the high life

Well, here are some pictures of my new bed. My apartment is still a bit messy, and obviously there are some wall decorations (like that Rothko print) that need to be relocated, but this is the basic idea of what my apartment will look like from now on. There is exactly 5'5.5" of clearance below the bed (I know this because that's how tall I am, and when I walk under the bed the top of my head just almost skims the underside of the bedframe). Add to this maybe about 8 inches of mattress, and I sleep a little over 6 feet above the floor. I set up a little caddy on the side of the bed next to my head where I have tissues, lip balm, hair elastics, and a little trash receptacle. At the other end of the bed, I'm about level with the storage space above my closet, so I can reach out and use it as a ledge to set a glass of water or a bowl or cereal on. Thus the only major inconveniences are going to the bathroom and bringing my laptop up and down (although the latter is not that difficult; I just unplug the power and DSL cord, climb two steps up, set the laptop on my bed, and then thread the cords through the guardrail and plug them back in when I get up there). Since it's a full-sized bed, I can sleep with my laptop (in addition to a huge pile of surveys, at the moment) up there with me without being cramped. It's amazing how quickly you get used to climbing up and down a ladder to get in and out of bed. And I thought I would be sort of freaked out by the height (the frame does shake a bit when you scoot around on the bed), but it seems very sturdy and secure (it's made out of steel, after all), and since it's so big it's hard to see how it would tip over.

My dearest B is coming for a two-day visit next week (she has to come to SF in person to get her French visa), so we'll get to see how it goes with two people (the bed frame warning label actually says that only one person should use the bed at a time, but that begs the question of why they bothered to make it a double bed; besides, I'm not one to pay much heed to alarmist warning labels...). The only problem I envision is one of us having to climb over the other to go pee or something. Right now I sleep with my head on the ladder end, but I think while she's here we should sleep the other way, so that I don't have to crawl over her head to get down the ladder (or she doesn't have to crawl over mine).

Okay, just kidding about the pictures. Blogger does this thing to me sometimes where it says its uploading the pictures, but then they mysteriously aren't there. I'll try again later.