Aw, Sheet.

Last week was hectic for me, filled with a gala, brunch with friends, lovingly stalking Ali and her crew, and of course, a spirited fight with a pervert con man-cab driver. I’d write about it all, but, well, it’s pretty self-explanatory. What I REALLY need to talk about are my damn sheets.

And really, you know what seems like a good idea? Fleece sheets. I mean, who doesn’t love fleece? It’s soft! It’s cuddly! And last, but certainly not least, it’s fleecy! It seems perfect for bedtime! J and I had gotten a fleece sheet set (TONGUE TWISTER!) a while back, and given the past (particularly chilly) few days, we decided to bust them out the other night.

This would prove to be the biggest mistake of our lives. Well, this week, anyway.

Fleece sheets, you see, are a good idea in theory only, much like low-fat cheese, balloon-related hoaxes, and that one time I had four (4) tequila shots at a bar and decided to go to visit the bathroom in said bar, located down a steep flight of Deathly Bruise-Inducing Steps, while wearing stiletto boots. Ah, college.

But back to our sheets, and with it, the collective idiocy of me and my husband:

By way of background, our apartment building is full of a particularly ornery breed of Crotchety Elderly Folk. This carries with it many implications, but chief among them for this tale, that our building is kept at the approximate temperature of hell for most of the year, so as to quell their whining. (At least about the cold.) Like the morons that we are, we momentarily forgot about this, and put the fleece sheets on our bed. I felt a vague sense of dread, but shook it off, because hooray! New sheets!

Later that night, I donned a pair of velour pants and a tank, and hopped into bed. Somewhere around 1 a.m., I woke up, feeling trapped. Or perhaps, more accurately, ACTUALLY TRAPPED. NOT UNLIKE A DOLPHIN IN A TUNA NET. Because as it turns out, velour and fleece? LIKE VELCRO. Half asleep, I woke J to assist me by sort of…kicking in his general vicinity with my bound legs. “These pillowcases!” he moaned. “There is no cool spot!” I agreed as enthusiastically as one can while still basically in REM sleep, and he helped to free me from my not-so-metaphorical shackles. We fell back asleep, but I then woke up an hour later, sweaty and uncomfortable. The sheets were cooking me alive. As I tossed around, unsuccessfully trying to find a comfortable place, J woke up and whispered, “It is like sleeping on a bear. Not a rug, M. A living, hibernating bear.” Which then devolved into an impromptu game of "What Else Is It Like Sleeping On?" featuring entries such as "Tony Manero's leisure suit, apres disco," "one of Bill Belichik's grody sweatshirts," "Barry Gibb's chest hair," and "OH MY HELL, IS IT REALLY 2:27 A.M.? WHAT THE HELL ARE WE DOING?!"

Somehow we made it through the night, and this is the part where you think I tell you all about how we immediately changed the sheets in the morning, right? Because it should be a foregone conclusion? Yeah, well, due to a combination of laziness, stupidity, and a secret but earnest desire to get a “full sheet wearing” (my ludicrous concept and phrase, thank you) out of the damned things, we’re still living with them, days later.

It is, at this point, a war of attrition.

The sheets remain, but we’ve abandoned the pillows entirely, choosing instead to rest our heads on the (cotton) pillow shams. Each night, J kicks the top sheet so far down that it’s basically on the floor, and I kind of wrap myself in the bedspread, eggroll-like. I don’t know what we’re hoping for...that the sheets disintegrate from the combined power of our hatred for them? That they’ll magically replace themselves? That we’ll spontaneously enter a new Ice Age tomorrow, and there we’ll sit, wrapped smugly in our aggressively warm bedding? Whatever it is, I hope to god it happens soon, because the end of the "full sheet wearing" cannot come soon enough.