Sleep Like the Dead
The last time we bought a new mattress was during the Norman Invasion. We didn’t have many choices back then, it was straw or straw as I recall. So when I told Steve last week that I believed that I was waking up every morning sore and achy was not because a squirrel was beating me up at night, but because we might need a new mattress, he was not happy. The word “new” always means that there is shopping involved and whenever shopping is involved Steve is not.
Steve and I have an interesting history when it comes to major purchases. We bought our house in a couple of weeks having chosen not only the town we wanted to live in but the school district, (our realtor told us that she considered herself lucky that we hadn’t narrowed it down to one street!) our cars usually take us a week and lately, if something can be ordered online and delivered to our door, we don’t even leave the house. This is nirvana for Steve.
But a mattress is tricky. All the web sites say that it’s difficult to make equitable comparisons between mattresses since every brand has its own styles, and every store its own brands. Since the important stuff is pretty much hidden, purchasing a mattress is akin to buying the proverbial pig in a poke.
The first stop on our mattress hunt was the store where we had bought mom’s bed. She was happy with it so we figured we had a chance of success. The salespeople wore white lab coats perhaps in the hope that you’d defer to them as you would your doctor. Either that or they were going for a lab tech image, but why I would buy a mattress from someone who does research on small animals puzzles me. I kept thinking that at any moment they would be asking me for a blood sample.
Most of the shoppers had brought their extended family--kids, uncles, cousins, nephews, to give them advice. They were all lying down pretending to sleep, bouncing, arguing, and offering their opinions. The two of us felt a bit bereft but we were shortly assigned a “sleep technician”, who after asking our price range, promptly steered us to a mattress that was at least $500 more than the figure we had named.
We tried “sleeping” on a few mattresses like Goldilocks but I was too self-conscious to find anything that felt just right. Lying down in a busy store dressed in a coat and boots was not the optimum experience for figuring out my comfort zone. I asked Shatz to snore a bit to create our usual sleeping ambiance but he refused.
The couple next to us was having some serious comfort disagreements. The wife said that she loved that the mattress was firm while the husband said it felt like he was lying on cement. She sighed that the two of them would never agree on a mattress. I suggested that they investigate those sleep number gadgets where everyone gets to choose their mattress firmness. She told me that her parents had one of those and hated it. Her mom was tired of looking up at her dad at night. It turns out that the firmer you like it, the higher your side of the bed grows--like blowing up a balloon.
Steve and I discussed a memory foam mattress but I was hesitant. Our friends, Nancy and Harry, bought one a few years ago. She told me that after sleeping on it for one night they called to have it removed. “It was awful!” she said. “I felt like I was sinking deeper and deeper into the bed and that I would never get out!”
I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be tapped in my bed like quicksand, especially if I wanted to get up during the night. The idea of having to wake Steve so that he could push me out didn’t exactly appeal to me. This is one old lady who doesn’t relish having to fight her bed in addition to gravity just to go to the bathroom.
According to a web site Shatz found called, Sleep Like the Dead, memory foams have disadvantages. One of them is off-gassing. This is when your bed smells like Old Faithful due to the gas in the materials. I won’t even comment on that.
We also discovered that memory foams tend to sleep hot meaning your mattress builds up heat as you sleep. This last was confirmed by a friend who told me that during the summer she felt like she was sleeping in an oven. She kept dreaming that she had died and gone to hell.
But it was the column titled, “Good for Sex?” (which has nothing to do with sleeping hot) that convinced me. I quote, “What complaints there are tend to involve models with memory foam; See Mattresses and Sex, for more info.” I decided not to, since the visuals dancing in my head were already disturbing enough!
This week-end we’re off for another try. This time I’m going in my pajamas and bringing the dog. I’ll throw him on one of the memory foams to see if he can get out. If he can’t we’ll definitely cross it off our list. I have enough stress in my life without worrying if my mattress is gong to eat me.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Snowshoeing in the Streets
Snowshoeing in the Streets
What a day! The sun is out, no clouds, no wind, 50 degrees. And it’s February. This is my idea of a winter that I can live with. For years I’ve said to anyone who will listen, “I wouldn’t mind the winter so much if there was no snow and the temperature stayed in the fifties.” A pipe dream for Massachusetts, but this year it’s a pipe dream come true. This morning even though I shivered at the train station, I knew that on my way home I would no longer need my scarf, but my sunglasses instead.
Today has been an easy day. I’ve accomplished everything on my to-do list and a few people canceled their appointments, leaving me breathing room. The community center office upstairs is quiet and no one has rushed into my office with a crisis.
Yet for some reason the date seems familiar. The Super Bowl is over, Valentine’s Day isn’t here yet, it isn’t anybody’s birthday that I can think of so why does this date refuse to leave the edges of my mind? And then on the internet I see a small story at the bottom about the blizzard of ’78.
The small blurb informs me that 34 years ago today the heavens dropped twenty-seven inches of snow on Boston and the rest of New England. On a beautiful day like this it’s hard to imagine being buried in over two feet of snow. But we were. Thirty-four years ago I couldn’t push open our front door and could barely see out of our second story apartment window. I still remember the excitement of having work canceled, classes canceled, usual life canceled because of a relentless snowfall that showed no inclination of stopping anytime soon.
After listening to governor Michael Dukakis reassure us that even in this state of emergency we would all be fine if we just stayed off the roads, we headed across the way to a state-of-emergency party that had just been called by a neighbor that we had never met but were about to.
Today old-lady-me would be staring nervously out of the window, checking to see if we were stocked up on batteries, candles and food and praying to the electricity gods to stay put, stay on. I would imagine freezing to death on the couch, or starving to death in the kitchen or…you get the picture. Thirty-four years ago I simply gazed out dreamily, happy to be with Steve, never even imagining that this would be anything but some fantastic experience that we would enjoy together.
