Our mattress of 16 years is dead. Clinically it's been dead for a few years and my husband didn't notice....no comment. Frankly, I didn't realize it either because until recently I slept in another room. I'm a lousy sleeper and my husband is a thunderous, earth quaking snorer. His repertoire of snoring sounds is endless. In desperation, I left our room in 2008. It was a wonderful quiet and restful period in my life.
Things changed. A recent event (my niece moved into "my" room) coupled with the acquisition of a C-Pap machine, invalidated my reasons for sleeping alone. I had to return to our room. Theoretically there should have been no more problems. But there were.
Sleeping next to someone with a breathing apparatus stuck to his face is like being Mrs. Darth Vader. His machine is sporadically quiet with brief periods of leaking air (think of the sound a Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon would make if you punctured it),. The leaky balloon sound is often followed by a whine and a hissing period. Sometimes there is faint gurgling. And on rare occasions, I can detect a faint but familiar snore under the noise.On the best night I even experience a cool breeze eminating from his mask. Kicking someone with a C-PAP attached to his face doesn't work. It just wakes him up and pisses him off. Lying awake nights listening to the sound show gave me plenty of time to think about my surroundings. There is too much light in the room. The blankets are too heavy and the mattress is awful. There is a valley between us...a place where - if we roll too close to the middle - we tumble in. Plus the mattress creaks.
Time to dig deep into our pocket and replace the mattress. My husband says the new mattress will be for my sake because he is perfectly fine with the old one. Umm hmmm.
This past Saturday we took a short drive to the Grand Opening Sale at a local mattress store. A big place with a showroom full of color coded mattresses with staggering price tags. Things have changed in 16 years. When we bought the dead mattress you could buy a regular mattress or a plush mattress. Now you can still get those but are also forced to consider pillow tops, gel, memory foam, or combinations of these choices.
Our salesperson - who is probably still sleeping on her original crib mattress- remained calm and composed as I bounced from bed to bed asking dumber and dumber questions. I had to beg my husband to lie down and try a few. He was still insisting that this mattress was for me and that anything I wanted was fine. I knew better and proved it to him by zeroing in on the mushiest pillow top I could find on short notice. "Mmmmmm- this is yummy," I teased. He stared at me for awhile and said, "Then get it." "NO! You have to lie down." He did. He hated it. "Way too soft," he commented. "AHA! You do care. I knew it!" He got in the game.
We played the Goldilocks game for about fifteen minutes. Too soft, too hard, just right. The mattress we declared to be the "best compromise" was locally made. This concerned me. Not sure why. "How long is the guarantee?" I asked. "Fifteen years," the salesperson replied. "I guess that's good enough," I said. In 15 years I'll be 80. My husband and I looked at each other and shook our heads. I said what we were both thinking. "It's probably the last mattress we'll ever buy." I think nursing homes provide adjustable beds.
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Friday, January 11, 2013
Ice Floes
This week I learned that I am too old to teach English as a second language in a foreign country. All along I've been led to believe that in many countries elders are respected. Apparently that is not quite true...According to a company that trains and helps place people wishing to teach overseas, there is a "mandatory retirement age" over which no one is allowed to work. I find this appalling on so many levels. I've got the brains, the experience and, God knows, I've got the time. A foreign-based adventure would be a great final re-invention. Alas, this is not to be. I now wonder if there are some areas of the world where elders are still placed on a ice floe and sent to their eventual demise. Heck - with global warming a person could expect to drown in hours. Don't order my ice floe just yet.....
Sunday, January 6, 2013
Initiation
Day One of 65. Strangely, today began with breakfast in bed. I don't like breakfast and it's not easy to eat in bed but I appreciated the effort. Do they think I'm too feeble to walk downstairs?
There are three presents on the bed. A hoodie...that ubiquitous article of clothing that old folks aren't supposed to wear.(I read the fashion magazines). Hoodies for oldsters are verbotten along with leggings, high boots, sparkly shirts, sparkly eye shadow and butt grazing skirts. I pay no attention to five of these rules. As for the sixth - it's too damn cold in Wisconsin. There is also a gold necklace in the shape of a dachshund - honoring my dogs both dead and alive. And there are chocolate covered cherries. My downfall - dietetically speaking. I don't usually get a second box of cherries but this was a replacement gift since all my family and their significant others ate mine at Christmas. I am keeping these in my bedroom. They're great after sex and given the paucity of sex in my life the box should last two or three years.
