I hope I can get Ron out of it now.

"How many do you have?" I asked the man with the cart full of cat food, yesterday.  An animated discussion ensued about his 9 (!) cats and what we do for them.  He was impressed we had a catio. 

Ron preened.  Then we got home and found a bashed in window. 

Lately, I have been experiencing some low back pain and stiffness.  It's been pretty bad, I had to do stretching exercises at work the other day.  I mentioned it to Ron, along with my theory I probably needed a new mattress. 

My old mattress was over 10 years old, and was only 4 inches thick.  It did the job, many a night, for years.  Frosty, Bubba, and Gravy slept on that mattress with me, before they died.  Biscuit and Bubba vomited on it.  Baby Girl, Torbie, and Biscuit slept with me on that mattress.  It did alright for quite a while. 

And I got it from Ikea.  Now, I concluded it might be a good idea to get my next mattress from them, and told Ron I had enough saved up to get a basic mattress. 

I do have to add, while Ikea has good mattresses, their beds and bed bases are terrible.  I had constant trouble with the bed I got from them and now sleep on a bed base from Amazon, far cheaper, little assembly, and very comfortable.  It also has lots of room for storage underneath. 

But we got sidelined by the patio door drama and that was that, I figured.  Maybe next week. 

The guys left around 1:30 and I was able to take a nap.  When I got up Ron had arranged for our driver to take me to Ikea. 

Let me tell you, that was VERY odd, shopping for a bed with a man who wasn't my husband.  I had looked online and found a likely suspect, a foam/innerspring combination.  It was about $250.  My old one cost $200 and it was comfy for 10 years, so I felt fine with the price point. 

When we got to the mattress section, I had a look at it first.  Yes, it was very comfortable.  I tossed and turned as if I were trying to sleep.  I laid down on a couple of other beds, but it was fine.  It had as much foam as my old bed, plus innersprings, plus more foam.  I was sure it would be fine. 

And, like I said, I haven't had a problem with an Ikea mattress.  Then we had the fun part of lugging the 60 pound cylinder (they are stored, rolled up) onto the cart, through checkout (the Mark of the Beast is coming, half the registers didn't take cash!), into the truck bed, and into the garage. 

I took over from there.  I shut the door behind me and dragged the beast into the house, leaving it in the hallway.  Then I stripped my old bed, put the sheets in the wash, reserved the mattress pad, locked up the cats, and dragged the old mattress out to the street. 

Then I came back into the house, released the cats, dragged the new bed cylinder into the bedroom, and positioned it on the bed. 

However, I had some "help" from cats who wanted to walk around on the bed base now that the mattress was gone.  I chased them off, positioned the mattress, and began cutting the plastic. 

BOOM!  It exploded as I screeched in alarm.  The mattress erupted from the packaging, expanding at an alarming rate.  Biscuit ran between the mattress and the bed base, then out again as it began to sink on him. 

I'd say it was totally expanded within 2 minutes.  I had positioned it basically where it needed to be, so I didn't have much trouble.  I just had to wrangle it a little and then make the bed with the mattress pad and bedsheet. 

It's a queen sized bed, and the mattress is double the depth of my old mattress, coming in at a comfortable 9 inches deep.  I slept fine, I didn't have any sort of adjustment period. 

Most importantly, I didn't wake up with a backache. 

Ron wanted to "try it out".  He doesn't look like he wants to leave.  Good news, if he likes it we can get him one in a twin.  His mattress is over 15 years old. 

The only problem, he may never get up if we get him one.