I sit here in my office knowing that it all happened to me but feeling like it’s a fairy tale that someone has told me that I’m only just remembering. That seems to be happening more and more lately—feeling that the events of my past life are only fairy stories and not my history. Most are vague and faded like the photographs on my wall that I’m having restored. Maybe I can ask the camera store if they can work on my memories as well.
I can clearly see us tramping off for groceries to the nearest STAR Market, but can barely remember what else we did with our days. And as our days turned into a week, while the plows worked to unearth us from our snow castles, I remember feeling bored but not bored enough to want to return to real life. It was too much fun staying home playing with friends, building snowmen, even digging each other’s cars out from under mountains.
Even as the stories began drifting in about people being stranded, people unable to get home, people with no power for days, people dying in the snow banks, we somehow never worried that any of that would happen to us. We were too young to think that this would be something other than a lark. How I miss that girl! During our latest Halloween snowstorm I spent the entire day worrying about the really important things in life like, how would I ever be able to go to work unless I dried my hair and how could I dry my hair without a hairdryer?
Is this what growing older is about? A double whammy of losing your memories and fearing life? In ’78 I saw people snowshoeing on the roads and wanted to rush out and join them. Now I gaze out of the window and feel old and too likely to break a leg if I dared try.
During snowstorms I no longer party or recall past parties, instead I watch our trees and wonder which one will break and land on the roof. I watch the driveway and worry about when the plow guy will come. I watch the electric lines and will them to stay up. I watch and worry and miss seeing what is right in front of my eyes—a life that should be lived in sharp Crayola hues and not worried to death.
Today, on this sunshine filled day, I have nothing to worry about. I will get up in a few minutes and enjoy my walk to the station in balmy February weather. But there is snow forecast for Saturday. Maybe I should go out and get myself some snowshoes before I remember to be afraid. And then I should go out and find some new memories.
What a day! The sun is out, no clouds, no wind, 50 degrees. And it’s February. This is my idea of a winter that I can live with. For years I’ve said to anyone who will listen, “I wouldn’t mind the winter so much if there was no snow and the temperature stayed in the fifties.” A pipe dream for Massachusetts, but this year it’s a pipe dream come true. This morning even though I shivered at the train station, I knew that on my way home I would no longer need my scarf, but my sunglasses instead.
Today has been an easy day. I’ve accomplished everything on my to-do list and a few people canceled their appointments, leaving me breathing room. The community center office upstairs is quiet and no one has rushed into my office with a crisis.
Yet for some reason the date seems familiar. The Super Bowl is over, Valentine’s Day isn’t here yet, it isn’t anybody’s birthday that I can think of so why does this date refuse to leave the edges of my mind? And then on the internet I see a small story at the bottom about the blizzard of ’78.
The small blurb informs me that 34 years ago today the heavens dropped twenty-seven inches of snow on Boston and the rest of New England. On a beautiful day like this it’s hard to imagine being buried in over two feet of snow. But we were. Thirty-four years ago I couldn’t push open our front door and could barely see out of our second story apartment window. I still remember the excitement of having work canceled, classes canceled, usual life canceled because of a relentless snowfall that showed no inclination of stopping anytime soon.
After listening to governor Michael Dukakis reassure us that even in this state of emergency we would all be fine if we just stayed off the roads, we headed across the way to a state-of-emergency party that had just been called by a neighbor that we had never met but were about to.
Today old-lady-me would be staring nervously out of the window, checking to see if we were stocked up on batteries, candles and food and praying to the electricity gods to stay put, stay on. I would imagine freezing to death on the couch, or starving to death in the kitchen or…you get the picture. Thirty-four years ago I simply gazed out dreamily, happy to be with Steve, never even imagining that this would be anything but some fantastic experience that we would enjoy together.
I sit here in my office knowing that it all happened to me but feeling like it’s a fairy tale that someone has told me that I’m only just remembering. That seems to be happening more and more lately—feeling that the events of my past life are only fairy stories and not my history. Most are vague and faded like the photographs on my wall that I’m having restored. Maybe I can ask the camera store if they can work on my memories as well.
I can clearly see us tramping off for groceries to the nearest STAR Market, but can barely remember what else we did with our days. And as our days turned into a week, while the plows worked to unearth us from our snow castles, I remember feeling bored but not bored enough to want to return to real life. It was too much fun staying home playing with friends, building snowmen, even digging each other’s cars out from under mountains.
Even as the stories began drifting in about people being stranded, people unable to get home, people with no power for days, people dying in the snow banks, we somehow never worried that any of that would happen to us. We were too young to think that this would be something other than a lark. How I miss that girl! During our latest Halloween snowstorm I spent the entire day worrying about the really important things in life like, how would I ever be able to go to work unless I dried my hair and how could I dry my hair without a hairdryer?
Is this what growing older is about? A double whammy of losing your memories and fearing life? In ’78 I saw people snowshoeing on the roads and wanted to rush out and join them. Now I gaze out of the window and feel old and too likely to break a leg if I dared try.
During snowstorms I no longer party or recall past parties, instead I watch our trees and wonder which one will break and land on the roof. I watch the driveway and worry about when the plow guy will come. I watch the electric lines and will them to stay up. I watch and worry and miss seeing what is right in front of my eyes—a life that should be lived in sharp Crayola hues and not worried to death.
Today, on this sunshine filled day, I have nothing to worry about. I will get up in a few minutes and enjoy my walk to the station in balmy February weather. But there is snow forecast for Saturday. Maybe I should go out and get myself some snowshoes before I remember to be afraid. And then I should go out and find some new memories.
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