Guy and I did the smartest/cheeziest thing this weekend. We got a hotel room so we could try out a bed. Here's the deal: Guy's back has given him problems for a while, my hips and mid-back have developed more tweaks and aches than they used to have, and the mattress we bought six years ago isn't holding up near as well as we thought it would. Oddly enough, our queen-size bed seems to have gotten smaller as time has rocked on. I roll over to get comfy only to get a knee in the kidneys from Guy. He moves his arm out only to whomp me in the head with a Dusty-Rhodes-atomic-elbow move. Toss a 13-lb sleeping-on-my-head cat into the mix, and you have a recipe for a rough night's sleep.
[And I know the obvious suggestion is get the cat out of the bed. Oh, we've tried. You can throw her off as you're going to sleep, but then you wake up at 3am with your arm wrapped around a furry purring meatloaf. Even Guy has ended up in this blackmail-worthy position. And say what you will about them bugging you, but now and then, they pinch-hit best when the alarm and snooze button fail to work. She knows I need to get up and go to work so I can make money for cat food and crunchy treats.)
We've found that time and again, sleeping in a king size bed seems to help a great deal. We've also been thinking about one of those air-mattress beds, a la the Sleep Number bed by Select Comfort, for whom Lindsey Wagner is always testifying on TV. With the two halves isolating the sleepers from movement, we wouldn't be bugging each other when Guy goes to bed two hours after me and I get up an hour and a half before him. Also, it's inevitable that one of us has a tossy-turney night when the other wakes up in the same position they went to sleep in, and isolated halves of a mattress would reduce that motion transfer as well. And yes, I realize that I sound like a commercial as I type this, but we've actually been thinking a great deal about this lately. I mean, you give a lot of thought to how much you like your job and where you work, and you spend at least eight hours a day there. So why not give your bed and your quality of sleep some thought, since you spend 7-8 hours a day there as well? And we're not just doing this out of the blue. My mom has this bed, and she and my stepdad really like theirs. And my mom doesn not spend that kind of money on a whim.
So last night, off we went to a Radisson hotel to stay the night, have a lovely labor Day night out, and try out a Sleep Number bed before we dropped over $1000 on a mattress. We checked in, and Guy immediately laid down and found his number. We went to dinner and upon our return laid back down on the bed and started fiddling with the remote. Or more precisely, I started fiddling with the remote. I went to 100, then to 15, then to 85, then 35. I finally settled on 50, and I believe Guy decided to try 40 for the night. [Note: a higher number is harder, lower number is softer.]
We awoke this morning just before room service arrived with breakfast. "How'd you sleep?" Guy asked. "Like Lindsay Wagner," I replied. "Really? Can we rebuild you and make you stronger?" Guy joked. Room service saved me from having to come up with a snappy comeback.
So, the verdict: nice bed. Also, nice pillow. I've slept well on a super-firm mattress and on a fluffy mattress, but I think the pillow has something to do with it as well. I like having a bed big enough that there's some space between Guy and me when we sleep, and not because I think he's a hideous bastard or something. One, we both tend to sleep like whirling dervishes, so we need some room so we can engage in this type of Stage 4, delta-wave breakdancing. Also, Guy has pronounced me overly exothermic, so everytime I try to snuggle up on him he's fanning himself like he's getting hot flashes. Both of us are tired of waking up in the middle of the night sweating like Senator Larry Craig in an airport men's room. We'd like to make it through the night without going Jet Li on someone's ribs by accident. And our experience last night shows that we might just benefit from this sort of thing.
So, yes. We treated ourselves to a night out just to try out the bed. Oh, and to have someone else bring us breakfast. That too.
Monday, September 3, 2007
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4 comments:
if you liked that you need to try the tempurpedic mattress too. I have one and it is the best thing to ever happen in my bed. And I mean that. just the way you think I do.
:)
Mrs. Faded and I can bring 112 years of sleeping experience to this problem of bad backs, punching each other out in bed, and animals in bed.
If you have an animal in bed with you, you will not get it out until the animal dies. When we got married my wife had a Miniature Schnauzer who slept in bed with her. After we got married we put the dog out, but the dog was very smart and figured out ways to get back in bed. After 6 months of trying we gave up and the dog slept under the covers with us for the rest of its' life.
As for hitting each other in our sleep I learned very quickly not to do this. Because of stuff in my wife's back ground I do not touch her when she is asleep. The results are not bad now but there was a time when they were spectacular. You can train yourself not to do things while you asleep.
As for bad backs and the like we discovered something unexpected in our mattress purchases. Buy a cheap firm mattress! We have done water beds, pillow top mattresses, tested a sleep number bed and found that an inexpensive firm mattress works best.
I bought a thick tempurpedic-type pad for my bed and have slept well ever since. It is heaven, better than any other bed I've ever slept in. And when I added the weird-shaped tempurpedic-type pillow, it got even better. I never have had cricks in my neck or back since. And it's lots cheaper ($139 or so for a queen size pad) than replacing the whole bed. They're available at Costco and in catalogs, plus other places, I'm sure.
Oh hell Pix, spring for the SLeep Number, but I think you're a bit light about the $1000.
One of my clients has been trying to get us to buy one for 5 years and his cost $2600. We will get one,....eventually, but Uncle Sam seems to have the keys to the bank account of late.
Good luck with the cat as we have two Yorkies that occupy our available space at night. They seem much less invasive than a cat.
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