Thinking outside the box spring

While the country’s supply chain has been racking up headlines lately, my own personal supply chain issue has been front and center here at the Ponderosa for some time.

And what’s in short supply? Sleep.

I can’t remember the last time I slept a solid eight straight through. I’d like to say it’s been months, but sadly it’s been years.

Part of it is my own fault—I have the bladder of a three-year old (who’s going to want it back anytime now) and the bad fortune of usually wanting to quench my thirst with a can of mango-flavored Spendrift from Trader Joe’s right before bedtime.

So there’s that. Perhaps I’ve said too much.

But the other thing that’s also worked against my slumber has been my mattress.

For years the wife and I enjoyed the quality craftsmanship of a California King, Custom Comfort mattress. But a dozen years of kids trampolining, dogs of various weights and sizes jumping on and off, and two exhausted, alleged adults flopping down for the night year after year had definitely taken its toll. And I don’t just mean on the mattress. Don’t get me started.

Anyway the Custom Comfort mattress finally caved—or concaved—and we were forced to shop around for a new one.

I went to the Google, and discovered that now—like salty soup, cheap wine and organic milk—mattresses also come in a box and are all the rage.

Being the trendsetter you know me to be (cargo shorts are still in fashion, right?) I was on it. I thoroughly researched all the boxed mattresses. Once I landed on the one I wanted, I revved up the Mastercard and started the countdown until my comfy new Cal king arrived. In a box.

In the badly produced, low-res video that seems to live on all the boxed mattress websites, all I had to do was unfurl it on top of my existing, seemingly indestructible, original Custom Comfort box springs, which I firmly (no pun intended) believe will outlast us all.

What they conveniently fail to mention is to get a mattress that big in a box, they have to machine coil it so tight it's virtually spring-loaded. My daughter had the misfortune of standing in front of our first one—yes I said first one, keep reading—when we unleashed it from its wrapping, and she literally got knocked across the room.

Oh well, that's what therapy is for.

The first mattress we ordered was the Luxury Bliss® Organic Hybrid Latex Mattress from Plushbeds. You could tell it was a hybrid because it was uncomfortable and expensive.

Fortunately they have a 100-day trial/return policy, with a minimum trial of at least 30 nights.

The first night was great. Then it got progressively more and more uncomfortable. We were waking up with horrendous back, knee and hip pain. Not hip in the sense of trendy. Hip in the sense of “Did you know Rich Siegel got a new hip?”

There was a bit of a rigamarole getting it returned, but the bottom line is they finally did come out and take it back. Which was a good thing because we weren’t about to tackle rolling it back up and putting it in the box.

Setting the pick up date for the return took a bit of planning, because we didn’t want to be between beds for too long, although the living room couch felt like a Heavenly Bed after that mattress.

Being gluttons for punishment and having to learn the same lesson over and over, we went ahead and ordered another boxed mattress. This time it was from Birch, which is the organic luxury division of Helix Mattresses, which advertises on Smartless, which is my favorite podcast. See how that works? Ad people are the biggest suckers.

Anyway, same song, second verse. Long story short, we wound up sending that one back as well.

In the end, we went back to the beginning and bought a real mattress, another Custom Comfort California King. It didn’t come in a box. It came in a big truck with two big guys who set it up for us.

The moral of the story is don’t try to save money on your mattress. You get what you pay for.

Thanks to Custom Comfort, now when I sleep it’s the sleep of kings.

Now if they could just do something about my bladder.

Hipster

Let’s start with the title. There were a lot of ways I could have gone with it:

Shoot From The Hip.

Hip Hip Hooray.

Joined At The Hip.

Hip Hop.

Hip-A-Long Cassidy.

Keep Hip Alive.

But I didn’t choose any of those. Instead I went with Hipster, because it conjured up an image of Rich in a knit cap, wearing ripped jeans and an olive drab t-shirt with a vaguely smug, ironic saying on it.

I know how much he’d like that.

Rich by the way is my good friend Rich Siegel, proprietor and author of the RoundSeventeen blog, former captain of the USA pole vaulting team and bronze winner in the ’96 Olympics in Barcelona.

After years of breakdancing and spinning, poppin’ and lockin’, and his part time gig as an Elvis impersonator at the Graceland chapel in Vegas, his hip had enough Jailhouse Rockin'.

So this past Monday he walked with a limp into the hospital bright and early and had hip replacement surgery, which he so eloquently wrote about about here.

I spoke with him by text yesterday, and he was doing fine. A lot of napping. As those of us in the tribe say, “Why is this day different than other days?”

Anyway, I along with his other friends and quite possibly some members of his own family he doesn’t owe money to are glad he came through it swimmingly. I imagine he’ll be back on his feet setting off airport metal detectors, working on his Lee Majors impression (look it up), auditioning for Dancing With The Stars and doing a #glitchchallenge (@_aubreyfisher) on the IG in no time.

Get well soon Rich. Oh, and by the way, fuck Trump.