I'll be turning in around six tonight.

"Sleep Country USA,
Why buy a mattress anywhere else (ding)?"

For those who aren't familiar with this jingle, it's the most annoying assembly of tones ever assembled for the purpose of purveying a product to the American consumer public...

...and it's where we bought a mattress yesterday.

I apologize for subjecting you to those words. They'll bore into your brain and lay their larva like next-door neighbors who park their one-wheeled Airstream along your front curb. They can inflict a "song tumor," a nightmarish combination of subconscious singing and whistling which can last at least twenty-four hours.

So don't think about the Sleep Country USA song, starting right now.

Yeah, so we bought this new mattress yesterday. It was one of those things where you've been talking for a while about replacing the old one, and hey, look, here we are in front of this mattress store. Let's just go in and see how much they cost, maybe lie down on a couple and test the mattress waters.

We walked out an hour later with the most expensive freaking mattress in the store, the Serta iComfort mattress. It's got something like fifty-seven inches of foam which conforms not only your body shape, but apparently also maps your genomes and creates a nice little cushy DNA buffer. Which is nice.

These people had us at memory foam.

It's a highly unusual purchase for my wife and I, since, like a lot of middle-agers, we're constantly weighing current expenditures against long term outlays, most notably kids' college and retirement. My bride has always been one to err on the side of fiscal conservatism, and I've followed suit since the early Nineties. Except beer.

We've flirted with Hondas, yet thrice purchased Kias.

Old Navy is a name mentioned more frequently in our house than Johnny Depp. Wait, that's not true.

On my weekly grocery trips to Safeway, I salivate thinking about how much I'll save using my club card. It's a payoff sweeter than any amount of freshly harvested earwax after I've examined that receipt and learned of an eighty cent savings on my next petrol purchase.

So very sad.

But now we've got the most expensive mattress in the store, sitting on the bed just waiting me to plop my weathered carcass onto its supple petroleum-based virginity.

I promise to be gentle.