A-G-I-N-G!

I think my bed is trying to kill me. I’m serious. A few months ago, I went to bed feeling perfectly fine – sleepy and looking forward to a good night’s slumber – and when I woke up, I could barely move. My left hip and knee were so sore, I could hardly walk Maggie that morning. For sure she got shortchanged in the sniff-and-pee department.

 

While my hip recovered quickly, my knee? Not so much. I’ve been icing it and applying stinky topical pain relievers to the point where I’m sure anyone walking by me thinks I’m confusing pain reliever ointment with perfume.

 

All this pain simply from sleeping? C’mon. Life is not supposed to be this difficult, people!

 

I took to sleeping in my old spare room bed, which seemed to prevent any new aches and pains.

 

And I got rid of my cheap-o mattress that I bought when I moved here. I’d heard horror stories about people spending thousands of dollars on a particular type of mattress – and not being happy with it. I didn’t want to suffer the same fate.

 

I didn’t know the differences between types of mattresses and I didn’t have time to do any sort of research prior to moving. Memory Foam? Cooling Gel? Coils, inner springs, pillow tops? Oh my.

 

So I picked something inexpensive thinking it would do until I had more time to figure it out.

 

Yeah, clearly the memory foam mattress wasn’t it. For me, anyway.

 

Vince and I had bought a Sleep Number bed from someone years ago. It worked well for a long time, but eventually the air pump broke. Because it was a used bed, we couldn’t call the manufacturer to have new parts sent to us. So Vince did some sort of MacGyver repair with rubber bands and gaskets and chewing gum (I think), but that meant we couldn’t raise or lower our sleep number after that. 

Sort of defeats the purpose of a Sleep Number bed, doesn’t it? (I did write a rather amusing blog about our Sleep Number issue here if you'd like to read it.)

 

Anyway, I didn’t want to bring the bed with me when I moved. For one, it didn’t work right and I’m no MacGyver. And for another, it had so many baffles and foam pieces I didn’t think I could figure out how to jigsaw it back together. I’m not all that good with puzzles anyway.

 

So I recently did a little research and bought another, more expensive, mattress. And it’s sort of hard as a rock. Now I’m torn between sleeping on my softer, more giving, spare room bed – and my hard-as-a-rock bed.

 

I feel like Goldilocks. When am I gonna find a mattress that is “just right”?

 

Toppers have helped – a little. But eventually I’m going to add so many toppers to my bed that I’ll be forced to use a step ladder to climb into it at night. And Maggie Minx won’t be able to jump up into it no matter how spry she is.

 

I sure do miss those days when I could sleep pretty much anywhere on pretty much anything and I could wake up pretty much raring to go.

 

I remember one time in my mid-20s going to a Halloween party where the hosts had just bought an old house and hadn’t yet fixed it up – so it was perfect for a spooky Halloween party. There was a roll of new carpeting in one large room awaiting installation. I’m guessing they didn’t want to take the chance of installing it and then having a party with a bunch of 20-somethings spilling beer on their new carpet.

 

A group of us out-of-towners ended up using that roll of carpeting as our pillows and our jackets, coats and costumes as our blankets.

 

And no one complained.

 

Nowadays, I require a special ergonomic pillow to alleviate any possibility of waking up with a sore neck.

 

Aging. So fun.

 

I sure do miss those days when I could fall asleep all curled up and snug in my bed and wake up without experiencing a frozen shoulder or an aching back. Those days are gone for good, I fear. Nevertheless, I know that I need sleep every night in order to function. So I’m just doing my best to figure out how to make that happen.

 

Probably I should just walk into a Beds-R-Us in my PJs carrying my special ergonomic pillow and tell them I’ll let them know in the morning if I’m going to buy their bed.

 

And, PS, applying stinky topical pain reliever regularly does seem to be helping my sore knee. But perhaps I should knock on wood. I don’t need to tempt Fate or mean ol' Father Time. Neither has been very nice to me lately. Maybe I called ‘em “crotchety” once too often.

 

Until next time, friends.