed has turned into a very obvious indicator of how crap my back is on any given day. If I get up and am able to make the bed before going off for a cuppa and a heatpack then I’m probably not feeling too pained yet and might have a chance of having a relatively ‘good back day’. If I get up, go for heatpack and tea BEFORE being able to face the bedmaking… then I’m probably not quite doing so well. If the bed is still unmade by 10am or so it’s because my back is causing me too much pain to get in and do it. And I can feel the bed lurking in my room taunting me because I don’t have the requisite freedom of movement or the required energy to feel up to making it.
If, come 3pm, my bed is still not made… you can normally tell by the look on my face that the back pain has totally gotten the better of me that day. Recently I noticed the week after going to the Cirque du Soleil I probably averaged only managing to make my bed by mid-afternoon every day for the entire week I was so stirred up. 🙁
Maybe it could be useful as a quantifable measure of what my pain levels are like for the day. Maybe I should be writing down what time I made the bed as a record of how much the back pain is bothering me each day. Or maybe… and this is a totally preposterous suggestion… maybe I should get over it and forget about making the damn bed altogether!
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