I’ve been saving up this charmingly terrible goop gem for a few days. I thought about letting you know about it before, in time for your actual Christmas shopping, but then I thought I would do the moral thing and only bring it to your attention when it was too late, in order to spare you the agonizing pain of wondering, “Should I or should I not spend $959.00 on an avocado vegan mattress?” In other words, you don’t really have time to treat yourself before Christmas, phew. But you’ll still, I think, want to know about it, and what it would do for you if you were to buy it. But still don’t, because what kind of person would you be…not someone who could ever come back and read this blog without lowering your perfectly threaded eyebrows in shame.
What is a vegan avocado mattress? Calm down. Chill. Before you can even know about it, first you have to know about what goes with it. The person to explain it you is goop’s chief revenue officer. I’m going to go out on my sustainable, reforested limb and say that this is someone who is very very very rich. The kind of person who, when you tell her that you’re tired because you haven’t taken a holiday in seven years, will give you—and I stole this from my dearest friends in the world—the Just Be Rich Solution. “Oh,” she’ll say, “I have my live in childcare do that.” And then she’ll go on to explain how she takes her live in childcare with her on her very expensive holiday every year so that she can have the rest that you so obviously need. Anyway, here is how goop’s chief revenue person copes with the exhausting demands of her life.
Bryan has been pulling the weight all afternoon, coaching soccer, and making it all happen, so when I get home, I’m on. From 6:30 to 8:30, it’s me running the ship.
6:30 p.m.: Right when I get home, I have a glass of Harmless Harvest Coconut water and start up my Vitruvi diffuser with some essential oils—it sets a great mood and chills us all out.
Oh the dreaded two hour evening wind down. You might be crash landing at the end of your day, digging through children’s backpacks, scrubbing cat sick off the floor, keeping before your desperate eyes a late night little glass of eggnog, or a massive vat of red wine, or, I don’t know, probably some more work that includes things like making the dinner that doesn’t magically make itself just because you work full time. But instead of that, try some coconut water. That sounds…well, I don’t really feel like trying it because I hate coconut. But you know what, maybe my kids, who behave perfectly and are very very very very photogenic, will love it. It’s literally the first thing all of us would want to drink together if we’ve been busy in our own separate worlds for a whole day.
Ok, what’s next. Literally whole minutes are going by. Gotta keep on schedule.
6:40 p.m.: I’m usually exhausted, and so are the kids, so bath time is just a great moment for all of us. I use mostly Seventh Generation stuff for them—I love the goop Martini bath for myself, but I think it would be too much for them!
Yeah, I’m always exhausted by 6:40. Deathly tired usually. And you know what else…hungry! What an ideal time to, oh never mind. Get in the tub kids, for your super special bath. Wait, wait wait wait wait. Who is doing the bath? How are you both taking a bath and making children take a bath? HOW? Is it the live in childcare? Or Do They Magically Bathe Themselves? I ask because we’ve gotta keep moving. Twenty whole minutes have gone by and it’s
7 p.m.: After the tub, I do a quick dry-brush and then take a shower to wash the day off. My favorite thing in the shower is the goop body scrub. It feels so clean, smells so good—I just love it. I keep it pretty simple in the shower beyond that: Seventh Generation body wash and the goop Instant Facial once a week.”
Boy that is a lot of water. I suppose you weren’t standing over your kids, yelling at them to Turn Off The Water. Certainly not because you had a bath first and then a shower yourself. Did you wash your face? Girl, did you? Anyway, it’s
7:10 p.m.: My nighttime skin-care routine is easy: I wash my face with the Oat cleanser from Naturopathica, then do a little vitamin C serum, plus moisturizers from my facialist (Vanessa Hernandez in Brentwood—she’s amazing).
I know, I know, you’re upset that we haven’t gotten to the mattress. Chill. Drink some more coconut water. That’s probably what the children are meekly doing after their perfectly appointed twenty minute bath administered to them by…sorry, sorry, I’ll try not to be so bitter. Let’s see, what’s next?
7:15 p.m.: Sometime between 7 and 8, the kids and I pile into bed to read a book together.
Oh, I see, these times are not exact. There are minutes in there for flexibility. I wonder what are they going to read. Let’s find out.
Our favorites right now are Love You Forever and The Giving Tree.
I’m sorry. There is no way on Gaia’s green earth that you are reading those books. Those are terrible terrible books. Nobody wants to read those books. Tell us what you’re really reading. Is it even worse than that? Are you Not Even reading? Like, maybe you’re lying there on your mattress—Which We Will Get To—on your face while your irate, coconut water filled children beat you over the head with a bunch of terrible terrible Disney books that you don’t have the will to say no to but you’re too humiliated to even deal. You lie there and try to read your phone out of the corner of your eye while they scream and bash you. But it’s fine, it’s ‘your turn.’ Poor ‘Brian’ was with them all day and you have to spend meaningful time with your children. You Have To. You have it all, dammit. You Are Living The Dream. Anyway, where were we.
In what is just the best moment of my day, we all snuggle together—our new mattress from Avocado Green Mattress is so incredibly comfortable. We got it just a month ago, and we got them for the kids, too. Everything the company makes is totally nontoxic—such a big deal for us, considering all the off-gassing and other problems you can have with many mattresses—and they’re sustainable, so it was a really easy decision. It’s vegan: made of natural latex rubber and certified organic cotton, with no polyurethane foams or toxic fire retardants. We even got the pillow toppers and the sheets.
Ok, so I went to the website. Super disappointing. These mattresses are not made out of avocado. They are made out of latex. Take a moment to scroll through the internet while I retreat into a baffled and aggrieved silence……..
Well. But at least they’re vegan. Boy, vegan sure sounds nicer and greener than latex, doesn’t it? You know what’s really humiliating? When I came back to America after being in France for a year and went into a very intimidating bagel shop in Ithaca, NY—one of those ones where you have to stand with your neck stretched back, wildly, anxiously, frantically reading the wall of words, the seemingly thousands of bagel descriptions, plus everything you could possibly have on the bagel once you cram down your trauma and actually choose it. The line piled up behind me and in a panic I blurted, “I’ll just have a Ve-j-an bagel if it’s not too much trouble.” The tattooed cash register person looked down her nose and hissed, “It’s Veee-ggg-an.”
Anyway, times a-wasting. There’s only so many times you can ‘read’ The Giving Tree before life becomes irrevocably meaningless. It is now
8 p.m.: While Bryan’s having his downtime with TV, the kids and I put the books away, set out backpacks and stuff for school, and brush teeth, and I get them into bed, which they’re pretty good about. They always start out in their own beds, but it’s the cutest thing: By morning, they’re always curled up together in one bed.
Oh honey, cute is definitely some kind of word for it. Nothing cuter than having your perfectly curated vegan coconut infused sleep disrupted by large children who have their own perfect mattresses and pillow toppers and all the fixings. That’s My Favorite.
You know what else is my favorite? Keeping my money and using it to buy a lot of delicious food—like bacon, and butter, and all the stuff to make wassail. Incidentally, I also like being with my kids longer than a few minutes of the Giving Tree. But not when they’re in the bath and not when they’re in my bed. Someone get those poor children a sandwich, and one for ‘Brian.’
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