The Princess and the ???
You've probably heard the story of The Princess and the Pea , written in 1835 by Danish author, Hans Christian Andersen, about a prince whose royal parents wanted him to marry a real princess. Apparently, in Fairy Tale Land, the only way to tell if a girl is really a princess is to stack up a whole pile of mattresses on top of a single pea and, if the girl feels the pea through all of those mattresses, she is the genuine, real deal. I'm no princess, but lately, I'm beginning to understand what that miserable night must have been like for the girl in the story. My misery is usually only momentary, while I grab the offending object from the top of my solitary mattress, where it has deposited itself under my sleeping body. Sometimes, I'm careful to not wake Bill, but other times, let's just say my single-mindedness may cause us both some distress. I'm not in the habit of sleeping with peas. Instead, I wear four finger splints each night, in hopes of keeping my arth...