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.
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