Adventures in Bed

....Buying, that is. Dirty minds!

Yesterday, we decided that it was time to buy a new bed. Ok, actually, we decided that years ago, but yesterday we had money. The bed that we're sleeping on now, and I use several of those words loosely, is old. While impressive at a King size, the mattress is so thin, that when we moved here, and didn't have much room left on the truck, we actually folded it in half to get it to fit. The entire mattress actually folded in half. Additionally, the mattresses originally belonged to (you ready?): My ex-husband's grandparents. Then, my ex and I. Now, GWH and I. Aside from the 30 year oldness, and the fold in halfness, that alone was reason to buy a new one, don't you think? I agree. Now that I have justified my purchase to my friends inside the computer, I can continue on with this story of intrigue and adventure.

There are 3 mattress stores in town. Which, to me, seems odd, as the town only has 25,000 people and no Sams or Costco. We need a Costco way worse than 3 mattress stores. But, whatever, deal the hand you're dealt, or something. We figured between the 3 of them, we should be able to find something we wanted. We also figured that Medina Mattress was our best bet. So, of course, we went to the other 2.

Mattress store 1: The sales guy was way creepy. Think I saw him in a movie where there was much death and stalking. He wouldn't make eye contact, to the point that I thought he might be blind. I probably should have hopped from bed to bed to see if he could keep up with me as a test, but we were really just so weirded out that we had to leave. He followed us all the way to the sidewalk saying that if we would just come back when we were done shopping, he'd give us $20 off to cover the gas. Sorry, buddy, it's going to cost you more than $20 to ever have me within restraining order range of you again.

Mattress store 2: A bit more promising. All we had to deal with there was a very exuberant older gentleman with a sweet love for cologne. He was talking a mile a minute, but at least looked at us and had a personality that didn't scream "I will wait for you outside your bedroom window". He had me convinced that the $700 pillowtop set was the one for me. Would have bought it on the spot had he not said that delivery would take place on Wednesday. I'm rather impatient, I don't know if I can hold out for 4 days. Might go to Sams and buy whatever they have and tie them to the top of the van and make GWH lay on top holding them down while I drive home 95 miles an hour on the freeway. Only problem with that plan was that there is no freeway on the way home from Sams.

Mattress store 3 / "the one": At this point, I was ready to say the hell with Medina, lets drive over and see what they have at Sams. But, fine, since we're right here, lets stop in. Probably the thing that made this store the best was the fact that it was crowded, so no sales guys were trying to hump us on the bed to show us how well the polysodacarbonbandaidgouda springs work under extreme use. We, of course, being the impetuous fools we are, asked first "What is your delivery window?". 30 minutes, he said. Woo hoo, we're buying here! We can get it today without GWH having to mattress surf all the way home on a freeway going the other way. This is our place. Now, to pick one. I, of course, being the sensible one in the relationship, quickly found the one that was almost identical to the one we'd picked out at colognia, and deemed it the one. This is where the fine point of the store being crowded came back to bite me on the ass like a bed bug on steroids. We figured while we waited, we'd take some of the others for a test drive. So, we laid in each one, farted some, drooled alot, watched TV, ate cheesy poofs, etc. We considered having sex, but since we don't do that at home, it seemed pretty pointless. Finally, we come to what must be the Grand Daddy of mattresses, as they have it displayed on this big ass 4 poster bed that I think King Rich Fucker of Austria actually slept in. "Oh my God!" GWH exclaimed as he lay upon the fluffy pillowness. "Oh my God!!" CAW (cheap ass wife) exclaimed as she gazed upon the price tag. "This is the most comfortable bed I've ever not slept in!" he says, excitedly. "This is twice as much as we were going to pay!" she replied. "Go back and lay in that one and use your imagination!" she pleaded.

But, being the loving and dutiful wife I am, we decided we'd go with the one he liked. Honestly, I don't have a strong enough opinion about the quality of the mattresses to get into a debate about it (which is why I liked the cheap one, more money left over for the 17th pair of flip flops for 2006, or $25 lipsticks at the Clinique counter). Fate threw me a bone fragment when the sales guy informed us that he didn't actually have those mattresses in stock in queen, but he did have the next one down (a mere $1400 for this set!) ready to go.

So, those are the ones we bought. Incidentally, he was apparently lying about the 30 minutes, since they aren't delivering until today. But, that's just as well, I need to vacuum under the old bed before they get here and notice that dh's body hair has formed an army in the corner and is planning an attack.

That's my story. I'll spare you the bedding buying experience, other than to mention that the quilt we picked out has the same name as GWH's ex-girlfriend.

