Just So You Know

And in this corner....

I have a Tempur-pedic mattress. You know the advertisements, “made of space age material” and they have the wine glass that doesn’t move when the girl in a shorty nightgown jumps on the bed. Now before you think I fell for advertising hype, let me explain a few things about my life. I’m married to a man who has been mistaken for Peter Jackson (before Jackson lost weight) on more than one occasion. My last traditional spring mattress lasted 3 years before it looked like that kitchen gadget that goes next to the stove in which you to rest spoons. Turning it didn’t work, it just broke down the springs on both sides. Let’s not even get into the back pain. DH has a congenital back problem that the doctors describe as “Pretend your spine is a sturdy ladder, now put that ladder on a bowling ball.” Needless to say, a good mattress is a necessity. So we went mattress shopping. First, DH spent a month researching things on the internet, by telephone and in print. Then he found all the shops in town and went and checked them out. Finally, he took me with him to the shops that had the best prices. I wasn’t that thrilled with the thought of a traditional mattress that we would have to replace in another 3 years. So we checked out some of the specialty shops.
It’s amazing how someone dressed like a laborer with long hair can’t get taken seriously by sales people. Did I mention that in the morning DH had been doing remodeling on some rental houses we’re selling and then going mattress shopping in the afternoon? Anyway, the Tempur-pedic people didn’t try to run him off the premises so they had an advantage. So after checking out the bed and prices, he called me to come try the mattress and see the shop. I got there and the salesman showed us several models. We decided on a king. Smart sales person then suggested that we try several different models of pillows. I ended up loving one that reminds me of the wood block described in Memoirs of a Geisha (the book not the movie). It was so comfortable that while DH and the salesperson were haggling, I fell asleep.
Fast forward to winter…
No one bothered to tell us that the Tempur-pedic material becomes rock hard in the cold. If you “flop” back onto the mattress, you may crack your skull. I’ve learned, however, that if you crawl onto the stone cold rigid surface, body heat will warm the mattress and you will sink in beautifully. Think about that a second, the mattress molds around you and is a perfect fit to your body. But if you’re like me, you came to bed to read, do crosswords, logic puzzles, or sudoku puzzles before going to sleep. You crawl into bed and make yourself comfortable for the activity that you’re doing. The bed molds around the position that you are in and when you’re ready to sleep, you move to get into your favorite sleep position and discover that the mold you set is not the one you sleep in. It takes a while for the mattress to shift the mold and while it’s doing so, it never fails that there is a small spike of cold mattress poking into my back.
But in the morning, the bed is warm and soft, the blankets cozy and the flannel, which attracts beagle hair quite well, is comforting. The beagle is usually at my feet, either under the blankets and on top of the sheet or right at my feet depending on how he burrowed in the night. And this brings us to the point of this entry… This morning, the mattress won, I didn’t get up and exercise.

posted by Shondratasha @ 14:00