YOU CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP! A COMIC 'S LIFE KERRI POMAROLLI: September 2011

My marriage bed is broken. No really, if you walk into our bedroom you will see that half of our bed is sagging to the floor. My side is neat and perfect. Ron’s side of our brand new mattress has sunk into a deep cavernous mess. If you like splinters in your behind then you can come sleep at our place. This is because I pulled another scheme and got us into this situation.

With our wedding gift money we decided to buy a new mattress. We’ve both had back problems and after watching Lindsay Wagner's 1500th infomercial we decided to try out the “Sleep Number” mattress at the store. These beds are luxurious and wonderful. Each side has a remote control and you can pump up to your desired firmness or pump down to your desired softness. We fell in love with this mattress immediately and had to have one. The only problem was that they cost $2,500.00 and they don’t sell them used on Ebay. I looked! We just couldn’t afford to spend that kind of cash on a mattress when we were newlywed full time starving comedians and needed the money for little things like rent and food. We were a bit heartbroken that we couldn’t purchase our dream mattress but we agreed to save up for it. So about 6 months later we had saved some money and I announced to Ron we were going to get a new “Sleep Number Bed” very soon. He was thrilled. It would be our first grown up purchase.

What he didn’t know was that I had the master plan. He was giving me $2500 for a mattress and box spring. I went online and saw all the knock off brands and stumbled on a bed that promised to be everything the “Sleep Number Bed “ was and more. It was called the “Sleep Mumber” and it looked really swell according to the pictures and testimonials. Now that I think of it all the testimonials were written by the company’s founders. ARRRGH! Hindsight is 20 /20. But the big thing was that this bed was available now for a one day only internet special for$1200. What a steal! I called up Luanne at customer service and she promised our bed would be delivered the very same week. I wanted to surprise Ron so I scheduled delivery while he was gone.

I answered the door and these two dudes were standing there at the top of my second floor apt with a pen and a clipboard. One guy says” Sign here!” and then he told me to come out to their truck. They had these big boxes and didn’t look too fired up about carrying them to my apt with no elevator. The second guy wanted to leave. He came up with some excuse that the mattress wouldn’t fit through my door. I was standing in the back of this unlabeled truck that looked like it had just come from some back alley making a pick up. I wasn’t letting them leave. I said “I’ll help you guys do whatever needs to be done cause neither of you are leavin till I get my bed!” So after a lot of wrestling and 2 phone calls to their manager they got the boxes up my stairs. Then I said” Ok get started and install my bed!” They both looked at me if I was insane.”Uh maam I don’t know what you heard but we’re just the delivery company for whatever is in these boxes. We don’t do installations. See ya...sucka!” Then they bolted out my door.
I was stuck there with huge boxes in my bedroom and no bed. I thought to myself” How hard can it be? I ‘m a strong woman. I can do this myself!” I got out a kitchen knife and started cutting away through all the boxes. I used all my might and even broke a sweat but I managed to get everything out of the boxes. It didn’t look like a bed at all. It was a bunch of tubes and plastic and bubbles and things that scared me frankly. How was this going to provide those hours of heavenly sleep like Luanne promised? I spent the next two hours trying to make heads or tails of the whole thing. I don’t read directions so I just tried to make it up as I went a long. I failed miserably.

Then at about 6:30pm Ron comes home and heads into the bedroom. He sees me whimpering in the corner surrounded by parts. He had no idea what I had done but I had to sweet talk my way out of the situation. I just wiped my face and said” Surprise Honey! Our Sleep Number is here!” He wasn’t buying it because he knew good and well they would have assembled it for the price they were charging. He had that” I love Lucy” look on his face and they said” Kerrrrrrrrrriiiii..What have you done?” I turned on the waterworks hard and went into my sob story of trying to do something nice for my husband by surprising him with a cost efficient alternative to the overpriced sleep number. So I told him all about the “Sleep Mumber” its high customer rating. (Ok I made that part up!) I was hoping we‘d both giggle together and order pizza. But he knew I had gotten some knock off blow up mattress ghetto version of the real thing. He also knew there was no return policy! He also noticed there were no numbers on the dial of our “Sleep Mumber” bed. We just had to twist the one remote up and down till we liked the firmness.

