I am reading The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, and I would like to say that this is just the kind of thing I used to like to read before the possibility of this exact kind of future (no contraceptives! clean water is too scarce for most people to afford! all education is private and too expensive for most people to afford! police/firefighters are private and have to be paid for directly by the citizen who summons them! women and children can’t go outside safely except in a group including armed men!) went from “oooh, kind of thrillingly creepy to think of the effects of that kind of unlikely societal collapse!” to “our political leaders are right this minute working on achieving those very goals.” I want to finish the book, but it’s setting my baseline level of panic way too high for daily life, so I think after this one book I’m done (it’s a series).
I’d like to veer into another topic, which is my new pillow. This story begins when I was doing my in-home eldercare job, and one of the houses I went to had the TV set to a station that played a pillow commercial again and again and again and again until I was about to lose my fool mind but also kind of wanted to try the pillow. Then I read some reviews, and the reviews said the pillow was nothing but one of those egg-carton memory foam things you put under a sleeping bag, but all ripped up into chunks and stuffed into a sack.
I was at Target earlier this week, and their whole pillow aisle was full of the new yellow clearance stickers (I HATE the new yellow clearance stickers). I found a pillow labeled “Shredded Foam Pillow: Shapeable memory foam designed to fit your ideal sleep position.” Definitely hinting at it being a knock-off of the one in the commercial, and I squeezed it and it felt like it was full of ripped-up chunks of memory foam, so I bought it.
This would be a much better story if I loved the pillow, but I don’t. It seems like it might be good for me: when I lie on my side using the pillow, I can just SEE the part of the commercial that shows the side-sleeper’s spine aligning correctly. But I am also a stomach-sleeper, and a half-stomach-half-side sleeper, and this pillow doesn’t CHANGE enough for that. It’s the firmest pillow I have ever used: there is almost no GIVE to it at all. I am accustomed to a down-filled pillow, which had too MUCH give (I had to keep plumping it up and squishing it into a half-pillow-sized lump in the pillow case), but this is too far the other way. When I squeeze the pillow with my hand, it feels as if it would squoosh down nicely, but my head is not heavy enough to make it do that, so I feel as if my head is resting on a stable little shelf. In the reviews for the pillow on TV, reviewers wrote that foam chunks could be removed from the pillow to make it more adjustable; I may see if I can do that.
Pillows are just SO difficult to gauge – it’s never really judgeable by hand so can only ever be a best guess. I’m also a single down pillow person but with the proviso that it must be a very good quality (preferably goose) one to avoid the very scenario that you describe – I would hazard a guess that yours is simply just coming to its natural end and it is time for a new, well-stuffed one.
You know, I think I have that pillow you saw advertised. I found when we bought our pillows that they had a variety of pillows with a variety of levels of softness/firmness. We all started out with firmer pillows than we ended with (luckily exchanges were easy). I really like mine. I bought one, like you did, off of Amazon and found it much too firm, but now I use that one to prop my top knee up when I sleep on my side.
I HAVE that pillow, the one in the commercial. I was having neck pain from sleeping (SLEEPING WAS HURTING ME) and then the neck pain would radiate into my shoulders and as a yoga teacher, I really cannot afford to not be able to use my shoulders. So I bought the pillow based on the zillion commercials I heard on the radio “This is Betty Jo Kaiser here and I had another great sleep last night with my pillow” and I will say that I love it. I mean, *I* could be on those commercials, I love it so much. But the funny thing is that I ordered two (order now and you can get two for the price of one) and they didn’t arrive, they didn’t arrive, they didn’t arrive. Finally my husband called and cancelled, and got a refund. THE VERY NEXT DAY THE PILLOWS ARRIVED. So we kind of got them free. Well, not kind of. Anyway, BEST FREE PILLOW EVER.
Interesting! I have a shredded latex pillow from Bed Bath & Bey0nd, and it’s a bit too soft four years later. They’re pricey, though I feel like they last longer than down or fake down pillows.
You and I sleep in exactly the same positions. I love the feel of a down pillow but like you, had to squish all the time. I found a solid core down pillow that was better suited to me. It was hella expensive though (at Target)!
Me too. I sleep in the fetal position with a body pillow below the waist. I throw an arm over the body pillow and sleep on my stomach above the waist.
I can never answer the pillow quiz on position of sleep!
