To The Mattresses!

When we got our first dog, our intention was to be good dog owners. You know, the kind who keeps very clear lines between the dog members of the house and the human members of the house. The kind who put the dog in the crate in the laundry room at night for sleeping time and never, ever let it sleep on the bed. I believe those intentions lasted about two nights, when the fwip fwip fwip of her scratching at the crate followed by piteous whining made me feel about 0.5 cm tall. And soon she was in a laundry basket at the foot of our bed. And when she was big enough to manage, she jumped up on the bed, settled in between us with her head sharing my pillow. And then proceeded to push me one way and Tim the other as she stretched for more room so she could turn perpendicular and sleep that way.

Shortly after this, we bought our first king size mattress...because there really does need to be room for the people on the bed with the dog. That was our line in the sand.

12 years later, the dog is too arthritic to jump onto the bed anymore, but she'll stay if we put her there, or she'll happily snuggle on a big pillow at the side of the bed. And the mattress? Well, it's well and truly broken in - so it sleeps a bit like a hammock, no matter how you flip or rotate it. Basically, it has exceeded its useful life.

Once you have a king, there is no going back. We get to hotels and die a little inside when faced with a queen or, horror of horrors, two doubles. Because while we're all for closeness and snuggling, we're also all about stretching out. So the fact that the realization of needing a new mattress coincided with Memorial Day sales seemed to be a good thing (cause the major down side of the king bed is that you have to be one to afford them and their accouterments).

So this morning, after Tim finished up working from home (not being silly enough to brave the commute the day before a 3 day weekend if he could do otherwise) we piled in the car and headed to a mattress store. The weird thing about the shopping around our house is that it is primarily cheap furniture (e.g. Value City type places) and mattress stores. There are, in fact, 4 mattress stores across the street from one another - and all the cheap furniture places sell them too. I really think they ought to just rename our little town "Mattress City" and be done with it. So rather than asking ourselves where one goes to buy a mattress, we had to decide on which store we wanted to visit. (Because even with a brand name mattress, every store has their own special style name, so you can't compare apples and apples, and forget price shopping - you just have to choose a store and find a mattress that a) you like and b) you're willing to afford. Then you buy it and you never look again until you need a new mattress.) I'd enjoyed the mattress purchasing experience at the store where I bought our guest bed, so we went there.

(Side note: Bed shopping with a 2 year old is a considerably different experience than without. I imagine mattress stores are a bit what toddlers think heaven will be. On the other hand, all of the mattresses in the store have now been thoroughly jumped on.)


We went in and the lone salesman was working with another couple. So he said hi and he'd be right with us and Tim and I smiled and I laid down on a bed to start the shopping process at which point the doodle began screaming, "No mama sleep! No mama sleep! No lie down!"  Oy. So I tried to get him to lay down next to me, which really only ratcheted up the screaming, and then I stood up and took him and Tim lay down. The chorus of the previous tune is apparently, "No daddy sleep! Daddy no nap!" After a brief consultation, Tim took him back to the car where, I imagine, the facts of the matter were spelled out in no uncertain terms, and when the boys returned to the store, we had a much happier toddler.

At this point the lone salesman came over and asked us how he could help us (probably because he realized that we had brought with us a ticking time bomb in the form of said toddler and it would behoove him to get us going) and had we ever experienced the science of sleep? Now, I will admit that at this point, I'm thinking that perhaps they should rename their store to the Loony Bin, but I can play along, so I said, "Um. No...what's that?" You could almost see him shrug into his red striped blazer with top hat and stick to step up on a platform in front of a tent, "Come one, come all! See the amazing new sleep technology that's backed by science." And he ushered us over to this computer screen where we got to type in our name and how we sleep and how tall we are and do we have any pains and then lie down on their super duper computer bed and it would tell us exactly what mattress to buy.

So I poked in the right answers for me, set up a virtual Tim (because there was no way both of us would be able to do this at the same time) and lay down. And while it did complicated measurements and calculations and shot a quick query off to the mothership to see what they were overstocked on currently so that it could give me my personal profile, this chirpy woman encouraged me about how smart I was being because we spend so much time asleep and it's an investment in my health and, did she mention I was pretty? (Ok, maybe not that last one.) Then my personal sleeping profile was spit out of the printer and I am....blue. Handily, while virtual Tim was green, when Tim actually did it, he was also blue. So we can share a bed. Woo!  (Theoretically I suppose they will tailor the sides to different colors if needed, but then you can't swap sides when you need to and that would be a big bummer - cause sometimes it's just nice to sleep on the other side of the bed, you know?)

Regardless, we tried the blue (which we came to find out was to do with firmness and support). We tried various other mattresses that were considered to be equivalent other brands in that level of firmness. We even tried a tempurpedic, but honestly we'd stayed in a hotel with those and I remember it being dreadful - those are just not for me, though my sister loves hers. All the while, the child was jumping and running about and trying to ride the enormous Serta sheep, and the lone salesman was now trying to juggle five customer pairs. When we were done laying on this, that, and the other, he had finally rung up the folks who were there before us and was, I like to think, on his way to see what we wanted, when his coworker finally came running in, apologizing to everyone. Ok, fine. So he helps this lady who just needed to pick up her mattress (fine, no worries) and another guy in the same boat. Meanwhile, lone salesman is helping the folks who came in after us and Tim and I are trying to decide if we should just leave and get the kiddo napping or try and stick this out, though we weren't 100% sure what to do anyway.

Finally though, the new guy on the scene sees that oh, hey, they look like they're ready to either walk or make a decision so maybe it'd be good to check in on them. And, at the end of the day, we have a mattress that we expect to like (it's hard to tell in the store, though we do have 21 days to exchange it if we don't end up loving it) at a price that we're ok paying. And a very overtired toddler who, surprisingly, is actually napping now that we're home even though we were way outside his window.