I've purchased many mattresses over the years, the embarrassing result of always giving the mattress up in the divorce. Once it was the result of generosity on my part - he paid for it, I should leave it behind. The other time it was because I was trying to move out before he got home from work and at that point, I was just screaming "LEAVE IT, IT'S NOT IMPORTANT!" at the moving guys. None of the mattresses have been the providers of those dreamy, long nights of sleep you always see in movies, where a woman rolls over in a beam of sunshine with her eyeliner intact and her hair perfect. Most of mine resulted in painful tossing and turning all night and waking up to a blaring alarm with eyeliner smeared like a bad Alice Cooper impersonator and hair sticking up like those lizards who flip up a neck ruff to scare off predators. Needless to say, I was never in love with a mattress, probably the other reason I was willing to let them go along with the ex.
When I first moved in with Tony, he had a mattress that had been very generously given to him by friends. I'm serious. Without them, he'd have been sleeping on the floor in the studio apartment we were sharing. The hygiene concerns alone with that scenario were terrifying. But there was a reason they were so willing to part with this particular mattress. It had been manufactured in 1922. Sleeping on it felt like sleeping on a pillowcase jammed full of old stuffed animals and sawdust. A distinct dent had formed in the middle of it, creating a canyon into which both Tony and I slowly rolled during the night. Every night I went to sleep praying that he got there first. He outweighs me by around 100 pounds and if I rolled first, I had to give up any hope of getting up during the night to pee, get a drink or breathe. And because he owned no other furniture, Tony had stained the bed with six month's worth of dinners, cups of tea and for some reason, about a gallon of ketchup. I maintained a strict don't ask, don't tell policy when it came to stains on the mattress. To know was to vomit.
We graduated from that mattress to the one we sleep on now approximately 35 seconds after I moved in, when I received my tax return and spent the whole thing on a new queen-size bed. (Did I mention the other one was a full? And that my husband is not diminutive? Holy tiny bed, Batman.) That mattress has been serviceable the past two and a half years, but it still leaves sore spots on my hips and Tony's back. And this is even after following a religious flip and rotate schedule that inevitably peels one of my fingernails back to the cuticle and sparks some sort of hideous fight with our dignity, marriage and other furniture as collateral damage. We are growing to hate it.
So this time, we were determined to not make the same mistakes. We would comparison shop. We would lay on our sides, backs, stomachs and any other body part that got close enough to the bed to vote. We would interrogate the salespeople, read the literature, examine the sliced up mini-mattresses these places always have that show you the guts of a particular mattress, chock full of steel coils, foam, duck down and magic, next to the competitor's, which is constructed solely from toxic waste and airborne asbestos fibers. We would take notes. We would hit every mattress store in Florence, Kentucky (and there were many - at least 10!) We would find a reasonably-priced block of heaven upon which to rest our weary bones every night. Our marriage would improve, we'd look slimmer and younger.
We jumped from bed at 7:45, massaged our sore spots, showered and headed out. We started with a trip to the new house for inspiration. Nothing helps you choose a mattress like observing the early-ish morning light in the room where you will sleep. Then it all fell apart. Because of the great time-suck that is getting ready and driving a half-hour to our new property and Tony's tendency to want to walk s-l-o-w-l-y from room to room, examining all the changes from day before, (Was that dust mote floating in the sunshine yesterday? I don't think so!) we ended up hauling into Florence, starving and crabby at 11 a.m. We hadn't eaten and my blood sugar was reaching Incredible Hulk rage levels. (YOU WON'T LIKE ME WHEN I'M HUNGRY!)
So we stopped in for a giant breakfast at Cracker Barrel. I don't know about you, but I can never resist a country-fried steak with biscuits, eggs and baked apples. (This is the part where I hope my personal trainer never reads this blog.) Tony, on the other hand, is a sucker for pancakes, arranged in such a disturbing way with over-easy eggs, maple syrup and ketchup that I won't subject you to the details. Suffice it to say that I usually spend breakfast with my eyes averted from Tony's plate, fork and mouth in order to preserve my enjoyment of the pile of deep-fried salt on my own plate.
After our repast, what we wanted most was a nap, which contrary to what you might think, does not actually help in mattress shopping. We stumbled from store to store, clutching distended bellies and beaching ourselves on the shore of every Serta, Simmons, Sealy and any other S-named mattress we could find. (Side note - why do all mattress companies have such similar names? We almost ended up with one of those crazy Swedish foam things because we could actually remember the name from one store to the next.)
Once you've sorted out where you are and who is helping you find your Sertimmonly mattress, you must decide how you like it - Do you like firm, soft, medium firm, firm with pillow top, soft support with deluxe pillow top, medium firm with super soft feather pillow top, memory foam, amnesia foam, Swedish foam, latex, non-latex buckwheat shell-filled organic cotton picked by fair-trade laborers in Eastern Mongolia, a sack of bricks with an light topping of foamessence, and on and on and on. It's like being in a Starbucks from hell - they all have funny names and you have NO IDEA what they mean. I think we almost purchased a dirty venti half-caf chai latte mattress at one point.
Another problem for those of us who share a bed with another human (and possibly animals) - what if you don't like the same level of firmness? And what if you don't sleep the same way? Tony is stomach sleeper and I am a side sleeper, no matter what Tony says about waking up in the night to me sleeping soundly on my back, snoring away. He lies. The solution they offer is the sadistic Sleep Number bed. Don't do it. I once went on a retreat with six other women where we had sleep number beds to share and adjoining rooms in the hotel. The entire night consisted of women swearing over the sound of beds inflating and deflating while we tried to find our elusive "number." I've assigned the number 666 to all Sleep Number beds.
Barring a sleep number, we had to compromise. So that meant laying on the beds while looking deeply into each other's eyes and repeating, "Can you live with this? I think I can." You know, foreplay for married people. It was hot.
At the first store, a higher-end furniture store that also sold mattresses, we followed a salesperson around as she stripped lovely 23-pillow arrangements from beds and then laid on them uncomfortably as other shoppers strolled by and examined the occasional chairs to our right. They carried one line of mattresses and we didn't love any of them. We did, however design a lovely sofa that we totally didn't need. And Tony nearly broke the saleswoman's foot with a dowel rod from the fabric display wall. Not the best start to the shopping experience.
At the next store, a mattress-only shop that carried all the S-lines and the crazy Swedish stuff, we laid on 42 mattresses at the behest of our very firm saleswoman. She was making the decisions, and you were going to like what she chose for you! We laid on pillow tops and memory foams and latex foam and coil mattresses and I think at one point, a straw tick. And then we gave up and bought one. We spent more than twice what we had budgeted on a very comfortable latex bed. I think. Pamela says we made the right decision, and I have faith in her. We stumbled back into the daylight, a little dazed and still wanting that nap.
Looking back on the day, I'm a little ashamed that we only made it to two stores, did no negotiating, took no notes and bought what I think was the most expensive mattress we laid on. But I'm holding out hope that it will deliver the smear-proof eyeliner and sexy, wavy bed head I'm after. And if not, we can always return it within 90 days and go through the whole process again.
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