The Sleep Comfort Adventure

 

       

My beautiful, talented, supernaturally perceptive lady-liege and I went mattress shopping this morning over in Jantzen Beach, the big-box store capital of the universe. We spent a considerable amount of time in Bed World and Mattress Mart. Or was it Mattress World and Bed Mart? I disremember.      

         

Carolyn was adamant that we needed new mattresses. She told one of the salesmen that I kamikaze onto mine from a great altitude, splashing down on it and creating a thunderous sound that can be heard by our neighbors a block away. This, she claims has caused my mattress to sag considerably. This may well be. The fact that I hadn’t noticed and sleep just fine on it doesn’t seem to be a part of the equation. I credit her for not using the word “oaf” at any point in her narrative.

Like everything else, mattress shopping has gotten very high tech. At one place (either World or Mart, I disremember) they have you lie down on a mattress hooked to a space-age looking device. It creates a cartoonish green mock-up of your body, which shows the salesman what you need in the way of firmness, lumbar support, leg room and muscle adjustment. It’s possible it also indicates nutritional deficiencies and need for personal counseling. Again, I disremember. ( Disrememberization, by the way is a handy device for avoiding marital disputes, ignoring medical advice and chore avoidance.)

I’m convinced the mattress technology also provides the salesperson the talking points to sell the customer up into the $3000 super-deluxe hyper-double-frammis, air-cooled, internet-ready dual-exhaust model from the basic $200 “flat place to sleep” model he or she came into the store to buy.

 Next, Carolyn insisted we lie down on a number of mattresses to see how comfortable they are. Very honestly, I couldn’t tell one from another. Keep in mind that if I went out drinking during my college days, my roommates would ferry me home and stand me up in the corner. 8-16 hours later I would awaken, fully refreshed.

She had exchanges with the sales guy using terms like “too soft,” “the memory foam feels like I’m sinking in quicksand” and “firm but with a nice bouquet and a hint of elderberries.” My feedback was pretty much limited to “oof” and “pretty nice flat place to lie down.” (On this one, my wife and I exchanged marital eye-rolls. Mine was far superior, making a ka-ching sound on the upper end.)

In the end, we bought two twin mattresses. They weren’t as expensive as I thought they might be and delivery, setup and disposal of the old mattresses was included in the price. (I’m not sure how challenging set-up will be, amounting to setting the mattress on the wooden bed frame).

It was explained to us that they donate the old mattresses to charity, which I think is a worthwhile thing. Carolyn wonders where they’ll find a recipient for mine, muttering something about she hoped some poor schlep doesn’t mind crashing on a U-shaped mattress. Hey, not everyone requires a flat place to sleep.

Ultimately, I think the mattress shopping excursion was a positive experience. I learned some important science involving lumbar support and reclining body imaging. Shopping together made our long-lasting marriage even more fulfilling. And the series of eye-roll exchanges strengthened the muscles of our foreheads and upper cheeks. 

I was so inspired by the process, I’m exploring the concept of opening my own big-box sleep comfort outlet. The sign out front will read “FLAT PLACE TO SLEEP MART.” (or possibly “FLAT PLACE TO SLEEP WORLD.”)

 

 

Thank God it's over!!!

 

I recently underwent the second most unpleasant procedure known to mankind. The first, of course, having your nose eaten off your face by a family of voracious weasels. But at least with the weasels you don’t have to drink the vile slurry they give you to clean out your nether regions prior to a…

COLONOSCOPY !!!

I could actually feel a group shudder as you read that word.

First of all, let me say that the staff at the Oregon Clinic Endoscopy Center (east) could not have been nicer or more helpful and compassionate than they were. They made the experience slightly less gruesome. That being said . . .

UGH!!!

As anyone who has undergone one or more of these procedures knows, the prep is far worse than the actual event. After all, they give you some great drugs and you snooze while they’re reaming.

