The Tale of The Bed and The Condom (it's not what you're thinking)

Memory foam is a fabulous invention.

Memory foam mattress pads are even better. Like sleeping on a wee bit o' fluffy heaven.

Until, that is, you add children who like to sleep with their parents but still occasionally wet the bed. Oh, and cats who act out in stress by peeing on your sheets.

At that point, your wee bit o' fluffy heaven becomes a big effing piece of shit from hell. It sucks up the pee smell and it's impossible to clean, and when you try to clean it anyway it's impossible to dry, and it's OMG WHY THE HELL DID WE EVER BUY THIS THING?!?

So.

After one episode of goddamn-it-why-aren't-you-in-your-own-bed child pee and three episodes of stressed-out cat pee in the space of exactly 6 days, we decided that we needed to either really clean the thing or just get rid of it already. I don't know about you, but sleeping with the enchanting smell of urine under my toes is just not high on my list of best ways to spend my down time.

After pouring about a gallon of Nature's Miracle on it, the pad had evolved into smelling like chemical-treated urine. So. Awesome. We made the last-ditch decision to pull it off the bed and clean it in the bathtub, using the shower head to soak it thoroughly in the desperate hope that we wouldn't have to throw $125 of "innovative, hypo-allergenic, temperature-smart, open-cell therapeutic foam*" out the window. Or, out the slider and off the deck, if you will.

We spent about an hour wrestling the damn thing into the tub and soaking it down. I'll tell you what, if I ever live in a house where basement flooding is a problem, I'll just line the floors with memory foam. That crap sucks up water like nobody's business. We did our best to (very, very carefully) dry it out, but after almost another hour of employing every drying technique we could think of, we still had a water-logged, 500-pound behemoth on our hands. Oy.

But! A genius plan came bubbling up out of the depths of my foolhardy brain. For the sake of fun and adventure**, we hefted the dripping pad back in the bedroom, on top of the bed. No, we did not put it directly on the mattress. Come on, do you really think we're that stupid?

You know what? Don't even go there. Do not even go there, people.

Anyway, we laid it on top of a couple sheets so that we could spread it out nice and flat. Then we proceeded to suck every last drop of water out with our fabulous, industrial-strength steam cleaner. Quick as a wink, our pad was good as new and ready for us to lay down for a stink-free good night's sleep.

Or, maybe - just maybe - my genius plan of using the steam cleaner did not work out quite so well. And maybe - just maybe - it took us another hour of hard labor to admit that. And maybe - just maybe, people - we ended up dragging it back into the tub with the admittedly stupid idea that it would just dry on its own. For thirty two days. But whatever.

Either way, in the end, we had ourselves a clean, dry, non-smelly mattress pad.

{pause for applause}

(Hey, I applauded, okay?)

(Quit looking at me like that.)

The night we declared the pad to be bedworthy, I announced to my husband that I had purchased a new mattress accessory. Voilà! Enter the queen size vinyl mattress protector! We had a huge fight loud argument heated discussion nice chat about the pros and cons of topping memory foam with a layer of vinyl. Despite his reluctance, N gracefully bowed to my request that we try putting the vinyl on top of the pad, where it would actually do some good in the event of yet another urine-fest. Or, I may have possibly said something snotty along the lines of the vinyl would go on top or the pad would go in the trash right then and there. I'm not really sure. Details, they slip my mind at times.

Lying in bed that night, after weeks of sleeping on an incredibly uncomfortable mattress, I blissfully reveled in the return of my beloved wee bit o' fluffy heaven. Sleepily, I turned to N and cuddled close. He lovingly put his arms around me before speaking.

"This mattress protector ... "

"Yes?" I yawned. "It isn't as bad as all that now, is it. Admit it, you can barely feel the thing." Even 90% asleep, I feel the need to not only be right, but also have the last word about it.

"It's ... it's ... it's like we've put a condom on our memory foam."

I laughed so hard, I peed.




*So says the Product Description on Amazon***
**aka, sheer stubbornness
***I may have manipulated the Product Description a smidge for the purposes of this post