A Night Like No Other…

It was the first night in the new house, and we were sleeping in the guest room floor on an air mattress. We had been fortunate to stay at Betsy’s parents for the last week until we could get the guest room ready. Once we thought it was ready enough to stay there, we decided it would be fun to try it out and make a go of it! Exhausted from weeks of packing, moving and remodeling, we needed a good sleep in our own house. What a nightmare! The air mattress was losing air and we were sinking slowly toward the floor – or at least I was. Betsy was buoyed by my being on the other side of the bed. My back hurt, my knees hurt, and I was not able to sleep due to the pain, and the lack of support from a leaky air mattress. We had bought a brand-new air mattress in preparation for the move, but it was still packed away. So, there we were, staring at the new guest room ceiling when Betsy had the best idea of the night. “we could go to Wal-Mart and get a new air mattress”. A-ha! Yes, that beats trying to unpack the trailer to find it. We couldn’t fire up the compressor in the middle of the night and wake up the folks in the townhouse next to us, so Wal-Mart was the best idea. Somehow, “we” turned into “me” going to Wal Mart at 1:00 am to get a new air mattress. One with a built-in pump! Fortunately, Wal-Mart wasn’t too busy at that hour. I was back in a jiffy with the new mattress pumped up and ready. We swapped the sheets and were laying down by 2:15 a.m. The Ibuprofen I took before going to Wally World had kicked in, so I was able to get about 2 ½ hours of broken sleep before getting up at 5:30. Ugh! “The first order of business today is buying a mattress for the guest room and get that bed set up – We cannot handle another night like last night”, Betsy said. She walked into The Original Mattress Factory two minutes after they opened. Needless to say, we had a nice new mattress to sleep on that night.
Here is a short list of lessons learned:
1. Don’t try to live through a whole house remodel, unless you are young or newlyweds. It is miserable.
2. Sleep is a wonderful thing! (not a new lesson, just reinforcing the fact)
3. When you buy an air mattress to try and “camp” at your new place – make sure you don’t pack it.
4. When you have a bad back and bad knees, pay someone to pack and move your stuff.
5. When buying and selling a house, two closings on the same day sounds like a good idea, but it is not all it’s cracked up to be. Trying to get two closing attorneys to both not make any mistakes or need last minute items, is asking a lot!
6. Don’t stop going to the gym, you need to be in the best physical shape you can be when you try to move.
7. The Original Mattress Factory makes a nice mattress!