2021, Family, home, Kids, Mysteries, Science, Technology, Uncategorized

Going to the Mattresses

62 Comments

Years ago when YA moved from her loft bed into a double bed (and moved from her smaller bedroom to the next size up), I will admit that I bought her a cheap mattress.  I didn’t have much money and between getting her a bed frame and a mattress, it pretty much did away with my disposable income for a few months.  And I figured she was young, it probably wouldn’t deform her for life.  It was a traditional mattress and we drove about 15 miles an hour all the way home from the outlet shop with it precariously tied to the top of our small car.  Had to have a neighbor help me get it up the steps.

A few years later, I was able to get a new box spring and mattress for myself, using the award points that my company gives out (no cash – yea!).  My old mattress had given up the ghost; I actually had duct tape in two or three spots where the springs had poked through.  This new set was delivered and I managed to guilt the delivery guys into wrestling it up the stairs and wrestling the old set down the stairs.  

YA has been complaining about her mattress for a while now and has purchased several different toppers that she says makes it more comfortable.  Honestly part of my reluctance to get her a new mattress is the traditional “how do you get the mattress up the stairs” conundrum.

You can imagine I was a little blind-sided two weeks ago when she announced that she had purchased a new mattress for herself.  My first thought was that we were going to do another perilous trip with a mattress on top of the car.  Then I thought maybe I’d have to negotiate with two burly delivery guys again.  But nope.  She purchased one of the new mattresses that inflate when you take it out of the box.  When the delivery guy brought it, he left the big box sitting on the front sidewalk at the bottom of the stairs – that should have been my clue that it was heavier than it looked.  We managed to get it up the stairs by a combination of shoving and flipping. 

After she got it out of the box, she laid it out in Nonny’s room – apparently it had to “rest” for several hours before you lay on it.  She ended up letting it rest for a whole day and it did seem to get bigger every time I looked at it.  And it was amazingly sturdy once it was done resting.  I’m not really sure of the exact science that goes into these things, but I had assumed it would be more foamy and less sturdy.  Wrong on all counts.

So one more traditional thing evolves… no more big burly delivery folks wrestling a mattress and box spring up the steps!

What do you see as a positive evolution?

62 thoughts on “Going to the Mattresses”

  2. We plan to take a trip to Comfort King in Sioux Falls with Son and DIL in Ocober to get a guest room mattress that will eventually become grandson’s mattress when he grows out of his youth bed. I love getting beds all set with bedding, pillows, blankets, etc.

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        2. Ha! If you count the fancy shams on two of my pillows, then there are six pillows on my bed. And since my bed is all mine, this means six pillows for my head!!

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    1. My son just bought a robot for his business—they do digital engieering and need circuit boards which cannot be manufacturing overseas in lots less than 1,000. He and business partner make prototypes requiring circuits in small quantities. So they bought a used robot to make the parts they need. He had a picture of it. It looks like an oven with a keyboard.

      So much for my preconceived notions of robots. No adorable R2D2.

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        2. I think of the Roomba as a robot, am I wrong about that?

          Husband’s last place of employment, before he retired, utilizes lots of robots, none of which have any human characteristics. They do all of their repetitive work and work that requires accuracy in terms of measurement, cutting and drilling of holes. Initially these robots were cost-saving devices, but more and more they also reflect the inability to find employees who have both the skill and willingness to that kind of work. It would be cost prohibitive to do what they do without robots.

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      2. I once spent a little time studying robots. Some of them, like you say, look nothing like what the word suggests. But it is possible with a few engineering tricks to create a robot that seems friendly and totally interested in you. That turns out to be pretty easy, and people are flattered when their robots pay more attention to them than their kids or friends. For some people, robots are kinda creepy. And yet many folks–especially the Japanese–don’t feel that at all. I now fully expect the market to produce robots that are almost impossible to dislike.

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        1. I’m kind of with Bill on this one. The shadows under the feet look real but I’m having a lot of trouble envisioning the time and money that went into making this video if it’s real.

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  4. Rise and Shine Baboons,

    Much of mental health treatment has evolved during the span of my career. When I started in 1981 it was all about family dysfunction and your mother. Now it is about exercise, medication and cognitions that make patterns. The first treatment for insomnia is now a Cognitive Behavior Therapy protocol creating new conditioned responses.

    This is a positive evolution.

