Mattress Talk

Cozy, my wife, likes soft squishy mattresses. I hate them. I'd almost rather sleep on bedrock than something I'm going to sink into very far. The trouble is, she's been having a tough time getting comfortable on our bed at night, and so she tosses and turns quite a bit. All this movement in the bed might be nice if we were both awake, but all it seems to do is wake me up, instead of her. So we've got to do something about our divergent mattress tastes.

I've thought about getting one of those mattresses that you can adjust the "hardness" levels on. They're really expensive, though. To be honest, I don't know if I could come up with a "sleep number" even after several weeks on the thing, anyway.

Cozy decided to solve the problem for us. Well, at least for her. One of her close friends was getting a new mattress with a memory-foam top, and was getting rid of her old memory foam mattress cover. Cozy, in a fit of pure unthinking greed, decided it would be a good idea to take it off her friend's hands, and put it on our bed.

Without going too far into the reasons behind why you should never sleep on a mattress that another couple has been sleeping (and copulating) in, it should be no surprise to anyone that I didn't want it. (At least the darned thing has a cover that could be washed in bleach before putting it on the bed.) Cozy is very sneaky, though. She called me at work and asked if I wanted their old mattress. Of course I said no, after forcing the bile back down my throat. She didn't ask about the mattress topper. No fool, her.

Now, I love my wife. I really do. I also love my sleep, so I was willing to have a go at it. So far it's been, shall we say, less than ideal.

Let me explain something to you about foam mattress toppers. This one has a two-inch section of firm memory foam, backed by about four inches of regular squishy foam. Regular squishy foam doesn't bounce back; it just fools you by making it look like it has.

On my side of the bed is what I can only describe as a sinkhole, and it's right where my pelvis should be. Cozy's friend is only slightly shorter than I am, but let's face it, as some might say, "baby got back." Based on the difference between her, and her husband's builds, I'd have to guess that this side is the one she slept on. So now, in an attempt to be considerate to my wife, I find that I'm sleeping on a squishy mattress in her friend's butt-divot.

Let's not mince words. My side of the bed now has an ass-hole in it. Some might say it always did, but that's a different story.

Needless to say this is causing me all kinds of physical and emotional stress. On one hand, it's really disturbing to think that my butt is trying to occupy the same space as Cozy's friend's butt did. It's not as bad as sharing underwear, but you get the idea. To top it off it means that my butt sinks into the mattress at an alarming rate, screwing up my back and letting my feet fly up above the level of my head. Not a comfortable position in any case.

On the other hand, Cozy's tossing and turning a lot less, so I wake up less. Or at least I wake up for different reasons.

I don't know what to do. She's promised to turn the mattress topper around today so she can sleep in her friends butt divot instead of me, but that's just as disturbing. I'm weirding out just writing about it.

We've got to do something, though. I can't keep waking up several times a night just because my wife wants to roll over. My schedule is going to become way too tight in the next few weeks to put up with more of that. The only thing that is certain (so far) came out of a conversation I had about the whole thing with Cozy this morning.

"You know I'm going to have to blog about this," I warned her.

"You're not serious," she said.

Oh yeah, I'm serious. "But don't worry," I told her. "I won't mention any names but yours."