THERE aren’t many things in life that beat a new mattress.
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Many, many purchases in life make us feel good, but very few are actually good for you.
And the mattress is one of them.
Considering we spend a third of our lives sleeping, it pays to get a good one.
I recently did just that and my life has literally changed overnight.
Apart from the fact I want to spend every waking and sleeping on it, I have never slept better.
It’s been a long time coming. Too long.
I’m sure other parents can attest to putting their children’s needs and wants ahead of their own. Before you know it, you’ve had a bed or a car that’s older than your first child.
But thanks to a half-price sale and ScoMo’s stimulus money, I thought it was time to update my Queen-sized mattress.
I can hear you thinking it now – if not saying it aloud to a nearby friend or just snickering to yourself – that I must be something of a sad case to be celebrating such a mundane domestic moment.
But honestly, I’m loving every stretching, turning, curling moment of it.
But if you think you are riding high on a wave of sleep comfort, wait until you add the mattress protector – the one with the thick woolly bits on top.
Just enough wool to let you actually sink onto your mattress, with the most gentle of sighs escaping your lips as you slowly settle for the evening.
It is a golden moment - and it is your moment.
You don’t have to justify it to anyone, you don’t have to share it with anyone and once you have laid down the law to the children – “if either one of you so much as sticks your head through the door I’ll chop it off” – it is your own domain.
You might think I am gilding the lily just a little bit too much.
Until you realise you are talking to a woman who actually had a single bed until she was 20.
And a woman, who as a slightly younger girl (but still in that same single bed) talked her sister into poking a hole in our parents’ water bed because of jealousy (it was a king size) and curiosity (about what would happen to all that water).
So on many levels, I am actually someone with a mild case of bed PTSD.
Which is why I am probably more excited about this mattress than you might otherwise be yourself.
And I think that’s a little bit sad for you.
Because in some ways a new mattress is a bit like your first hit of something – like accidentally sniffing sherbet up your nose when you opened your first packet of WizzFizz.
You get that real rush just the first time.
A sigh on a new bed isn’t just a sigh; it’s the breath of bliss.
Thereafter your new bed becomes your good friend, then your old mate and then you slowly drift apart as the children are once again allowed to jump in with you; the dog, the cat; Chris Hemsworth and Scarlett Johansson, if I were that way inclined.
There are even times when you aren’t overly fussed about making the bed before heading out to face the day.
Fortunately, my new bed and I are still in the honeymoon period.
I have lovingly stretched the sheets and the doona with almost military precision each morning, taken one last longing look over my shoulder and then closed the door to keep everyone and everything else out.
I actually love winter now. I get home about 5.30pm and it’s already dark, letting me furtively slip back into the house and spend the next few hours with breathless anticipation of what awaits me behind that closed bedroom door.
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