The marital bed

Ohhh…no no no…not what you’re thinking. Though…I will say that a few years ago I wrote an amusing little post on the perils of getting a little “adult” time with small kids in the house. (Note: if you wish to believe that I placed two orders to the stork and nothing more, I recommend skipping that link. Extended family members, old flames, colleagues…this means you. Probably should skip all this as well.) That event should have prepared us, or at least hardened us (giggity), for the future. Sadly, it did not. Our lives today…well… Our current home is less than half the size of our former house in Colorado. There is not a lot of distance from one room to another. Strike one. We have a night owl son who flirts with chronic insomnia. And thumps into the bathroom when we think he’s asleep. And then, more often than not, opens the door to our room to make some sort of comment (at least now we have a lock on our door, didn’t when we moved in). Strike two. And with the never-ending chaos around here, there’s not a lot of down time. Strike three. All those strikes, it’s like a Cubs game around here, except no one is getting screwed. Ahem.

That was one hell of an aside. The marital bed to which I’m actually referring is the physical mattress.

Tom and I have have been married for 16 years. We are on our third mattress. (This post really isn’t getting out of the gutter, is it?) The first one wore out in the first year (oh my God, I swear, this post is about the mattress only!), we called in the warranty, and lo we had a new mattress. That one lasted a little longer, maybe another six or so years (hand to God we have bad luck with mattresses) before we caved and just bought a new one. That’s the one we’re on now, and it’s around 8 years old. I only know that because we bought it and A’s Big Boy Bed at the same time when J was born.

I thought it was just me. Random insomnia, loudly cracking my collarbone first thing in the morning (something that should not make that horrible knuckle-popping sound), stiff neck/headache/tired/grumpy. I just figured it was more of “I need to take better care of myself” and “So help me, I’m going to sell a kidney for a massage and yoga classes,” but no! ‘Twas not just me. Tom was in New York the better part of last week, slept great, and felt like a million bucks (in NYC, that’s actually just a buck twenty). Once home he could barely hobble out of bed. Not just me!

We need a new mattress.

I hate mattress shopping. Hate.It. How in hell am I supposed to pick my sleep date for the next umpteen years by throwing myself onto random mattresses in a store? How? It’s like speed dating…not that I’d actually know, but you get the idea. I need blankets and pillows and no lights and to not be wearing clothes a belt and to be asleep. The true test is how I feel after 8 hours knocked out cold, for several weeks in a row. Five minutes on a mattress in an overly lit showroom is like meeting someone on park bench and deciding to get married that afternoon. Ain’t a good plan.

So mattress shopping is in our future. Far, far in the future. So far in the future that it’s barely a blip on the radar. Hopefully by the time we get to that point mattress shopping will have evolved and we’ll have better luck finding a more permanent sleep partner.

I’m simply looking for a long-term sleeping relationship here. One that doesn’t hurt, is supportive (yet yielding), and promises hours of pleasure restful slumber. That shouldn’t be too much to ask.