I think pillow shopping is at LEAST as difficult as jeans shopping. Especially now that I’ve gotten to the Debilitating Neck Injury Just Because I Rolled Wrong In Bed Last Night stage of life. I have one that I kind of like? I think it may even be from Costco, which means it was $9.99. But I don’t LOVE it. And sometimes I still wake up feeling like a gymnast borrowed my body during the night to do things it’s not capable of.
Perhaps this was already covered, but are you also WATCHING the Handmaid’s Tale? I need a week of counseling after every session. During the entire show, my husband and I manically ask each other “will we know when it’s time to move to Canada? WILL WE?” So stressful.
There is absolutely no way I am watching that. I read the book long ago, and I’ve heard the show is very good and also very realistic and very currently-believable, so there is absolutely no way I am watching it.
This.
Swistle, if the book you’re reading is too tough, the Handmaid’s Tale probably is. It is SO GOOD, yet also positively HORRIFYING. There are moments where you can see some small thing that happened in a flashback (to our time now) is something that indeed politicians are talking about now, and it is scary. The show is just so, SO good though. So well done. I have exactly the same feeling as Beth while watching: will we KNOW when it’s time to flee to Canada???
I so vividly remember reading it in high school and thinking it was an interesting story but SO FAR FETCHED. And now? NOW? I can’t even watch a commercial for the series.
Just reading comments about the show is stressing me out! I read the book long ago and I can’t revisit it. I stick to delightful and funny books and shows. Brooklyn 99, Georgette Heyer novels, snappy sci fi series, etc. It’s all I can handle in the current political climate.
Right? When June & her family finally flee Boston it’s too late. They thought it would all blow over! When the husband had to sign for her bc pills, they kinda brushed it off, like, oh, how silly, they’re really doing that….? And I’m thinking “RUN TO CANADA NOW!”
I watch Handmaid’s every week and and feel sort of numb with horror and then immediately watch a few episodes of Queer Eye to remind myself there is still kindness and light in the world.
Last night’s left us positively slack-jawed. WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN?!
Years ago my in-laws had these amazing latex pillows in their guest room (not the shredded ones, solid, but sqooshy, with lots of holes in it) and eventually they gave us some as gifts. (I maybe had one time mentioned how we often thought of stealing theirs every time we slept over). Alas after that break up, it didn’t seem worth it to ship a pillow overseas. As a grown adult I could/should probably just buy a new one, but I don’t.
Octavia Butler is 100% amazing and The Parable of the Sower is an incredibly powerful book. But I would support your decision not to read the sequel or her other books, since I read them TWENTY YEARS AGO and still lay awake at night sometimes feeling panicked by their possible futures.
I read Handmaid’s Tale in college in the late 80s and it was a fascinating and far-fetched read. I cannot bring myself to reread it and/or watch the show now because it no longer seems far-fetched but rather a terrifying reality we seem to be veering towards. I also love Octavia Butler and want to support more women in sci fi but I can’t bring myself to read The Parable of the Sower right now either. I will add it to the list of things I will read someday when (hopefully) our national nightmare is over and we are out the other side into sanity.
As for pillows I hate it when one of my pillows gets old and unuseful and I have to buy a new pillow. I have an ongoing shoulder issue that makes a comfortable pillow selection into some kind of insane puzzle. I try 5 different pillows and settle on one that is sort of ok and remain vaguely irritated nearly every time. Sigh.
Have you used just a regular memory foam one? The non shredded ones? I absolutely LOVED my memory foam pillow..like, can’t sleep without it, had the same one for ten years, and brought it with me to very hotel, anywhere I slept.
And then I left it at a hotel.
And ordered a shredded memory foam one because I thought it would be the same, and the reviews were great, and I HATE it, and can’t sleep with it, and made my husband take that one and I took his regular memory foam one. Ha. Like you said, it was just too firm, and didn’t mold well. Whereas my regular memory foam one molds absolutely perfectly to whatever position I’m sleeping in.
I love love Octavia Butler. But I agree, that one is too realistic for comfort.
THOSE YELLOW STICKERS. grrr
SO HARD TO SEE. grrr
I have been on a Pillow Quest the past few years & I have found that the shredded ones soften up A LOT after some regular usage. So maybe for now it’s your prop-me-up-in-bed-while-watching-TV-or-whatever type pillow but you may end up liking it to sleep on after it softens. Mine have gone the other way and are now too soft!