A Living Magazine - Day 285 - Homecoming - Colonial Heights: The Discomfort of Comfort

This will probably be my shortest post yet. I didn't sleep as well as I thought I would. This has been the pattern with hotel rooms lately. They are really great--the showers, the privacy, the security, but rarely do I sleep comfortably. This bothers me now, as I'd love to have a restful sleep when all these other amenities are so nicely lined up. But still it eludes me for some reason.

I could theorize all day about why this is. Am I so used to the hard ground? Is it the somewhat stale air of being indoors? Is it the temperature? This bed was comparatively firmer than many others during this Journey. I tried the air conditioner, then turned it off, cracked the window, tried various temperature settings...not much luck with any of these experiments. 

I thought it might be the loose fitting bedding around me. Then it seemed the bedding was too confining, so I'd slip one of my legs out and over it. That just made me cold.

The only thing that did a bit of good was to not sleep with my arm under the pillow. When I'm in my sleeping bag I can't have my arm under the pillow, because the "pillow" is actually my bag of clean clothes in the hood of the sleeping bag itself and can't have anything under it. So, I sleep on my side with my arms crossed over my chest. Forcing myself to do this in the bed worked fairly well, until I simply ended up with my arm under the pillow by habit again. I'd like to solve this issue, but the infrequency of being in a bed lends little opportunity to practice. Ha! 

Getting up in the morning was easier after a night of frustrating experimentation. It turned out to be an unremarkable day. Beside the pleasures of a hotel room--the good food and TV that came with it, the day was simply filled with work.

I was able to make a good lunch though, one that was a variation on the finger food of the night before. This time was in sandwich form...

French wheat bread bun, smeared with pine nut hummus,

then a layer of pepperoni, then tomatoes, and finally a large portion of avocado.

Had to take one of my classic hotel hall shots.

Apparently there is a light at the end of the tunnel!

When the night grew late, and I grew tired, I reluctantly returned to the uncertainty of my bed, determined to find away to sleep more peacefully through the night.