We just can't keep our exes out of our bed.

OH OH OH!!!!

I almost forgot (wth???).

I GOT A NEW SEWING MACHINE!

Check that off the list, baby!

My husband is straight. At least I think so.

GWH was reading my blog yesterday and said to me:

"Why am I 'Gay White Husband'?"

Which is actually way funnier than what it actually stands for, so maybe we'll just go with it.

Please make sure I'm REALLY dead.

Aside from my completely irrational fear of using the telephone (another post, another day), I also have one of not really being dead.

Since I don't like to limit myself, I'm not only afraid of being buried alive. Oh no, I'm afraid of all the things they might do to me when I'm not REALLY dead. Autopsy, organ harvesting, creamation, embalming, you name it.

When my mother died, they did a little bit TOO good a job with the makeup. She seriously didn't look dead, and I figured she'd be sitting up at any second, which creeped the shit out of me. I'm easy creeped, too.

When my grandmother died, I had a dream every night for a year that she wasn't actually dead and was REALLY mad that I'd gotten rid of all her stuff and sold her house.

I'm not sure if these 2 events are results of my paranoia, or contributed to it, but I swear I just get worse by the minute.

I've already told everyone who will listen that I don't want to be cremated. Just in case I'm not really dead. Just buying more time to wiggle my finger or something before they put me in the ground. Being buried alive doesn't sound that fun, but I figure it's gotta be better than being cremated alive. I'm also not an organ donor, for the same reason. I realize this makes me a bad person, but what if I'm not really dead?

GWH needs a cornea transplant. So, of course, we've been talking about the fact that someone has to die in order for him to be able to see out of that eye ever again. I like to tease him and tell him that he's going to have a smelly old lady eye, and he said he's going to give it a name and go around looking at people through it and saying things like "Marge doesn't like you". You would think that knowing someone who hopefully will be the receipient of the world's greatest gift would sway my decision about organ donation. And, I'll admit, as I get older and my likely hood of needing parts and things increases, I am starting to change my mind. Slowly.

We had the conversation last night. It of course started out with 'but what if I'm not really dead....?. So, just to prove that I'm being strong and changing my mind, I said "Well, they can have my heart, but not my corneas. What if I'm not really dead?"

GWH never misses his cue to make fun of me.

"So, you're not really dead, but they can have your heart?"

I guess I'd be really dead then, huh? Might as well go on ahead, take my corneas, and otherwise defile my corpse. But make sure you do my nails. I need to look my best when I don't have corneas anymore.

Anatomically Correct

I get my nails done roughly every 2 weeks, always at the same place. As I have been going to this same salon for 2 years now, I have gotten to know the staff, and even some of the customers pretty well. Some, perhaps, a little too well.

I love it when I go in and the owner, David, is flailing around dancing and singing loudly along with 'Like a Virgin'. That alone is worth the price of the nails. I love it when he gives one of the girls hell for the way she dresses, and when they tease him for being short. All in all, I have a very entertaining time at this salon.

Sometimes, though, it gets a little too personal.

One day, a couple of months ago, I started talking to a woman while our nails dried. Regular practice at the nail drying station. "How about this weather?" "Yep, crazy, I tell you!" "Did you hear they are putting a Bed, Bath and Beyond on North Court?" Etc. This particular woman seemed very well to do. Middle aged, or beyond, she was slender and made up, clothes looking very expensive and well thought out. Nary a dark root or grey hair showing through her perfectly blonde hair. She was also very soft spoken, and articulate. We talked about the fact that I have 5 kids, which seems to be the topic of conversation every time I go. If I didn't know 2 other families on this block with equal or greater number of kids than I have, I'd swear I was the only one in the county.

Eventually, and I can't remember how (you know, that whole brain blocking out the bad stuff thing), she began to start telling me about a recent surgery she'd had. Couldn't be a knee surgery, or even open heart surgery. Oh, no. This woman was telling me about VAGINA surgery. That was the word she used, vagina. Might have been more entertaining if she'd gone with cooter, hootch, vag, etc. She went on to tell me, in great (very great) detail about the reconstruction. It's all rather hazy now, thankfully, but there was rebuilding, something about mesh (I keep thinking Magic Mesh when I tell this story... which is only funny to scrapbookers, but funny nonetheless. So many uses for the Magic Mesh!).

I walked out of there, overshare almost weighing me down to the point of paralysis. Rushed home and immediately told GWH the entire story. He married me, if I gotta hear about old people cooter, so does he!

I've seen her in there a couple times since, and she's mentioned my 5 kids. Apparently having 5 kids makes me quite memorable. If only she knew the effect of vaginal description.

