Down by the Old Crick

I don't want anybody to think that I am ungrateful. I'm very grateful, and I appreciate the thought behind each and every gift I have ever received. But the truth is I don't like presents. If I need something I will go and get it for myself. Very, very few gifts that I have got over the years ended up being used by me. Mostly they were stashed away and recently sold in our moving sale or donated to the doggy resale shop. Unfortunately I cannot get this across to Mark in any appreciable manner. I've said over and over that on my birthday, dinner is enough for me. And I've said again and again that at Christmastime I don't need to have a gift, but I always end up with a bunch of crap I don't want. conversely, I hate giving gifts. I don't know what people want, and I don't like spending money on crap that will probably be re-gifted anyway. The only thing I like to exchange is dinner. I don't mind taking somebody out for dinner on their birthday.

Last week I walked in on Mark while he was watching QVC, the shopping network.

"If I buy you a pillow, will you use it?"

"Ummm... I don't need a pillow." I told him.

And I don't. There so many pillows on the bed already that there's no room for a human being or a large dog to sleep on it without tossing most of them on the floor. Anyway, Mark continued to question me on my need for a new pillow and at some point I must have said "Maybe" or "Possibly", because on Tuesday a box with a new pillow arrived on our doorstep.

"It's made with a special filler that conforms to your head." Mark informed me.

"Really? It feels like a bunch of broken up foam rubber stuffed into a sack."

"Just try it. I'm sure you'll sleep better."

So I tried it. Tuesday night I slept on that new pillow and at three in the morning, when Bette decided it was time to go out to pee and did her little pee dance on top of me, I awoke with a painful crick in my neck. The sack of broken up foam rubber did not conform to my head. It buoyed my head like a balloon floating in a pool of water. Every time I tried to pound the foam rubber down into a nice divot for my skull, it would pop right back up within minutes.

Sure my old pillow is very flat and doesn't look very pretty. Sure it has the odor of my scalp and Bette's butt on it. But it fits my goddamned head and doesn't feel like I'm sleeping with my head on a curb. So I dug out my flat old pillow, slept like a baby the rest of the night, and dealt with Mark in the morning. He accused me of not giving it a real try, but I don't care. I find the odor of schnauzer on a pillow that fits my head reassuring in the middle of the night.