is there any more pie?

I think I’ve posted before about my fondness for January 12.

This year is the 50th anniversary of our first date.

We can’t believe we’re this old.  I guess as long as we don’t look in the mirror today, we’ll survive.

Banjo Man and I intend to stay home tonight, eat leftovers and watch football.  We have cleaned my office and hung some drapes in the bedroom.  Not very romantic, but it made us old folks happy.

Yesterday we actually got in the car together and did some errands!  Then we had lunch, which was very wonderful (the $9.99 special at Ninety-Nine).  On the way home we stopped at Walmart, where Banjo Man picked up all of his bargain fruit and I napped in the car.

I am very good at napping in the car.  It’s a skill I perfected when I had teenagers and had to wait for softball games or football practices or rehearsals to end.  After a long day in front of the computer, I took advantage of any quiet moments in which to close my eyes and pass out while in the parking lot of the high school.

I also napped–in my new bed–when we arrived home yesterday.

Purple Bed Update:  this mattress is glorious.  Heaven.  The best thing ever.  And the “adjustable base”?  Well, be still my heart.

What baffles me is that neither of my physical therapists have heard of the Purple Bed.  I explained to my cancer PT that this was the first time I’d been comfortable sleeping on my right side since the surgery.  I explained to my sciatica PT that the pain in my leg and hip was much less at night now and I was sleeping so much better.

They looked very surprised.  And possibly a bit skeptical.

I am going to the mattress store tomorrow and getting brochures so I can pass them out at therapy and Spread The Word.

But tonight it’s time to open a bottle of wine and celebrate 50 Years With Banjo Man.  Who knew it would last this long????

Almost everyone I know is hurting:  hips and knees and backs and everything in between.

So consider this a public service announcement, because this solution never appeared on my Google searches regarding sciatica.

What solution, you ask.  A new mattress!!!!

I’ve been suffering with leg pain for months.  Twice-weekly physical therapy didn’t help much, though the therapists did their best and I did all the daily recommended stretches.

And then we went away.  The Bourbon Orleans had a lovely, comfy bed.  My leg pain improved…a lot.  I assumed that was because I was walking more, even though my doctor had advised me to take it easy.  The pain was almost gone by the time we hit Austin.  I still limped a little in the morning but I wasn’t hanging onto chairs and balancing against walls to get to the coffee pot in the morning.

After two weeks we returned home and I crawled back into my familiar bed and sighed with relief that we were home safe and sound.  And the next morning?  The pain had returned with a vengeance.  What could be the problem?  I gave it a lot of thought until that light bulb moment:  the mattress!!!

But our mattress was relatively new, I assured Banjo Man.  He was unconvinced.  And then I remembered we’d bought it…twenty years ago.

“We’d better go shopping,” he said.

Shopping???  Whoa, there!  I had to do research first!  As in googling, “best mattress for sciatica”.

After seventeen hours I narrowed it down to the weird Purple mattress and several “memory foam” manufacturers.  Off we went to lie down on about twenty mattresses.  I would be crippled by the time we left the Mattress Firm, but we’d agreed that the Purple mattress–whose specialty was relieving “pressure points”–felt the best by far.

Banjo Man grumbled incessantly about memory foam.  It was quite amusing…the first fifteen minutes.  I admitted that memory foam could take a bit of getting used to, but it was supposed to be good for painful parts of one’s body.

The Purple mattress will be delivered tomorrow.  I will have 120 days to decide if it works or I want my money back.   In the meantime I’m sleeping in the basement where the mattresses are younger.

I’ll keep you posted.