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  5. My electric food mill/ strainer is a god send, as I can puree tomatoes in minutes with very little fuss and I don’t wear myself out like I did with the manual one.

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  6. I rather fancy hand-held rangefinders used by golfers to measure distances. They save time and steps because I don’t have to find a distance marker in the ground and pace off yards from that marker, then add or subtract to the flagstick on the green.

    And I would NOT be taking solo canoe trips without lightweight, sturdy Kevlar canoes and all the other light. compact gear outdoors companies make these days.

    Chris in Owatonna

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  8. Had not been in a nursing home in years. My mother had half of a small room, very little space for anything personal. Sandy is in a large studio apartment with an alcove looking onto trees in which I have set up her chair and her tv surrounded by personal things. Even has a little kitchenette. Of course I pay for it but that is all right.

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    2. I had a conversation with my mom on Sunday about if her place is considered a “nursing home”. She talks about the one her mother was in back in 1990 and it was $3000 / month and this certainly is a better looking space than that. Nice windows and an adequate view, good meals, and yes, fridge and sink in an outer room… but I suppose technically, it’s still a nursing home.

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      1. I live in what they now want to call “extended living facilities.” They don’t want us to call them “nursing homes.” When businesses invent complicated euphemisms like that, it is usually part of an attempt to deny uncomfortable truth.

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        2. The very large, presumably French – based haulage company, Norbert Dentresstangle, does not describe itself as a haulage company, or at least, not when I had a brief fling with them about ten years ago. I still can’t remember the exact description, it went on a bit. Something like “Finding(or providing) some kind of solution (about something) with added value.” I think I’ve shortened it, but it didn’t mention transport, haulage, or logistics even.

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        3. My friend, Philip, was in what they called “assisted living” for a while. That didn’t last long. He rebelled. “It’s a damn nursing home,” he declared. So he was moved to another part of the same facility, which is more like what Clyde describes, at least in terms of physical surroundings. He has his own apartment with a tiny kitchen, but all of his “assistance” and “care” are provided by outside agencies and a team of extremely dedicated friends and volunteers. But there’s no getting around it, if you live long enough, or have a lot of mental or physical health issues, life can be very complicated.

          Clyde, it sounds to me like you’ve really lucked out with finding a place for Sandy. I’m hopeful that she’ll soon settle in, and appreciate her new surroundings. That in turn will allow you to take better care of your own needs, and give you the peace of mind to know you did the best you could under the circumstances.

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  9. Don’t want to be predictable (ha ha, not much). Chainsaws evolved between 1963, when Dad first bought a Remington Bantam,and approximately 1966,when he saw a newish model ( make unknown), belonging to a contractor. I never saw it, but he said it was a revelation. And saws have been that good ever since,with few further basic changes. My favourite : the Dolmar 118 I bought about 1978. A beautiful saw with only one safety device, easily removed.

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        2. Silly me. Motorcycles, sewing machines, and the best chainsaws in the world. I’m so enamoured of Stihl, I forgot.

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    2. Kelly made a comment the other day about clearing out some buckthorn and so I bought her one of those new battery powered chainsaws. They are getting pretty good reviews, especially if you’ve got a big enough battery. 

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        1. Or something, yeah, I know we can’t just cut it off… There’s a corner of the driveway, along part of the old calf pen and we used to be able to look down into the cow yard and across the fields. That’s where all the buckthorn is now; mixed in with a fence… so it’s going to be an issue… and a pain.

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  12. there’s a place in Rochester called ‘Rest Assured Mattress’ company. They make the mattresses right there. In fact my cousin Bill made our current mattress. Yeah, they buy the boxsprings and he tells you that right up front. He’s taken us in back and showed us the spring systems. Then the changes they offer is the mattress pads and covering. But at least I know that they made it and the money stays local. Plus they are real good at donating foam to the theater department if I need some thing and they can make custom size mattresses for boats and campers and such.
    I remember once staying in a hotel and really liking the mattress and looking for the brand name on it. When we got back to town and went looking for that mattress, they told us how the names are all changed so it was hard to compare.

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  13. I’m pretty fond of tapping the credit card at the grocery store. Remember how long the grocery line was when people stood there and wrote checks at the register? Especially before UPC codes, when the cashier had to punch in the prices. I often go through the self-check, where there is seldom any line. Swipe, swipe, swipe, type in the code for the bananas, swipe, swipe, tap, pick up the receipt and out the door. So fast and easy.

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