expectations

If you were to ask me 10 years ago what my bed would look like when I turned 30, its current state would not be my answer, which makes it a metaphor for how different real life is compared to expectations.

Not bad. Just different.

For starters, my bed is a nest and not an orderly sense of....anything. It's rarely made, outside of grabbing the edges of the sheet, blanket and duvet and spreading them haphazardly over the top of everything. I typically wouldn't even do this, but the dogs sometimes nap there and I draw the line at dog hair on my fitted sheets.

Speaking of sheets, mine don't match, and I have a random blue and yellow pillowcase that has nothing to do with one brown sheet, a maroon one, a cream blanket and hot pink duvet. Or the brown blanket, or the pink and brown spotted one, or the other green pillowcases. What the heck?

Yeah, crazy. I always figured myself for a matching-sheet-set kind of person, but now there's a comfortable element in my mismatched, imperfect sleeping gear.

It's not unusual for me to find Tuck's appropriated toys mixed in with the bedding.Oh lovely, your dental bone. And the shoe you stole from me. And your tug toy. If I'm lucky, I'll find them before I go to sleep. If not, then in the morning when every piece of bedding is rolled up into a human-shaped ball because apparently I'm a death-rolling alligator in my sleep.

Some nights I toss myself into bed diagonally because that's how I feel like doing it. And that's how my pillows were situated.

My bed can be a war zone, and the space closest to me the prize. My dogs still haven't reconciled who gets to spoon with me. I think they tried to work out a rotating schedule.

My mattress is actually the base of a fort. Do not think for one minute that I will not drag that sucker into the living room, surround it with chairs, and throw a bunch of blankets over it and the TV. No one should ever outgrow the thrill of a fort. 

Speaking of bed, here's the man who most often makes himself comfortable beside me while I'm reading, and then settles on the floor beside me when it's lights out:

I'm actually five pounds and you can't tell at all that I'm even up here.

Not exactly what I had planned, but sometimes life's expectations don't unfold as planned and, if you're like me, you're pleasantly surprised that what you have now is exactly what you need and your heart swells with gratitude for the life-journey you're on.

Different. Unexpected.
But fulfilling in only the way a messy bed that's rarely (properly) made filled with dogs and dog toys can be.