Curse of the Airbed

Tonight we have purchased what I hope will be our last Coleman Comfortsmart Queen Airbed. That brings us to a final tally of seven, an average of one a month, and a total of $220.00. Obviously their "Air Tight" guarantee isn't all it's cracked up to be. By this point I really hate the happy family on the box in their happy little tent at their happy little campsite.

"No, we're not CAMPING; we're just trying to live like civilized HUMAN BEINGS despite formidable and unreasonable obstacles!"

Right now it's anyone's guess when exactly the truck will arrive with the innards of our household, including a real mattress, but we had high hopes that it would be tomorrow or Saturday. Naturally our current air mattress, the sixth, decided to go flat last night. Really? It couldn't even manage to last another TWO NIGHTS. After that I could have chucked that piece of crap into the garbage with no regret. If it were a slow leak I'd just tough it out for a while, but it's a flat-in-five-minutes kind of leak. I really didn't want to shell out another $30+ now that we're so close, but what else could we really do? Just to make matters worse, Dave turned up sick this morning and could really use a good night's sleep. I briefly considered going ape again with the super glue and gorilla tape just to patch it up, but that didn't seem to have any effect the first four times I tried it.

The moral of the story is that you can never depend on an air mattress. My father once said that he'd never known one that could hold air, and now I'm not surprised. They're all crap! Save your money and buy a real mattress once and for all. And if the military hems and haws at you about maybe or maybe not moving your stuff, move it yourself! Just be done with it! So we shot $1300 into the wind; what of it?! It's done. Now we don't have to live like hobos under the assumption that we'll have to fit our entire household into the truck of one car! Now we can buy whatever the heck we want!!!

Excuse me, I don't know where that came from. Resume quiet dignity and grace . . .

Shame On You, Coleman

This current air mattress lasted all of three weeks. Actually, it started sagging after one week, but we only just now started waking up on the floor. Completely unacceptable, but we're maddeningly powerless to do anything about it. We are actively trying to move our stuff, but it's a process.

Elusive Sleep

Good sleep is not hard to get on an air mattress. Honestly, after seven months on one, I have no complaints about the way a good air mattress feels. The problem arises when the air bed decides it will no longer hold air, because the floor isn't such a great place for good sleep. I found that out the first night I stayed in the house with an air pump and a dead battery. We woke up this morning with that familiar sagging feeling, bringing our total up to three casualties. That's an average of one every two months or so, which is still cheaper than renting a clothes washer and dryer, but is still frustrating since each air mattress allegedly comes with a one year warranty.

I bothered to read the fine print the second time it happened, and of course it's not as easy as returning the flat air bed to the retailer; you have to have the original packaging and the original receipt and drive it down to the manufacturer's warehouse (or mail it at your own expense if you don't live close to such a warehouse) and then they will decide whether or not the item was in fact defective. Even flat, these things are so heavy and hard to pack up again that it seems easier to just buy a new one than to try cashing in on the warranty. Maybe they only expect these air beds to be used for camping five times a year. Maybe 375 pounds of people is exceeding some intrinsic weight limit. Maybe we can get them on some kind of rotation schedule, so that when the new one poops out, another will be on its way back from the warehouse.

I wish we could just buy a real mattress and be done, but that would be better than twenty times the price and until the move happens we have no means by which to integrate a new mattress into the rest of our possessions or transport it from here to Point B. Even if the price tag was our only concern, I never have liked the idea of a used mattress, especially now that the new age of the bedbug is dawning.

Just to shake things up a little more, there's a strange wrong number that keeps calling David's cell phone at 4 AM. Nothing quite gets the adrenaline flowing like the phone ringing in the dead of night, especially when the only people who call that early are naval authority figures who want your @$$ out of bed. If Mr. Nobody calls again tonight, so help me, somebody is going to answer or call him back.

Moving Once, Moving Twice . . . ?

We have officially had enough of our empty house. We have decided to DITY move out here regardless of whether we might be packing up again four months, which is by no means set in stone. We spent last week at the neighbor's house watching their dogs while they were gone over their class break, and it was amazing to sit on a couch again. Dave's class break is next week, so we're hoping to get all the required paperwork and arrangements taken care of during our free time. So much for a real vacation, but when else are we supposed to go visit these offices which are only open during class hours?

It would also be nice to have a real bed on legs, and some pictures to hang. Morning sickness has stricken with a vengeance, so I spend most of my days flat on my back anyway, staring at two pasty off-white walls and a belching closet (when I don't have my face in the toilet). Crawling up off the floor to make a stumbling dash for the facilities is getting more odious every day, particularly when the air mattress doesn't hold air like it's supposed to. It also has a habit of slowly migrating away from the wall when I try to sit up to eat or watch movies, which eventually creates a gap wide enough to swallow my pillows.

While we're on the subject, food aversions are an interesting phenomenon, but aren't there supposed to be one or two foods left that aren't repulsive? I have to eat sometime, right? I've had very little luck so far finding a healthy menu to get me through the rough patches. The stuff that stays down best is always salty, soggy, floppy, limp, chewed and swallowed with minimal effort. Thank God for Taco Bell; their regular soft tacos fit the bill perfectly, and always look like they've spent the entirety of their short wilted lives next to a humidifier. For the especially sensitive days, I still resort to french fries.

Quite another story altogether, but one worth telling, is the saga of the Vanishing Rollback. A while ago, a spot opened up in another class and it was offered to Dave. It would give him a chance to backtrack a few months and get a running start at the more advanced material. It would also move his graduation date from October to March. He accepted it, and we were told the finalization process would take about a week or two. A month and several inquiries later, we were informed that the open seat had defaulted to the Army because the paperwork had been snagged up too long. Do not pass Go; do not collect $200. Fortunately, his chain of command was as frustrated as we were, and apparently they are determined to find something else for him. Whenever the next guy drops, hopefully Dave will get his spot. Or they may try him in a different language altogether, and we might never leave. One way or another, we really don't know when we'll be moving away, and we're tired of waiting to find out.

Nutrition Nazi

I have successfully converted my husband to lemon pepper and turkey burgers. Wonders will never cease. ;)

There is an ongoing war war with the air mattress as we attempt to keep air inside it. After waking up on the floor a few times, we found the leak and attacked it with superglue and Gorilla tape. It seems to be leaking again, but we have enough tape to fight the good fight for a while yet. It apparently comes with a year warranty, but only if you kept the original sales receipt and if you spend a small fortune shipping it back to the factory.