Bob read an article on feng shui the other day, and told me that it was a bad idea to have mirrors in the bedroom. He thought that might be why he'd been having trouble sleeping. I thought it might have more to do with too many Diet Pepsi's in the evening, myself. So I basically laughed at him, but said I'd like to hear exactly what it said, so he looked for the article again.
It was apparently an article about feng shui, bedrooms, and romance; as I recall, it seemed like the advice was contradictory -- it said that if you were a single person, and sleep alone, that a mirror would reflect back that "singleness," and prevent you from finding a partner, but if you were married, or otherwise slept with someone, that a mirror would attract a third party into the relationship and cause problems in the marriage.
But then somehow Bob started talking about mirrors sucking the life force out of you or something, so I said, well, do whatever you want to do, if you want to cover up the mirrors, go ahead. So he went to the linen closet and got a sheet and covered up my big round vanity mirror.
I was already in bed, and he was going to stay up awhile, but as he started to close the bedroom door -- we've been closing it most of the way, with a doorstop there so it can't close completely (non-cat containment issue) -- he realized that there was a mirror on the back of the door, and one that wouldn't be as easy to cover up as the vanity mirror.
So he went and got a hanger that we use to hang an ironing board on, put that on the door, then got another sheet and draped that over the mirror. I said, "Can I go to sleep now?" and he said that yes, his work was done.
That was, I think, Wednesday night. On Thursday morning I asked him how he slept now that his soul wasn't being sucked out overnight, and he said he thought he slept better, maybe. But this morning he said he didn't sleep very well last night (we left the mirrors covered up), so maybe that wasn't it. I was telling Anna about the feng shui experiment yesterday at work and it sounded even funnier recounting it out loud. He's pretty hilarious sometimes.
Feng shui had come up earlier in the week when I was trying to explain how odd it feels to me when I move offices at work, and end up facing a different direction. I said, "It's like my feng shui is all messed up." I know that isn't really an accurate term, but it's sort of like the adjustment that has to be made when the time changes -- everything just feels kind of "off." It's been a week now, and everything seems to feel okay now, but earlier in the week I felt kind of tense and stressed out.
Like I said, it seems to be a matter, for me, of having my desk face a different direction. It just takes me awhile to get used to it. I think before I was facing north, and now I'm facing west. I don't think there's any significance to the direction, I think it's just that it's different.
P.S.: I did a tiny bit of research, and found this:
Mirrors, now this is another misunderstood topic as again many homes we visit have all the mirrors covered in the bedroom. It is only a problem if the mirror faces your bed and you can see your face and upper body in the reflection. If the mirror looks sideways onto your bed it is not a problem, why are mirrors in bedrooms considered bad? Two schools of thought, the first belief is when you sleep at night your soul is supposed to leave your body and when it leaves the first thing it sees is a reflection of itself and gets startled and this is what causes nightmares and a restless sleep. The second is when you sleep your body recharges itself with fresh Ch'i and the negative Ch'i leaves your body, if there is a mirror facing you the negative Ch'i cannot leave you. This does not just apply to mirrors, anything reflective like a photo, painting, computer screen or metal surface. If you cannot move the mirror place a cloth over it when you sleep.
So maybe it's not so crazy after all.