Square State Human: Mattress Protectors

 

     I think there is a short series here, analyzing why a show became an obsession for me for six months. I tried watching something else after binging the entire show, but couldn't. Every time I sat down, or worked out, or laid down to go to bed, "Netflix, Schitt's Creek" is what I said. Then the connections start and I am able to relax.

     The episode when David wets the bed, as a thirty year old man nervous about his wedding, is today's topic. Patrick covers the matterss with a mattress protector and David insists it go away. I have a mattress protector because I have animals. Matresses are expensive, and I thought it was pretty much common practice, even if you weren't a pet owner. People eat and drink in bed as well as have sex, which if you're doing it right produces body fluids that could stain a mattress. There's the whole menstration thang and many women don't wear tampons, but pads that can leak, also your tampon can fail. Even men know that, they've seen the commercials. Or they've had females in their bed. 

    I am in a constant state of washing laundry due to the animals. It is not always because they pee. The elderly rescuse dog who we think was never house broken in the first place, is too stubby to get onto the bed, so he focuses on the corner on the floor. The other dog, who is some kind of Pug/Chihuahua/Jack Russell mix only refuses to go outside if it's cold, and is smart enough to not pee where he sleeps. Besides, he has been dubbed "The Mad Pooper" on cold days, not "The Mad Peer". No, I'm constantly doing laundry because the animals shed. As much as I love them, and the cats bathe themselves, and we groom and brush and spray, the bed still smells like dog at the end of the week. The mattress protector is slippery, so my cheaper sheets are not snug on the edges, so in the middle of the night, I'll roll over and get plastic protector in my face instead of jersey sheet. The plastic gets cat fur on it and needs to be cleaned as well.

   And that is Part One of how Schitt's Creek kept me sane this last year. Every single episode was human, and had something in it I could relate to, and sent me into my own mind clattering around with a purpose: plastic mattress protectors this time. This is a much safer way to ping around my brain, at least there is a topic I am searching to connect to. In general, being removed from both theatre and students, believing I was being given this time to write but I could not write, I just wanted to sleep, was dangerous for my psyche. Now I realize, for the same reason that I clung to Hedwig and the Angry Inch for two horrible, bullied, years, I held on to Schitt's Creek. At least there were themes and plots that I could connect to.