I keep thinking I'm making progress but I'm falling behind - or things are getting ahead of me, or something. Going sideways?

You know about my new mattress and what I learned about asking for help . Now I have to learn how to sleep - on a new mattress. It's not the first time, of course. The rough rule is that you should change, that is, replace your mattress every 20 years or so. I never had to think about replacement. We had just bought our new mattress as a twentieth anniversary milestone when Bill died. After almost twenty years in Toronto I moved to Muskoka. Eighteen years later I moved back to Toronto. Each move involved a new mattress: a futon bed in the cottage, my first IKEA bed back in Toronto, which I have just replaced. I don't remember suffering any adjustment (read: pain). I'm older now. Who's counting?

It's a week since I have made my bed and lain in it. I am sleeping better, I think, slightly longer, until last night. But I also have had worse lower back pain and aching hips. I don't take pills. I swim and walk and do leg exercises. I'll go back to the gym and start pedalling and stretching - when it gets a little cooler. But I'm going to have to do something about my mind. My thoughts woke me and kept me awake from 4 to 6 a.m. I'm used to that and I believe in the two-sleeps theory, also in naps. But I like it best when I go to sleep without delay. You may remember I do Jack Reacher's three or four deep breaths and I'm OUT. I don't like it when I keep thinking.

It's my mind not the mattress. I have to beat it into submission - my mind not the mattress.