They say that a mattress should be replaced every 8-10 years. So, we were way overdue for the one we got last month. Neither Sue nor I could recall exactly when we got the one we’ve been using in our master bedroom. Our best guess is when our son Jim was in high school, and he graduated in 2006.
After finding one to our liking at Furnish123/Mattress123 in Rice Lake, we arranged for delivery. They would also take away the old bed; it would cost us an extra fee, but our options for its departure were limited. Selling it was really out of the question, and we couldn’t do with it what we’ve done with a lot of our discarded items, which is put it out at the end of the access road. For the last 29 years, since we moved in here, we’ve put all kinds of things out there: deck furniture, golf clubs, bicycles, a love-seat sofa, two different gas grills, even my old Bowflex machine (unassembled; I had to take it apart to get it out of the furnace room). Without exception, everything has been taken, some within minutes after we set it down and walked away.
We knew that replacing the bed was overdue, because I had been developing some lower-back pain in recent months. There was also the issue of snoring. We won’t say which one of us was the culprit for that, and there’s a possibility that it was the dog, but in any event, a new mattress would address all those problems, we were told. So, we sprung for the purchase going top-of-the-line. We are at the age where we can often say, “Go big or go home,” and have the financial means to back it up.
In the midst of a busy summer, an unexpected challenge.
I had spent much of the summer so far on the road for author business with a radio assignment or two thrown in. On May 30, I flew to New York City for ThrillerFest, my first after years of thinking about going. It was four jam-packed days of seminars, meeting fellow authors and pitching to would-be agents. I learned a lot, met some great authors and, hopefully, convinced an agent or two that my work is worthy of their representation. (At this writing, several inquiries are still awaiting replies. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.)
Visiting the Big Apple is always exciting, and staying close to Times Square, as I did, ensured that I’m right in the middle of the action. There wasn’t much time to see the sights, although I did talk to one or two conferees who caught a Broadway show. Had the Yankees been in town, I surely would’ve gone across the river to the Bronx to catch a game, but they were on the road, and I had no similar urge to see a Mets game in Queens. But overall, it was a great experience.
Returning home on June 4, I embarked on a busy week of radio work, calling a baseball game on the 6th and soccer matches on the 8th and 10th, as our local high schools finished out their spring sports seasons. On Sunday the 11th, I was selling books at Rice Lake’s Aquafest. Four days after that, I was on the road to Deadwood, S.D., for Wild Deadwood Reads. It was a long drive, even at the wheel of my new Lexus NX: Rolling through South Dakota.
Once I got there and settled in at The Lodge, things went pretty smoothly. Friday was filled with seminars, and in the evening I went downtown to enjoy some of Wild Bill Days. Saturday was the big book fair, over 90 authors (I was one of only five men) and some of the most elaborate table displays I’d ever seen.
It was while I was in Deadwood that the furniture store delivered the bed. They had no trouble hauling our old one out, and then installing the base of the new bed, but the two-man team couldn’t negotiate our staircase to get the new mattress upstairs to the master bedroom. The staircase has two left turns as you go up, and there wasn’t enough headroom on the lower landing to get the mattress through. When I got home Sunday evening after another 11 hours on the road, the mattress was in the middle of our main floor.
Fortunately, I am married to a woman who will not take no for an answer when she wants something done. If it’s a task that we can’t accomplish ourselves–and this one was clearly beyond our abilities–she will find someone who can. So it was that on the 20th, two men from a Chetek-based moving company arrived. They were good-sized guys and within a half-hour had the mattress up the staircase and in place on the base, waiting for our first night.
Three weeks of blissful sleep.
That was three weeks ago yesterday. I’m very happy to report that my back pain is virtually gone, and the snoring issues that plagued us for months–again, no names mentioned–have disappeared. I have taken to wearing my Samsung smart watch to bed, allowing it to measure my sleep and send the data to my nearby phone, so each morning I can see a detailed analysis of my sleep pattern. It’s been quite interesting, to say the least. The important thing, though, is that the mattress, with all its bells and whistles–adjustable height at both ends, vibration, even USB ports for our various devices–is doing the job. Sue says she is sleeping well, too. As for Maisie the dog, she is still getting me up at least once a night for a call of nature, something Sue swears she doesn’t do while I’m gone, so we’re working on that.
I’ve recently been following Arnold Schwarzenegger’s daily posts and podcasts about health and fitness. They’re free, and full of useful information and inspiring pep talks: Arnold’s newsletter. One of the things he preaches is getting 7-9 hours of sleep a night. This almost always means establishing a bedtime that is virtually ironclad, regardless of circumstances. We are creatures of routine and habit, he says, and developing new habits, new routines, to supplant unhealthy ones is necessary for us to continue our quest for excellent health and fitness. So, I have been forcing myself to get away from the TV and the laptop by 8pm every night. My alarm goes off at 4:20am on weekdays–at least, it will until I finally hang up my radio headphones–so that gives me about a half-hour to read and unwind before lights-out.
Speaking of that, I see it’s just past 8pm right now. Time to retire. I don’t want to get Arnold mad at me. Even though he’ll be 76 in a few days, I’d prefer not to annoy the Terminator.
A Strenuous Writer's Life 