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There's only one thing that I hate more than shopping for a new car, and that's shopping for a new mattress. Which explains why TW and I slept on a (cheap) IKEA futon for 18 months after her mom moved in and took over our bed. I wasn't worried about our mattress shopping excursion turning into a Monty Python skit but ... well maybe I was.
TW started complaining about sleeping on the futon after the first month. I generally ignored her complaints. Her mom was only going to be with us temporarily! We would get our bed back! And for a full year we shared a TWIN mattress on the FLOOR and neither of us complained about THAT. The IKEA futon was FINE. (I can't hear her!)
After about six months of hearing her complain, I couldn't pretend any longer that her mom was going to move out and give us our bed back -- and, errr, even if she did, I didn't really want the bed back, and we'd have to go mattress shopping anyway. So I acknowledged her futon complaints with laughter and jokes, and we carried on with the IKEA futon, because that's what I do. I procrastinate anything that I really do not want to deal with that isn't a life or death emergency.
Another six months went by, and TW went from complaining about the mattress to whining about how much her body hurt in the morning. I teased her about getting old -- 40 does that to ya, doesn't it? Surely that's why my back hurt all of the time. It's just age and not the sweet little IKEA futon.
A few more months went by, and I made up my mind that we were going to have to do something. I thought I might surprise her with a new mattress for some special occasion or another, but special occasions came and went and I was too busy to DO anything about the new mattress. Then TW went on a business trip to Atlanta, and I thought I'd surprise her with a new mattress when she came home. That didn't work, because I was too busy to leave my desk, and then I caught some stupid flu from the kids and I was sick, sick, sick. It all worked out okay, because I took her out the day after she returned from her trip, and it was our anniversary. I planned it all out ... a trip to the mattress store, and then I'd take her out to dinner. Perfect!
And it was. Perfect and pretty darn painless. I have no idea why I put it off so long.
We walked into the closest mattress store to our house. It was empty except for the nice woman who was manning the floor. She asked what we were looking for and I smart alecky replied, "A mattress! Neat coincidence, right?" She laughed and asked whether we wanted something firm or soft or... "Neither firm nor soft - something in the middle." And we plopped down onto the first one that didn't look like it was going to cost a gazillion dollars (because while I might have been ready to buy, I wasn't ready to spent a fortune. I'm still thrifty, even if I have a sore back!).
She told us to lay down and stretch out and asked us, "How do you sleep?" --- "Not well! That's why we need a new mattress!" -- She laughed again and said, "No, I mean on your back? or your side? or ... that's how you should test the mattress, the way you normally sleep." At that point I stuttered a bit because TW sleeps on her back, and she doesn't THINK she sleeps on her back, and I knew she'd argue if I pointed it out. So we tried the first bed, and it was a little too firm. We moved to the next one, and it was better. We moved to the next one, and it was way too soft. The middle one seemed just right.
TW asked whether the middle one would become TOO soft after it was broken in, and the salesperson told us that those floor models ARE broken in so that