Birthdays are a good reason to be active on Facebook. There are many reasons to downplay the role of Facebook in a person's life. Wasting time there creates a fake social group of people whom I mostly don't remember and whose political views piss me off. HOWEVER - Facebook is great on your birthday. Thirty-some people - many of whom I haven't seen in over 46 years - sent me birthday greetings. If I didn't have this connection there would have been less than a dozen well-wishers. Facebook birthday messages fill the gap left after my Dad died . He could always be counted on to forget my birthday and then suddenly recall having forgotten it some weeks later. "I thought it was the 16th!" he would say. "No Dad, it's the 6th. The twelfth day of Christmas. the epiphany." He would apologize again and then repeat the incident each year...never getting it right. He'd remember the 6 part so the call would always come on the 16th or the 26th. In the last two years of his life he never remembered at all. That's okay cause my dearest friend can't remember her daughters' birthdays...and I cannot ever remember hers.
We had dinner reservations at two restaurants because I couldn't make up my mind. In the end we cancelled both cause I wanted takeout fajitas from a restaurant within walking distance of our house. We didn't
walk. I sent my husband. He didn't walk either. I topped these off with a hunk of flourless chocolate cake. I wonder what's in a flourless cake...
Oh - I also received an email from Medicare reminding me that I hadn't yet had an annual exam, a pap smear or a colonoscopy this year. How do they know this? And since we're only six days into the year - when was I supposed to get this done? And why do they care?
I also went shopping. I bought a new toilet seat and a loaf of whole wheat bread. Not at the same place - although it would be nice if Home Depot sold food because it would save me a lot of time.
There are three presents on the bed. A hoodie...that ubiquitous article of clothing that old folks aren't supposed to wear.(I read the fashion magazines). Hoodies for oldsters are verbotten along with leggings, high boots, sparkly shirts, sparkly eye shadow and butt grazing skirts. I pay no attention to five of these rules. As for the sixth - it's too damn cold in Wisconsin. There is also a gold necklace in the shape of a dachshund - honoring my dogs both dead and alive. And there are chocolate covered cherries. My downfall - dietetically speaking. I don't usually get a second box of cherries but this was a replacement gift since all my family and their significant others ate mine at Christmas. I am keeping these in my bedroom. They're great after sex and given the paucity of sex in my life the box should last two or three years.
Birthdays are a good reason to be active on Facebook. There are many reasons to downplay the role of Facebook in a person's life. Wasting time there creates a fake social group of people whom I mostly don't remember and whose political views piss me off. HOWEVER - Facebook is great on your birthday. Thirty-some people - many of whom I haven't seen in over 46 years - sent me birthday greetings. If I didn't have this connection there would have been less than a dozen well-wishers. Facebook birthday messages fill the gap left after my Dad died . He could always be counted on to forget my birthday and then suddenly recall having forgotten it some weeks later. "I thought it was the 16th!" he would say. "No Dad, it's the 6th. The twelfth day of Christmas. the epiphany." He would apologize again and then repeat the incident each year...never getting it right. He'd remember the 6 part so the call would always come on the 16th or the 26th. In the last two years of his life he never remembered at all. That's okay cause my dearest friend can't remember her daughters' birthdays...and I cannot ever remember hers.
We had dinner reservations at two restaurants because I couldn't make up my mind. In the end we cancelled both cause I wanted takeout fajitas from a restaurant within walking distance of our house. We didn't
walk. I sent my husband. He didn't walk either. I topped these off with a hunk of flourless chocolate cake. I wonder what's in a flourless cake...
Oh - I also received an email from Medicare reminding me that I hadn't yet had an annual exam, a pap smear or a colonoscopy this year. How do they know this? And since we're only six days into the year - when was I supposed to get this done? And why do they care?
