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Dear Helga... 2006-03-19

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Helga is gone.

Ah, Helga, the new mattress so named because I'd wake up every morning feeling like I'd been slung around the room by a large Hungarian woman the whole of the night before. (Not, obviously, in the good way.) Helga, who beat me up on a regular basis but was nothing but wonderful for my back. Not for anything else, mind you, but wonderful for my back.

Just after the New Year, I started having some lumbar issues, which could probably be attributed to the fact that I was crying only twice a day by then, and so, you know, it all had to come out some other way. God, we were all breaking down by then. My mother needed a cortisone shot in her knee, my father's body decided that sleep was now something of the past, and my sister, who also happens to be in the throes of planning a wedding, started breaking out in cold sores and other little bits of horror. Frankly, my being unable to move because of a bad back made me the lucky one. At least it gave me an excuse to spend money, which has become my chosen form of therapy.

I called my cousin, who happened to marry the crown prince of mattresses, and he told me to stop by one of the showrooms and bounce around on a few. I did that, and told the sales guy who took care of me that I didn't want to mess about, that I wanted a mattress with balls, a mattress that meant business. No loosey-goosey soft thing that wouldn't do the job - I wanted Firm Support.

Dear God. Two weeks ago, two delivery men showed up at my door with Helga. Is a mattress supposed to make a noise when you knock on it? Should you even be able to knock on a mattress?

One of my favourite things to do when I'm on the phone is to flop, face-down, across my bed, phone to my ear and feet waving back and forth in the air. So there I am, shiny of eyes and brilliant of smile, on the phone with The Boy, this Lovely Boy, the Dawson Leery of boys because he's both a film-maker and cute as pie. (And frankly, if I'm going to work a little Katie Holmes fantasy, I'd rather it be Dawson than that nutjob she's currently bearding for.) Anyway. So there I am, on the phone with Dawson, smiling and talking away, when I make like a sixteen-year old and throw myself across my new bed to giggle on the phone for a while. Oh, dear, sweet Lord in heaven.

It's not like the bed was uncomfortable per se. It's more like it didn't really identify with the idea of comfort and warmth, because it was raised by a particularly unforgiving church pew.

Two weeks of having Helga around, and my pillows were retreating to the corners to closet eat. Helga was picking fights with the other mattresses in the house, and my bedroom suite was threatening to contact a union rep. I'd get into bed at night, and visions of street rumbles would dance in my head, because Helga, obviously, was a Jet and she made me a Shark and how on can anyone sleep with all that snapping, hmm?

I lasted four days before I called my cousin and said that, regretfully, my mattress with balls had effectively kicked my bottom. Please, I begged, I can live with a bad back. Just please take Helga away.

So, finally, yesterday she was carted off, stoic 'til the end, her pride keeping her upright as she bullied the delivery men through the door. This morning, I awoke from my first night on my new mattress, refreshed from the first deep sleep I'd gotten in two weeks. It's lovely, really, except for the love letter of a twinge that's being written in my lumbar area...

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