Life Now - The Waterbed

The waterbed is a lovely waterbed, as waterbeds go. It sits on a pedestal and has a sideboard the whole length of one side. Actually, it's a perfect waterbed for John. If he sits just right he can tuck his feet under the pedestal while resting his weary head (poor baby has been reading my summer books all day) on his right arm while the remote to the TV can be strategically placed next to his left hand. In one swift flicker he can surf the channels for baseball games and never has to actually move anything except a finger. The other day he was watching a ballgame that required food and when he stood up and started walking I heard an unusual squish. "Did you sit there long enough for the dog to think you were a tree and take a leak on you or do you usually squish when you move during a baseball game?" I asked. "Oh my God! A home run!!!" was his reply. Obviously the waterbed had developed a hole and the hole was big enough and had been there long enough to cause a drip that had found John's feet. The hole just happened to be in the middle of a crease that was way down and a bit under the side of the mattress. Neither the crease or the hole should have been there, and neither one of them should have been left long enough to cause a drip. But things never are exactly as they should be and it was obvious that this 'never exactly' was going to require that the bed be drained. That job wasn't much fun, but John had rented a pump and it went fairly quick. We patched up the hole, but the repair kit advised us to let the glue sit for about 12 hours before using the bed again. So we went about finding other places to sleep which wasn't easy considering that the waterbed is our only bed. But OK we did that. The next day we had to hook up the hose and refill the bed. BUT you have to let the water heat for about 24 hours so we had to find another someplace to sleep again. OK we did that, again. About 2:00 a.m. that second time I woke up to find John moving and moaning. It seems that sometime during the night he had become uncomfortable and moved his "someplace" to someplace else and that else was the damp carpet. He was wet, cold and irate that our waterbed hadn't been properly housebroken. THEN came the wonderful night when we were going to be able to sleep on the bed again. I hadn't paid particular attention when John filled the bed. What the heck, I had other things to do (like sneak outside to read some of the summer reading). I should have known better! That night when I got in the bed it was so full that I had to grab the sideboard and pull myself into the middle, and the minute that I let go of the sideboard I rolled off the bed just like we used to do when we were kids and rolled down a hill. The bed was a fricken water mountain. John laughed at me and told me that I was great at exaggerating. I just grunted and started looking for another someplace else to sleep, again!! By this time it was after midnight, but John was determined. He got in the bed on the side that has the sideboard and instantly rolled down the mountain of water into the crevasse between the water mattress and the sideboard and that is where he spent the night. It almost took a lift to get him out of there the next morning. Guess what we did after I got him out of the crevasse. Drained the waterbed!