I also went shopping. I bought a new toilet seat and a loaf of whole wheat bread. Not at the same place - although it would be nice if Home Depot sold food because it would save me a lot of time.
Saturday, January 5, 2013
Crossing over...looking back
In exactly five minutes I am officially an old person. I don't feel it. I don't look it. I sure as hell don't act it. But "I'm IT!"
In the sixty-five years I've been on the earth I have learned a lot - most of it useless. But not all. Here are a few insights I can pass along.
1. Never be a passenger on a bus full of church members, or church choir members, or church members going on a pilgrimage. Those buses always seem to roll over a cliff killing everyone inside. I've never ridden on a church bus - that's why I'm still alive.
2.There are no bad foods. The only really bad foods are the ones you've stuffed in the back of your fridge and forgotren about. This would include, but would not be limited to, cheese that is hard and covered with white or green fuzz. A dimpled, egg shaped marble that began its life as a lemon. And anything in Gladware or Ziploc plastic storage containers that hasn't been opened in months and is unrecognizable and pungent. All of the research I've read concludes that the "bad foods" (think "cheesy potatoes") in congregate take a few months at best off your life. This might mean the difference between living to 85 or 85.4. You decide: Cheesy potatoes or four more months of tapioca.
3. Motherhood is not a Gerber commercial. Children are not always a blessing. I've tried to pass this little nugget on to nieces and nephews - I hope I live long enough to hear them say "I wish I'd listened to you..."
4. Limit time with perpetually happy people. They'll drag you down. You can't be them. (All that happiness could might justify the purchase of an assault rifle just to shut them up.)You could , however, find out what pills they are taking and what doctor is handing them out. Studies have demonstrated that there are happy positive genes and there are negative genes. I come from a family of doom spreaders. The grass is brown on both sides of the fence. But, on a more cheerful note, you don't have to mow dead grass.
5. Sex with the same person year after year is boring. There I've said it. There's a point where you know every move so well you could plot it on a Google Map.
That's enough- I've now been sixty-five for 37 minutes. WTF? Time to go to bed and gaze over at my husband in his Darth Vader CPAP mask, watching him sleep while I listen to the whining, wheezing and hissing of the machine that keeps sleep apnea from killing him. The golden years have begun.
In the sixty-five years I've been on the earth I have learned a lot - most of it useless. But not all. Here are a few insights I can pass along.
1. Never be a passenger on a bus full of church members, or church choir members, or church members going on a pilgrimage. Those buses always seem to roll over a cliff killing everyone inside. I've never ridden on a church bus - that's why I'm still alive.
2.There are no bad foods. The only really bad foods are the ones you've stuffed in the back of your fridge and forgotren about. This would include, but would not be limited to, cheese that is hard and covered with white or green fuzz. A dimpled, egg shaped marble that began its life as a lemon. And anything in Gladware or Ziploc plastic storage containers that hasn't been opened in months and is unrecognizable and pungent. All of the research I've read concludes that the "bad foods" (think "cheesy potatoes") in congregate take a few months at best off your life. This might mean the difference between living to 85 or 85.4. You decide: Cheesy potatoes or four more months of tapioca.
3. Motherhood is not a Gerber commercial. Children are not always a blessing. I've tried to pass this little nugget on to nieces and nephews - I hope I live long enough to hear them say "I wish I'd listened to you..."
4. Limit time with perpetually happy people. They'll drag you down. You can't be them. (All that happiness could might justify the purchase of an assault rifle just to shut them up.)You could , however, find out what pills they are taking and what doctor is handing them out. Studies have demonstrated that there are happy positive genes and there are negative genes. I come from a family of doom spreaders. The grass is brown on both sides of the fence. But, on a more cheerful note, you don't have to mow dead grass.
5. Sex with the same person year after year is boring. There I've said it. There's a point where you know every move so well you could plot it on a Google Map.
That's enough- I've now been sixty-five for 37 minutes. WTF? Time to go to bed and gaze over at my husband in his Darth Vader CPAP mask, watching him sleep while I listen to the whining, wheezing and hissing of the machine that keeps sleep apnea from killing him. The golden years have begun.
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