Tale of a Shooting Star…

Mercilessly stolen from Outi:

You are strong… when you take your grief and teach it to smile.
You are brave… when you overcome your fear and help others to do the same
You are happy… when you see a flower and are thankful for the blessing.
You are loving… when your own pain does not blind you to the pain of others.
You are wise… when you know the limits of your wisdom.
You are true… when you admit there are times you fool yourself.
You are alive… when tomorrow’s hope means more to you than yesterday’s mistake.
You are growing… when you know what you are but not what you will become.
You are free… when you are in control of yourself and do not wish to control others.
You are honorable… when you find your honor is to honor others.
You are generous… when you can take as sweetly as you can give.
You are humble… when you do not know how humble you are.
You are thoughtful… when you see me just as I am and treat me just as you are.
You are merciful… when you forgive in others the faults you condemn in yourself.
You are beautiful… when you don’t need a mirror to tell you.
You are rich… when you never need more than what you have.
You are you… when you are at peace with who you are not.
(author possibly Nisha Nair)

Ugh. *sniff* *snork* Yes, that cold that was wearing me out last week thoroughly whomped my behind this weekend. I had a fever, terrible sore throat, stuffy nose and didn’t leave the couch all weekend. The fever has broken and I stopped taking medications for one day just to see how I was really feeling. In a word – crummy. I had a very important two-day meeting of which I have now missed the first day, but there are too many people who have to hop flights back to their hometowns later this week and I couldn’t risk infecting them. I can’t imagine trying to travel feeling like this. Besides, I couldn’t stand up long enough to complete my shower early this morning. Had to sit down for a few minutes half way through.

So, anyway, too sick for stitching. Terry seems to think that I looked better when he got home from work, so I’m hoping that a dose of medicine before bed will help to set this blasted cold on its last legs. Mix that with one more day of rest tomorrow and hopefully I’ll be back to normal soon!

The bed arrived yesterday, thankfully in the morning while Terry was still home with me. We checked all of the parts and pieces and then he left for work. I stayed home again, pulling another one of my half-work-from-home, half-sick days. In my boredom, I started to set up the bed and got as far as having the air chambers installed and ready to fill when I happened to mention it to Terry and received a plaintive “What, without me?” in response, so I stopped. 🙂 The installation finished up fairly quickly once Terry came home. You fill the air chambers to a preset amount, then zip on the pillowtop, insert the foam, close the pillowtop and away you go! We had fun laying on the bed after we finished assembly and testing out different firmness settings. It was so nice that I didn’t want to get up and go downstairs for dinner afterwards! 😀

I think I slept well last night. I kinda passed out, so I don’t remember much, but it was nice. The bed was so soft, warm and cozy this morning that I didn’t want to get up! Soft, new sheets and blanket… oh yeah, and bed! 😆 It’s a little taller than the old mattress so Phoebe is a little wary of getting up and down, but she can make it. I think it may actually be a good thing because it means she’s not jumping on and off the bed all of the time like she sometimes tends to do at night. Terry will eventually build a little padded bench for her to use as a mid-way point for jumping so it’s not so hard on her little joints. But that will wait until we get the furniture into the room. Which will come later… step 2. 😉

It’s true. This whole bed saga has nearly seen its end.

We did manage to get to the Select Comfort store yesterday evening. The sales guy was young, friendly and knowledgable. We had spoken to him on the phone and he was very upfront about wanting us to come in so he could make a commission. After being in there, I realized that with online sales being so easy, he may not actually make much in commissions in a week, so I was happy to oblige. It’s not like I’m paying extra. In fact, thanks to him knowing about a sale that had just started yesterday (imagine our luck!), we saved $150 on the mattress! And because the store is in Delaware, which has no sales tax, I only paid tax on the bed because it’s shipping directly to our home in Pennsylvania.

So, we went, we tried a couple of different beds and then we bought the one we were planning on buying anyway (the 7000 series). However, it was really nice to feel the difference between the lower models and the thick pillowtop one that we went with. The Select Comfort beds have a very different feel than our Nautilus Sleep System bed did (in a good way). Oh, and the sales guy told us that the company that made our original bed went out of business, probably just a year or two after we bought ours. D’oh!

I have to say, if you’re thinking of getting away from an innerspring mattress and trying an air bed, Select Comfort is the way to go. These are just really nice beds. I would strongly urge you to find a store, if you can, and try them for yourself. You truly can’t appreciate it until you’re laying on one. I will never, ever buy an innerspring mattress again. And not just because Terry and I prefer different levels of firmness (though that’s a big factor, too), but you can just sink into these things without having your hips sticking up if your on your side or your rump pushing your lower back up when you’re on your back. Of course, if you prefer it to be firm, you can definitely get that, too. If you want it to be as hard as a rock, it will do hard as a rock. 😆 I mean, I thought our Nautilus bed was nice, but these just take the technology to a whole new level!

Yes, that’s my sales pitch. Just for the record, I do happen to have a vested interest, because if you give them my name as a referral, I get a $50 gift card. It would either be under my name or Terry’s name (Jennifer or Terrence Magee). So, if my words happen to spur anyone on to buying one of these beds, I would greatly appreciate it if you tell them I sent you. 😀 However, I would have given the same rave review, even if I wasn’t getting anything for referrals. Honest!

