THE MATTRESS <\/strong>
\nWord Count: 317<\/p>\n

It was silly to worry about it, to feel shame. This she told herself again and again before finally deciding that they absolutely had to buy a new mattress set.<\/p>\n

The problem was not with a new one, they\u2019d already shopped price, and firmness, and spring count, checked out the new memory foam styles and the ones with two-sided temperature settings and even one made completely of down. Delivery dates and times were negotiated. The problem was what to do with the old.<\/p>\n

Twenty years of a happy marriage leave their mark on a mattress. Rightfully so, she told herself. But still, Sister Marie Rose\u2019s face glared through her nightmares, pointed fingers and clacked rosary beads at her dreams.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe could let the delivery men take it away,\u201d she had offered. She knew there could be snickers and winks but from two men she would never see again, or at least not for another twenty years.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd pay twenty-five dollars for the service?\u201d he said. \u201cNo, we\u2019ll just put it out at the curb on large trash pickup night.\u201d<\/p>\n

But she imagined the reaction of not only the trash-men who she waved to if she happened to see them, but the neighbors driving by.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll put it out after dark, how\u2019s that?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut what about Tuesday morning?\u201d<\/p>\n

So she sat huddled with her coffee by the living room window, hidden from the rising sun by the curtain, peeking out at the sound of every car and truck driving by. When at long last the squealing, clanking, rumbling belch of the garbage truck hissed to a stop at the end of her drive, when the mattress and box spring had been loaded and the two men got back into the truck, she exhaled, cut short by the beep-beep<\/em> of the horn and the wave of one gloved hand out the truck window.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THE MATTRESS Word Count: 317 It was silly to worry about it, to feel shame. This she told herself again and again before finally deciding that they absolutely had to buy a new mattress set. The problem was not with … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10],"tags":[23],"class_list":["post-206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-100-days-2011","category-mainstream","tag-mainstream"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susangibb.net\/blog3\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susangibb.net\/blog3\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susangibb.net\/blog3\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susangibb.net\/blog3\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susangibb.net\/blog3\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=206"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/susangibb.net\/blog3\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1151,"href":"https:\/\/susangibb.net\/blog3\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206\/revisions\/1151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susangibb.net\/blog3\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susangibb.net\/blog3\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susangibb.net\/blog3\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}