Bedtime story

I'm a Cancerian (7/14) and Cancer being a water sign, I've always had a certain affinity for water.
I chose an apartment and later, a condominium, because they were on small lakes. I've always felt a sense of exhilaration and awe whenever I see a large body of water, be it an ocean or one of the Great Lakes - anytime I can see water all the way to the horizon I feel strangely at home.
So it should be no big surprise that I was the first of my friends to have a waterbed when they showed up in the early 1970s.
My first wife (there were times when I called her that while we were still married) was, to a certain extent, a good sport and she went along with a lot of my ideas that she doubtless questioned and later probably regretted. Our first waterbed was just a big vinyl mattress that we filled with water. No internal baffles to inhibit wave motion, no liner, no frame and no heater. Just a big bag-o-water on the bedroom floor with enough blankets on it to insulate us from the chilly water within. We even used it to bring down our 2-year-old son's fever once - just laid him down naked on the vinyl and let the water draw the unwanted heat from his body.
Eventually, we built a frame, then stuck padded rails on it.
Hey, it was a new technology and we didn't really know what we were doing.
About 15 years later, in a moment of whimsy, we replaced it with what could only be described as a bordello waterbed: massive pine headboard and footposts supporting an overhead frame filled with six mirrors. I sat on a platform that afforded a half-dozen drawers and came with a heater.
When the marriage came unraveled in the late '80s and my soon-to-be ex found herself with a free hand to decorate as she chose, the monstrous bordello bed went to my son in Cincinnati. He and his wife still have it, sans overhead mirrors, in one of their guest bedrooms.
I bought a more conventional waterbed that I used in two apartments and a condo and eventually moved to the house my new wife and I occupied four years ago.
Over the last couple of years, we noticed the quality of our sleep declining. We'd both crawl out of bed in the mornings stiff and sore. My wife developed a work-related back and shoulder problem because of horrible desk ergonomics at the Gannett newspaper where she worked. It was further aggravated by injuries she suffered in a head-on collision with a blind woman a year ago.
I found I developed back pain if I stayed in bed too long.
We decided it was time for a new bed.
After shopping around and looking at all kinds of exotic and trendy beds - four-posters, sleighs, you name it - we decided we would be better served to put our money into a good mattress and then worry about the furniture side of the equation.
We ended up at the major furniture store in the state where the sales guy gave us a general overview of what they had, then suggested we consider Kingsdown.
Kingsdown has a pretty impressive sales system that includes a pressure sensitive pad you recline on to determine where your individual pressure points are and where you fall on the Kingsdown continuum of softness and firmness. My wife tested as a 2 and I tested as a 3 so the sales guy recommended we flop down on examples of each of the five mattresses to see if those numbers felt right to us.
We agreed upon a #3 kingsize with a basic metal frame.
And we swallowed hard at the final price of about $2,600. It comes with a 70-year warranty, so I figure I'm covered until I'm 129 years old.
It was delivered three weeks ago and I can say in all candor that we've both slept better during this period and anytime we can remember, individually or collectively.
My wife's shoulder pain, which she thought was a permanent feature in her life, is gone. We're both sleeping through the entire night with virtually no flopping around or tossing and turning. And if one of us does roll over or get up, the other remains blissfully unaware of it because there is no motion transfer.
And, of course, our dog loves it (see photo below).
The waterbed went out the second floor bedroom window in pieces and from there into the trash. I can honestly say there isn't anything about it that I miss.