Rewind five days ago...
I woke up with a crazy tightness in my chest and an inauspicious feeling of dread...did you know that before major health crises, patients can experience an actual symptom of "an oncoming feeling of dread"? Like, they're going along their merry way, when all of a sudden one of JK Rowling's dementors comes upon them and sucks all of the happiness out of them. I didn't see any dementors, but I felt them in my periphery Saturday. Oliver went kayaking with my Dad, and when I was invited along, I said, "you know, I just fell really tired, and a little off, so I think I'm going to lay down for a bit instead." I woke up 5 hours later.
The next day was date night. Our cousin came to be with Oliver and Charlie while Michael and I had a rare five hour window of togetherness without kids. Five hours! We dreamed up the possibilities. Mini golf? Swimming? A movie? Dinner? Well, with five hours, we could do all that! Plus I had just had another four hour nap, so I was good to go.
But wait- we almost forgot-first priority was picking out a new mattress. The only thing I ever owned and will ever own from Vera Wang is our mattress. Not sure why she decided to make a mattress instead of a dress five years ago, but she did, and it was the most luxuriously comfortable thing we had ever reclined on when went furniture shopping upon moving into our house. That comfort has now indented two inches and has caused chronic back pain issues and a string of physical therapy appointments. Vera Wang: stick to dresses, please.
We qualify for a new mattress, we just had to pick out a replacement. So this was our first stop at date night. We briefly considered jumping from one bed to another a la the Glee episode where they make a mattress commercial and thereby disqualifying them for the semi-finals. But in reality.. mattress shopping? Super-awkward. Having a salesman follow you around while you practice your natural sleeping positions on 20 beds is a little...personal. What also made it difficult was that we both felt like we had been hit by a 30-car train. The dementors were getting closer for me, and the beginnings of my chest cold made it too tiring to even climb the stairs up to SleepExpress (and what of the name, by the way? Like, take a power nap on 20 beds and then buy your favorite? Or does the sale go so quickly that you sail out the door on your new mattress like in Bedknobs and Broomsticks?) Michael was tackling a migraine and later discovered that the reason it was getting worse was because he had forgotten to take his meds, the two pills lying innocently on the center console of the car, waiting for a beverage to take them with. Every time we lay on a different bed, it was painful to think of getting up again. We lay there half-dead on the mattresses whining about our various aches and discomforts. While there, we also thought of what we would do next on date night. A movie? Too loud for Michael's head. Mini golf? Required movement. Going out for ice cream? Tempting, but we went for something better: after sealing the deal on our new Tempurpedic, Michael went home to take a nap while I ran to Target for the week's groceries.
Super-romantic, I know, but then I didn't have to go out and do it later when I'd inevitably be feeling worse, and Michael had a chance to sleep off his headache a bit. We still got our movie in, even though it was in our basement and interrupted 3 times by a preschooler, and we got our ice cream, even though it came from a box I picked up at Target. Chocolate is chocolate. Parenting is all about improvisation. And the new mattress? Is coming on Friday, just in time for them to take this one, ridden with days of the plague, and burn it.
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