Earlier this week, GWH and I were chatting along as we drove down the main road on the same side of town as the nail salon. I looked over and saw this woman out for a stroll with her husband. I, of course, just had to point her out. And, what better way to do so than to announce:

LOOK! It's the woman with the VAGINA!

Go ahead, let that soak in a minute.

I'm not sure I've ever seen a look like that on his face. I hope I do again, someday. I bet I will, I have no shortage of totally moronic things to say.

Riddle Me This

It's a standing joke around here that we have too much Jell-O. I don't know why we have so much. I mean, I bought it, but I still don't know. I must buy it for a reason... maybe for a recipe I never end up using, or a sale, or who knows. But we have at least 20 packages of it. That might not seem like that much except for the fact that I.never.make.Jell-O. The other day, Alec made 3 packages, just because we had so much.

Last week, while shopping with Cody, we walked down the Jell-O aisle. "Hey, mom, lets get some Jell-O" Yuk Yuk Har Har. Then he saw it. He had to have it. We must buy it.

Mystery Flavor

Personally, I try not to eat it even when I know what flavor it is, but kids are kids. They won't eat dinner, but they'll eat mystery Jell-O.

So, we get home, and we're talking about the Mystery Jell-O. Cody says "there's a puzzle on the side that tells you what flavor it is, but I couldn't figure it out."

Well, step aside, and let the brilliant, intelligent and expert puzzle solver look at it. It was one of those Rebus puzzles from our youth. Ahh... cake, I think. It was just 2 pictures. The first was a dog saying "Grr". The other was a gorilla holding bananas.

I said "dog banana...?" with great puzzlement. Who the hell would make Dog Banana Jell-O?

Alec took the package from me, took a 2 second look at it, and said, condesendingly "GRRRRRR APE. GRAPE" with a silent "you idiot" on the end.

Good thing I'm brilliant and intelligent, because my expert puzzle solver seems to have disappeared.

#2 Visit Ireland

Rumor has it, I am part Irish. Whether or not this is true is anybody's guess. My parents were both adopted. My father has been out of the picture since I was very little (in fact, I wouldn't know him if he came to the door). I don't know anything about his biological parents, other than them supposedly both being med students that wanted to finish school before becoming parents. I have no idea if that's true. Sounds like a big lie to me, but who knows. I can just see his adoptive parents being told that to make the sale, or them telling him that to try to trick him into being smart.

My mother's adoptive mother, the grandmother that raised me, had a little more information about the biological parents. She met them, had names, etc. I haven't gone too deep into it, since I really have no desire to actually MEET these people*, but I am curious where I might have come from. My biological grandmother was 19 when she had my mother... which was her 3rd baby. My grandmother's sister's inlaws (get that?) ran a boarding house. The 2nd baby lived there, which is how they got in touch. The boarding house people told my grandmother that there was a baby there that needed a home, and has she had gone through several losses and a stillbirth, it seemed a perfect match. So, she adopted my mother. Who, by 3 months, had already been so severely neglected that she had open sores on her bottom the size of quarters. Her winner mother would prop a bottle in her mouth and go to the bar to drink. Her biological father was a little more responsible, but he was working. He actually didn't want to give her up, but he couldn't raise her on his own, so he agreed.

I've often wondered if it was that first 3 months of neglect that made my mother the bipolar mess she was, but I guess that's another post.

Anyway, as it was, back in 1953 when this all went down, the adoption was a pretty open thing. In fact, my grandmother had to find 3 people that knew both her and the biological parents. Which, I gather, wasn't easy. As such, she met the biological parents several times, and knew their names, etc.

This is where the irish bit comes in. She told me that my biological grandfather, was tall, thin and very very irish. Red hair, green eyes, last name McKeon. So, I suppose that makes me at least 1/4 irish. Maybe more from the mystery pool of genetics that I come from, but without the new fangled genetic testing they are now doing (which I wouldn't mind getting if it weren't 43 trillion dollars), there's no way to know.

That was part of the reason I want to go to Ireland. But mostly just because I like beer and it seems a good fit.

Someday, I'll elaborate on the whole bipolar infested childhood I had.

*I thought about looking up my biological grandfather, who, according to my grandmother, was very upset about giving up my mother. But, as she made some very bad choices, and died in 1995, I didn't really think it a good idea. Maybe if life had turned out sunshine and light, he'd like to know that. But, he's an old old man now, and the life he envisioned for her is probably much better than the one she actually had, so I think it's best to let him die with that, even though he probably thinks he'd like to know. I don't think he does.