It all started with Twitter.
A woman my husband happens to follow announced to the universe that she was having the best sleeps of her life. She did not put this down to warm milk at bedtime or to calming music or to the nighttime air that was wafting through her window.
She put this down to a blanket. A weighted blanket.
“We have to get a weighted blanket,” gushed the husband, who does not routinely experience what could be called the best sleeps of his life.
“What’s a weighted blanket?” I asked.
It was, he informed me, the newest homeowner must-have since the Instant Pot.
“We have an Instant Pot,” I reminded him. “And we’ve never used it.”
“That,” he continued, “is because we’re afraid of the Instant Pot! We won’t be afraid of a blanket!”
He ordered one. It arrived in two days.
It was in a big box, and it was, well, heavy.
“What weighs this thing down?” I asked the husband. “I mean, what makes it a weighted blanket?”
“I have no idea!” said the husband, who was clearly tiring of my weighted blanket queries. “It just has — I don’t know — stuff inside it!”
I was not entirely sure what he meant by “stuff”, but clearly the blanket was filled with heavy something-or-other. Not boards, certainly, because the blanket was soft, as blankets are wont to be. Perhaps obese little gremlins, which were sound asleep inside the thing.
I was puzzled.
We placed it on top of the bed — this took the two of us — admired the blanket, and waited until it was time for some shut-eye.
“OK!” announced the husband, soon after nine. “Let’s give this baby a go!”
We climbed into bed beneath the weighted blanket. I felt, well, a tad weighted down.
“When does it happen?” I asked the husband after 20 minutes. I was still wide awake.
“When does what happen?” asked the husband, who was also nowhere near dreamland.
“The best sleep of our lives,” I said.
The husband sighed and turned over, which wasn’t entirely easy.
Eventually, of course, we both drifted off.
When we awoke, we agreed that we’d slept, well, OK. It hadn’t been the best sleep, it hadn’t been the worst.
The weighted blanket, we decided, would just take a little getting used to. It’s a homeowner must-have we’ll stick with. The Instant Pot, not so much.
