This weekend my dear wife and I made a significant lifestyle choice.

You see, we have 110lbs. of dog. Two of them, split not quite evenly. Once we got them both housebroken, Sam (not to scale) and The Professor (ducks and lake not included) were allowed to sleep at the foot of our bed. Our queen-sized bed. This worked out pretty well for everybody. At the time, The Professor was full-grown at fifty pounds and Sam was still a puppy at about thirty.

Now Sam is sixty pounds and has never outgrown that puppyish tendency to sleep in piles. He’ll cheerfully sprawl directly on top of your legs. He also loves to streeeeetch out and occupy as much space as he can. If that means pushing you right the heck off the bed, fine.

This has begun to wreak havoc on our spines. The dogs seem unaffected, but Deirdra and I are walking wounded, crippled by our own canines. Unacceptable.

So this weekend, we took a chunk of our tax refund and bought ourselves a king-sized bed. We’d expected it to make our room look crowded and small but it turns out that it seems to work just fine. Of course, despite each of us saying “Oh, I’m pretty sure my frame will adjust to fit a queen or king, even if yours doesn’t.” Neither will. It doesn’t matter, though. Now there’s room for both of us and both dogs. There’s even room left over for the cats, which seems to make them very happy.

At this point, you’re probably thinking “If it were ME I’d just kick those dogs to the floor. No way would they sleep on the bed with us.” That’s what everybody else has said. That’s fine, I suppose, if you’re a cold and heartless robotronic Vulcan animal-hater with no feelings who gets a charge out of kicking puppies. You evil bastard. How do you live with yourself?