Anyway, back to the story. We went in, we tried them out and we bought a mattress (we already have the foundation from the Nautilus that will work just fine), plus a set of 420 thread count sheets from heaven, a mattress protector to keep the dust mites at bay (you really don’t want to know the things that live in your mattress), plus a Thinsulate blanket and matching comforter that even snap together for those REALLY cold nights. It didn’t hurt that all of the accessories were 25% off with the purchase of the bed. Talk about the only time I’d be willing to buy expensive sheets, comforter, etc. I’m a sucker for sales.

Fortunately, we finished and submitted our taxes right before we went out, so with any luck our refund will be posted to our account before the credit card statement hits so that we can pay it off immediately without me having to dip into my beloved ING savings account. And then we will promptly go out and spend the remainder of it on furniture for our bedroom. Yep, the entire refund is going into our bedroom. I hope we’re worth it! 😉 Ironically (?), depending on how fast the refund comes through, we might actually have the bedroom furniture before the bed! The refund will take 7 to 14 days and the bed will take up to 14 days to arrive.

BTW, my toe is much better, thank you. I unwrapped it yesterday and was able to jam it into my sneakers and walk fairly normally. Now I just need to get my calf muscle loosened up and I’ll be back to 100%. 🙂

Oh and Outi, the mishmashing shades of blue are slowly going away. The new sheets and blanket are in neutral colors. The only thing left is the blinds and I just don’t care enough to do anything about them at this point. 😆

Finally, for the record, the mold thing was totally creepy and in no way indicative of my housekeeping. I’m not the neatest person in the world (except when it comes to my stash), but I certainly don’t allow or encourage mold to run rampant in my home! I’m not a complete slob! 😀

I just wanted to make that clear…

Yes, dear readers, it’s true. Our Nautilus Sleep Systems bed is history. I took the bed apart last night so that I could put the air mattress on the base for us to sleep on until we figured out what to do and discovered the deciding factor. I first unzipped the pillowtop and as I folded it in half and proceeded to move it into the hallway, my hand found this wet spot in the middle where I had folded it. Yes, wet. Not damp, but soaking wet. Quite dismayed, I wondered what was going on, so I went back and looked at the air chambers which were now exposed and found some drops of wetness towards the middle. Now I’m REALLY starting to wonder what’s going on, so I unfold the pillow top and look at the back side that was against the air chambers. And I see two tiny spots of mold. Oh yes… ew. I called Terry up to take a look because, at this point, I am really flustered. We unzipped the pillow top itself and pulled apart the foam layers. The top layer is memory foam and is unaffected, except for where it has changed colors over the years due to the heat from two people sleeping on it every night. This is normal. Then we looked at the egg crate foam. The front side looked fine, but we looked at the back and found a larger, dispersed area of mold.

Now, to be clear, I’m not talking about the big splotches of green fuzzy mold that grow on top of the ham sandwich that you’ve left in the refrigerator for 3 weeks, I’m talking about the black mildew that forms in a damp area. In the middle of our pillowtop. Now, seriously, how did that happen? I think we will never know for sure. Terry’s best guess is that it stems from the time when we cleaned the pillowtop with the hand tool from our steam cleaner. But we let it air out afterwards and proceeded to sleep on it, so one would think that we would notice a wet spot?? We did add a waterproof, hypo-allergenic mattress cover into the mix, but I’m pretty sure that was some time after the cleaning.

The bottom line remains – we will not be sleeping on that mattress again. So, we’ll be shelling out a whopping $2500 sometime in the next couple of days for a new Queen sized Select Comfort 7000 series mattress. The technology has improved since we first bought ours and apparently, so has the price. We don’t do anything halfway, do we? It’s the next to the top of the line, but hey, I have problems with my hip, shoulders and neck, so I’m not going to skimp when it comes to something I spend 8 hours a day laying on. While I’m at it and because the mattress is 14″ thick and the sheets we have already didn’t really fit the old mattress that wasn’t quite so high, I’m going to break the bank and buy some of their 420 thread count sheets plus a new Thinsulate comforter with matching blanket. I may even throw in a set of the (much cheaper) flannel sheets. All in the blessedly neutral shades of champagne, ivory and natural (i.e. pretty much the same color and shade, just with different names per product), so no more clashing of the blue sheets that don’t even remotely match the blue carpet which doesn’t quite match the blue blinds which don’t quite match the blue wall color. 😆 My only uncertainty is around how off-white bedding is going to work against the white bedroom furniture I was planning on buying, but you know what? If we have company, which we never allow into the bedroom anyway, we can always throw the old blue patterned comforter over the new set, right?

There goes the tax refund. And we haven’t even managed to file yet! I guess we’ll be finishing that up tonight, after we get back from our trek to the local Select Comfort store. We’ll take the truck, just in case, but I don’t think all of the boxes will fit, even if they have one that we can walk away with. Otherwise, I’ll probably have to stay home some day to receive the 6 or so boxes that the bed will come in (we’ve done this before, remember?), which is okay since my calf muscle on the same side as my bad toe has decided to completely freeze up to the point where I can barely walk. Darn my body’s and my attempts to compensate for the toe injury! 😉