Gradually, it went to hell

I bet this has happened to you. You wakeup one morning and say to yourself, when did my mattress become this saggy bag of rocks? It seems as though it happens overnight. One night the mattress is fine and the next, it’s terrible.

That’s what happened here last Saturday morning. I awoke feeling miserable. I’m laying there in the bed and feeling like I’m in a mattress taco shell. When Mr. Pop awoke I told him of my discontent and he agreed. Our mattress had met its demise.

Off to the furniture store we went. Lucky for us mattresses were on sale. We upgraded quite a bit from our old bedding. The old bedding was purchased within our financial means at that time. We upgraded accordingly. The new cushy mattress will be delivered today and the old one hauled away to a mattress graveyard.

Our mattress didn’t go bad overnight, it gradually broke down over the years and we unconsciously adjusted to the changes. Then came Saturday morning when the changes exceeded our ability to consciously or unconsciously adjust. Something had to change.

In my opinion, the story of our mattress is somewhat analogous to the story of this war in Iraq. The war didn’t go bad overnight, it has been steadily going bad for close to four years. The thing is, many Americans just didn’t notice the deterioration until they woke up one morning and realized how bad things had gotten, and they could no longer tolerate what they saw and felt. Some of us who are more sensitive realized and responded to our own discomfort much earlier. Others finally saw that something must be done to correct what they now recognize as a total disaster.

Sadly this problem can’t be fixed by simply going to the store and purchasing a replacement. Just because the Democrats now control the House and Senate, we can’t expect them to instantly correct the errors we have witnessed with a nifty new plan for a nifty new kind of war. If only it were that simple. The good news is that the general public is now awake and aware of the problem. I doubt they will rest comfortably until it’s addressed and some changes are made. The bad news is that there is only one person who can stop this war. He isn’t a Democrat and he doesn’t appear to show any intention of doing anything toward bringing our troops home anytime soon.