To give y’all some idea of the level of excitement around here this week, I’ll tell you what the highlight of my day was yesterday. Caroline and I went to Target and I found party favors for her birthday party in the dollar aisle. I won’t reveal what they are because I don’t want to ruin the surprise for any of her friends that happen to read the blog.
Even though her friends are five and they don’t really read.
And, as far as I know, none of her friends’ parents read the blog either. Well, except for Gulley and she already knows about the party favors because my joy was so great that I called her immediately to tell her of my incredible find.
I really need to find some sort of hobby.
However, my party favor elation was short-lived because I returned home later in the afternoon and made a horrific discovery.
The night before I had a hard time sleeping because it felt like the bottom of my bed was filled with crumbs. It’s not like this is an unlikely scenario considering that I have a four-year-old who, much like Barbara Mandrell, enjoys nothing more than eating crackers in my bed anytime.
So when I returned home yesterday, fresh from my party favor coup, I remembered that I wanted to strip the bed and wash the sheets. But when I went to throw all the pillows off the bed, I discovered that it wasn’t crumbs causing levels of discomfort I haven’t felt since watching Jeremy show up again on “The Bachelorette” Monday night, rather it was the fact that my bottom sheet is beginning to pill.
I cannot tell y’all how this troubles me. It completely stole all my $1.00 party favor joy.
It has been well-documented by me, and anyone who has ever had the misfortune of sharing a sleeping space with me, that I am a high-maintenance bedtime person. I always have been.
In fact, I can clearly remember dragging my sleeping bag into my parents’ room in the middle of the night when I was a child and taking the time to spread out a sheet under the sleeping bag because I didn’t want my hands to touch the shag carpet if I decided to tuck them under my pillow. Which is why they sold me to a band of gypsies when I was seven.
I need soft sheets. I need a fitted bottom sheet, not a ghetto flat sheet posing as a fitted sheet. I need the room to be the proper temperature. I need a gaggle of pillows surrounding me on all sides.
I am basically the poster child for why couples shouldn’t live together before they get married. Had P been made aware of all my bedtime quirks, I feel certain that he would have found a nice sane girl to share his life and his bed.
And I would be all alone with the exception of my eighty-two pillows.
All this to say that the reason I am so upset about my pilled sheets is because they are practically brand new. I had such high hopes for them. They had it all; high thread count, Egyptian cotton (no one knows cotton like the Egyptians, look how long those strips of cotton preserve those mummies), and a sateen finish.
Please note I said “sateen”, not satin. I am not confessing to the internet that I sleep on satin sheets. Although my Nanny swears by sleeping on a satin pillowcase because it keeps your weekly “set” from the beauty shop fresh.
When P and I got married we received two really nice sets of sheets. Over the next three years they developed a softness that was rivaled only by a baby’s rear end. I adored them.
Unfortunately, they were queen-size sheets because at the time we had a queen-size bed. When we decided to upgrade due to sleeping space issues, I had to lay my precious sheets on the sacrificial king-size bed altar.
Since that time I have bought various brands and styles of bed linens. I have purchased expensive sheets and I have purchased inexpensive sheets, but no matter what I do they always end up pilling.
Help me, O WISE INTERNET. What am I doing wrong? Am I washing them wrong? Am I drying them wrong? Am I buying the wrong brand? Are the Egyptians not as smart as I give them credit for?
Am I destined to spend sleepless nights singing Barbara Mandrell songs in my head?