But three days without solid food, (when lime jello becomes a highlight of your lunch hour) and swilling a full gallon of what had to have started its life as tailings from a toxic mining operation, seems much longer than what the clock is telling you.

 My older brother Ray, when I told him what I was facing commented; “You know, I’ve gone 96 years without having anyone put a camera up my keester. I think I’ll hold out a bit longer.” You know, if you’ve lived that long, you’ve probably done something right.

 Alright, alright, I know I’m being a bit of a gloomy Gus here. Colonoscopies are useful medical tools for discovering and treating a whole family of ailments. Unpleasant but necessary. But only once every 5 years, thank God. I won’t know until the biopsy results come in, but hopefully I’ve got nothing happening up there.

 There were a couple of upsides to the whole process. Dr. Ken Flora was upbeat and thoroughly professional. As were the various and sundry nurses. After I woke up, one them, I think maybe Staci, was telling me all the things I shouldn’t do right away because of the anesthesia. “Don’t operate any heavy machinery” she told me. Check. I’d have to put my afternoon manipulating a front-end loader on hold. “Don’t drink any alcoholic beverages.” Okay, happy hour is postponed till Wednesday. She continued with a serious look on her face. “And don’t make any significant life altering decisions.” I thought about it. “So, I should postpone starting my late-in-life career as a nude pole dancer?” I asked. This made her grin. Which made the whole pre, during and post procedure worth it.

        Bottom line. Don’t postpone getting your colon checked out. It’s not really that bad and could save your life. Plus, you’ll get some dandy photos of a part of your body you’d never see otherwise. I’m thinking about getting some wallet-sized prints made. Then, the next time I’m asked to show ID somewhere, I’ll just whip one of them out.

 On the way home we found ourselves in gridlock on I-205 out of Portland. In what had to be a masterstroke of cosmic irony we were stuck behind a panel truck bearing the logo of MR. ROOTER. Wait! I thought. You mean they’ll come right to your home? Is there a clown-festooned Mc-oscopy outlet with a drive-up? You just stick your fandango out the passenger's side window and they take care of it right there. I can almost hear the attendant/nurse’s voice now:

 “You want fries with that?”

 

 

 

 

Lilacs and Memories

 

Carolyn J. Rose

 

I seldom pass a lilac bush in bloom without thinking of Walt Whitman’s poem of mourning for Abraham Lincoln, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.”

But, as is the way of my busy brain, before I become mired in Whitman’s long lament, the memory leads on to another and another. Images overlap and blend together.

 

Lilac bushes abounded in the hollows of the Catskill Mountains where I grew up. Many of them marked houses long gone, flattened by snow and rot, wind, and gravity. Those bushes, once nurtured in sunlit dooryards, had grown spindly in their attempts to reach sunlight blocked by pine and oak and hemlock. Others were moss-covered, gnarled and bent from struggles to survive another winter.

 

But there were also younger bushes, carefully tended, fertilized and pruned. Many were planted with an eye toward shadings of color. White. Lilac. Deep purple.

 

I recall a long lilac hedge along the road the bus traveled in the tedious journey to school. In winter its bare branches did little to shield the home behind it from wind and snow and the interest of those driving past. Spring brought forth leaves, elongated green hearts that made my teenage heart long for love—or what I imagined was love at that hormone-driven age. When the lilacs bloomed, rain-drenched blossoms bending branches toward the ground, it signified the school year was coming to a close. The flowering gave notice that another page of my life was turning, that plans needed to be made, enlarged, or amended.

 

I remember walking dirt roads, catching the scent on a warming breeze, and following it to a flowering bush. Because the blooms turned brown far too soon and didn’t linger into summer they were precious to me. More precious than the varieties of roses my father’s mother managed to grow in the thin and stony soil of a yard shaded by an enormous maple.

 

My mother’s mother had a bottle of lilac perfume and, in the dim light of a winter day, I would sometimes loosen the stopper and sniff. It was sweet, but the scent was nothing like that of the blooms of spring. It was, in fact, more like a faint memory, poorly preserved.