Acid Mattress *

Last Saturday I bit the bullet and went to Canadian Tire and bought this mattress, the Obus forme 8" memory foam Queen size mattress. Our previous mattress, if you could call it that, was a piece of foam so old that my parents got it when they were first married. I am 31. They got married two years before I came along, so do the math. I'd like to think of it as an antique, only foam rubber doesn't really age well, so we have basically been sleeping on the slats of our humble Ikea bed for the past 8 years.

My mom talked the poor sales guy into giving it to us for $100 off, which was the flyer price of the previous week, and so I carted the box home and hubby and I gleefully unwrapped the thing. Memory foam is interesting. It was vaccuum-packed into the box and when we cut the plastic open, it seemed to inflate itself. We lay down on the newly-unpacked mattress and it felt like lying on an inflating marshmallow.

I've now been sleeping on the mattress for 6 nights, and each night is a new acid-trip adventure.

One night I was wearing a flamenco-style skirt and peeing in a pail - the 'washroom' - behind some bookshelves at an artist-run centre. The next night, Serena Williams was being bitten by sea turtles in the ocean. I visited Tina Fey at her house, which was decorated almost entirely in toys. I had a look at the insides of my own body. I went hiking in a wintery wilderness and found elk antlers, and carted them with me, which was awkward because I had to be fearful of stalking bears (yes I know that bears hibernate). I was in an jumbo airliner flying between the buildings of Vancouver, right over the streets and almost scraping the buildings with the wingtips, but to be fair that is a dream that I've had before.

Every night, I kind of dread what's coming up, because I wake up not knowing which end is up and I'm exhausted from all of the action.

This mattress makes a lot of claims. It claims to repel allergens with some technology that involves silver somehow. It claims to boost metabolism, but I'm still waiting to see the results of that. All I can say is that it's a shocker to lay down on, because it feels like my bed is made of plywood, but it softens under me and is so super comfy that I think about it all day. My old-lady hip still hurts but I care less, and I think it's just a matter of finding the right position. The only problem is my shoulders - what do most humans do with their shoulders when they sleep? My arms are always in the way, or they're falling asleep, which is super scary - ever wake up feeling like a dead guy is groping your leg? I have. But it was my own dead arm, which took about 10 minutes to revive, even after mouth-to-mouth. Nice. My husband and I were wondering the other day what it would be like if we had detachable arms like Barbie dolls, which we could take off before sleeping and pop back on the next morning. Our only problem was how to get them back on with no arms? Teeth? Special arm racks? We spend too much time alone together, he and I.

Anyway, I guess it's no wonder my dreams are what they are.

Long story short - I love the mattress. I love it. My hip, shoulders and brain still have to get used to it, but it's nice and high, and it has the added benefit of not being older than I am.

* Also the name of my future band, which will sound a lot like a cross between Stereolab and Indian music.