Above is a queen size bed with the standard dimensions of 80″ x60″ for the mattress.  This is my bed.

If you think I’m lying and just drawing beds and claiming that I sleep in them, then this picture is for you. This is my bed, when it’s made, and not drawn.

When it’s time for bed, this is what it looks like if only I am going to bed. Pretty standard. You can even see the memory foam for that extra added comfort. I’ll go to sleep and my wife will stay up reading with lights pointed at my face.  I bought her a special reading light for her Kindle, but it required a battery, and the gift was never heard from again.

On the ground, you’ll see I’ve placed the pillows that were once against the headboard. This is for easy pillow spooning access throughout the night.  If my wife isn’t in a cuddling mood or her hair makes my face itchy, I’ll use a pillow.

Sometimes, as I’m just about to hit my sleep sweet spot, when I’m just drifting off, my wife will say “Brian, I love you.”

And I will snap back awake, get my bearings and say “I know that already, please only wake me for dangerous earthquakes and fires.”

The problem, as you can guess, isn’t with my side of the bed.  My side is normal while the rest of the bed is insane.

“Good lord, what is that?” Is what you might be asking. This is the beginning of the insanity of when my wife goes to sleep.  That anomaly you see is Pillow Mountain. Pillow Mountain was not created by tectonic plates colliding, but it is rather a man-made mountain. It is a grade 5 climb, almost truly vertical at points.

You can see here the layers of pillow mountain. Three pillows. It is impenetrable.

My wife swears that Pillow Mountain is a magical place that will raise her legs, and give proper hip and lower back placement through a night’s sleep.

And deep inside Pillow Mountain my wife keeps a hatchet, in case of burglar or if I try to dismantle pillow mountain in the middle of the night.  Why would I dismantle it?  We’ll get to that in a minute.

The foot of pillow mountain ends 21 inches from the edge of my side of the bed. Shoulder to shoulder I am about 22 inches wide. We’ll go into this more in a minute.

These are our two cats. Like me, they want nothing to do with pillow mountain. Although pillow mountain is soft, they prefer sleeping on a harder surface like my knee caps or ankles when I make them available.

Here is a ruler measuring where these cats make their nightly camp. It’s 50″ down from the headboard. I am 73″ tall.

Here is a map so far of what we’ve discussed. As you can see we’ve burned about 70% of the real estate so far on cat camps and the fortified Pillow Mountain.

Although my wife swears she needs every pillow imaginable under the blankets to raise her legs off the bed, and thus take pressure off her back– this is how she really sleeps.  As you can see, subconsciously, she too hates pillow mountain. Plus she was secretly a starfish in a previous life. She starfishes the shit out of the bed. And if you remove a limb back to her side, it grows back. Like a starfish.

Here is me, trying to sleep. Arms hugging my knees. Being very accommodating to everyone: human and cat.  If I leave the bed for any reason, mid-night bathroom or water break, my real estate goes down to 0%. My wife rolls over, pulls all of my pillows onto the bed, and the cats migrate north.  It’s anarchy. My best defense is to shriek at wife and cat alike until they move over, then dramatically throw every pillow away from the bed.

If I don’t do that there’s always the couch.