Woke up this morning in the bed in my bedroom.  A rather remarkable thing.  The house I live in has two very different bedrooms, yet somehow I always remember to wake up in the one with the bed in it despite my being asleep at the time.
     Almost as remarkable: The fact that I actually have a bed in either room.  Both are very small rooms.  I'm not sure who designed this house, but apparently he or she never saw a bed before deciding how big to make the bedrooms.  I've been told the house is about 100 years old, so maybe he or she laid out the dimensions after the briefest of glimpses of a mere drawing of a bed in an old Sears and Roebuck catalog.  Certainly he or she must not have had any firsthand experience with this particular item of furniture.  Architects suffering from sleep deprivation almost certainly do very weird things.  It all begins to make sense....
     Just in case anyone reading this has never seen an old Sears and Roebuck catalog, I've taken the liberty of going out and acquiring one before proceeding.  Here's one of the beds listed in it:
 
 

     This bed, as depicted in this catalog, measures all of 1.5" wide by 1" high.  It would have no trouble fitting into either of my bedrooms and, as such, would be well worth twice its listed price.
     A modern king-size bed, on the other hand, would be impossible.  
     A queen-size bed would be inconceivable given the physical laws of the universe as we know them today.  
     Even two twin beds would be out of the question, forcing me to conclude that a married couple never lived here prior to the 1970s.  
     A standard-size doublebed, such as I have, is a tight, tight, tight, tight squeeze in the one bedroom and unimaginable in the other.
     After much discussion, my wife and I decided our standard-size doublebed belonged in the one bedroom it could possibly fit in.
     Even in this room, a normal placement of this bed proved to be beyond our abilities as mere mortals. 
     We had to angle it.  A square placement, a placement which would have positioned its edges parallel with the walls, would have left one of its main sides flush up against the room's only window.  This would not do.  It is one thing to accidentally roll out of bed while you sleep.  It is quite another to wake up in the yard being eaten alive by wild squirrels after you have done so.
     Thus, one end of the headboard is 2" from the wall behind it while the other end is no less than 14" from the very same wall.
     This bothers me to no end, but I dare not say anything to my wife about it.  If I say anything to my wife about it, my wife will tell me to go sleep on the couch and shut-up.  Well, I don't want to be told to shut-up, so I suffer in silence instead....
     No man should have to choose between having to dream his dreams askew and leaving himself open to kitty attack while he slumbers alone far from help.  It's inhumane, it is, an outright torture and a bother, and if you think Sears and Roebuck isn't going to hear about it, you're nuts.

     To make matters worse, I didn't wake up naturally this morning in the bed in my bedroom.  Oh, no - I woke up because the sun was hitting me right in the face.  We now have less than 10 hours of sun a day, but the sun had to spend one of those hours hitting me right in the face.  I'm specifically referring to the hour between 8 and 9 a.m. today. 
     Thank you, Mr. Sol!

     I know, I know - I ought to be grateful.  Not everyone woke up this morning to see the sun.  Some people woke up to rain.  Others never woke up at all.  And the sun that was hitting me in the face is the same sun that's the source of virtually all life on this planet, so I suppose I really ought to cut it some slack. 
     All I can say is, "I'm no Mother Teresa.  If she wakes up with the visible radiation of an 864,600-mile-wide fusion reactor smacking her full in the visage and the only thing she can think to do is give thanks, well, she's a better woman than I'll ever be."
     I mean to say, I was pissed.
     Had I fallen asleep on a beach, I could have understood it and blamed myself for being an idiot, but I was in my only bed in the only bedroom in the house that can hold it.  Let's not blame the victim here!
     The sun had clearly gone out of its way to be sociopathic.
     Not only had it and it alone sent its sunshine 93 million miles just to smack me in the face - oh, no.  It had also worked it so that that sunshine made it through the 10 miles of the earth's atmosphere without encountering a single cloud exactly when it could do me the most annoyance.
     And it wasn't just the clouds that it dodged.  It also worked its way through a tree, a fence, my porch window, my living room window, my living room window's closed mini-blinds, and my bedroom doorway just to toast my defenseless proboscis.
     It's a miracle that I can still sniff at all....

     And just in case anyone thinks that I have nothing to sniff about, consider this: 
Patrick Corp faces 5 years in prison for taking a photograph of his girlfriend.
     Yes, it's true!
     Patrick is a 24-year-old college student in Michigan who snapped a few photos of his girlfriend. 
     Ok, so she just happened to be nude at the time. 
     Ok, so she just happens to be 17. 
     The thing to keep in mind is this:  She agreed to be photographed.  She was, according to Michigan law, old enough to legally have sex with Patrick.  She does not want Patrick prosecuted.  And the photos were to be kept for his and her own personal, private use.  They were not going to be sold.  They were not even going to be posted on the Internet.
     Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Murray threw the book at Patrick all the same. 
     Why?
     Because a year-old law makes it illegal to create or possess child pornography if the pictures were produced with materials transported across state lines and the drug store Patrick took his film to for developing used photo paper made outside Michigan.
     Maybe it's just me, but 5 years in a federal penitentiary for patronizing a store that's not 100% behind the governor's "Buy Michigan" campaign seems a wee bit much.
     Now 5 years for being too cheap or lazy to buy a Polaroid camera I could understand, but that's not what Patrick was charged with.  I'm sure if Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Murray thought he could have gotten it to stick, he would've tried.  As it is, well...
     Sniff, sniff.
     Do I smell sexual McCarthyism or is it just me? 

     At least I'll be able to sleep well tonight, knowing that it'll be a long, long time before Patrick can threaten me again with his itchy shutter finger.
     Of course, knowing that I've put black paper up at my living room window helps, too....