So we spent the next 6 hours trying to stay married. (Well I was trying)Let’s just say our marriage was put to the test because neither of us is particularly handy. We’ve almost killed each other installing a shower curtain. No not a showerhead the curtain is what was so hard because Ron couldn’t lengthen the rod enough. We’re a mess and we know it.
Well to make a long story longer. We did get the bed installed and then we actual passed out from sheer exhaustion. Over the next couple weeks we enjoyed playing with our little controls that puffed up the bed and actually felt quite accomplished. We saved a lot of money and had the same sleeping experience as all of the fancy people on TV.

Then something started to sag in the bedroom. No not our love life….Ron’s side of the bed. It was slow at first with his side kind of leaking in the middle of the night. He’d adjust his firmness level to really firm and wake up like Goldilocks saying “This bed is too soft!”I didn’t think much of it at first because my side of the bed was holding up just fine. I attributed this to the time on our honey when I got in our private Jacuzzi with no problems when Ron joined me and the overflow of water caused a tsunami in our hotel suite and we had to call the management to fix the darn thing. Once again Ron’s issues with our equipment were not my fault! I was sleeping like a baby. Well when Ron wasn’t snoring like a chainsaw! I could kill that man in his sleep I swear! But that’s another story altogether!

So night after night he’s pump up his side of the bed to extra firm and awaken the next morning with the splinters from the wooden posts in his back and he’d get more cranky each day. I of course told him he had two options. 1. Fix the thing. 2. Sleep on the couch. I think I was secretly voting for option 2 because I’d get more snore free nights and I think I deserve that for carrying his baby don’t I?

The problem with Ron trying to fix our bed is that he has no actual skills in fixing anything and his buddy Tommy was out of town for a long time. Tommy is the one we call on to solve all our home improvement problems. We’ve made him the godfather of our child to ensure he keeps coming over to fix things out of guilt and obligation. So far so good! But Tommy wasn’t coming to the rescue. After a very uncomfortable visit my parents even offered to help us buy a new mattress. My dad said it was like sleeping in a “Cave” when he’d wake up in the morning all sunken down into the wood frame. I took the money they gave us for a mattress and went to a spa! So sue me! I just gave birth and I think God wants me to have relaxed muscles and good fingernails. Ron started sleeping on the couch and our marriage hasn’t suffered if you ask me!

Finally we decided we’d like to live in the same room after all. I kinda missed the snoring bear after all! So what were we to do? Suck it up and buy a new mattress? I didn’t want to sacrifice my adjustable sleep number mattress for some normal one with no remote! And the new ones cost at least $2500. Well leave it to some ingenuity and Ron’s hard work ethic to save the day. Well actually it was his good friend “Duct Tape” that really did the trick Ron got under the bed and taped up the hole in our air hose with Duct Tape and it all of sudden worked like a charm. We had no more air leaks and no more nights with Ron sleeping on the wood frame! It was so simple and only costs us $3.99 for the roll of tape! Whoever says Duct Tape can’t do everything including save a marriage obviously hasn’t tried hard enough!

Guest Blog
Behind the Scenes of Comedy by Kristin Weber

Hi! My name is Kristin Weber. You might know me as Kerri's opener if you've followed her comedy. She is mentoring me in the ways of laughter, and I have had the privilege (the crazy, insane privilege) of touring with Kerri, Ron, and their two kids Lucy and Ruby, this past week in their Eat Pray Laugh tour throughout California. Kerri asked me to post my Day 4 Account on her blog. Here it is! Enjoy =)

(By the way, if you wish to read the accounts from the first three days visit my personal blog at http://kristinweber.blogspot.com)

Day 4 of our tour was also spent in Napa. We had two shows that day, so there was no sight seeing. I only performed at the evening show, but Kerri and Ron did some time in the morning at a church service.

Lucy, Kerri's 3-year-old, used to come on stage during her act. Unfortunately Lucy was banned from the stage after saying "stupid" into the microphone during a show.

Kerri decided to give Lucy another chance and had been coaching her on a short comedy bit. The bit was supposed to go like this:

Kerri: "Lucy, what do you say to Satan when he tempts you to do bad things."
Lucy: Sings the chorus of "We're not gonna take it" by Twisted Sister.
Crowd dies laughing.

Here's how it actually went during the show:

Lucy tried defending her actions (and other car craziness) during our ride back to the hotel:

We had a delicious meal after the show with our kind hosts, and I ate the most delicious cupcake from Sift, which was a bakery that won the Food Network's Cupcake Wars. I have been on an unofficial quest to find the world's tastiest cupcake, and so far Sift has taken the cake (my pun zap collar gave me a little shock.)

Kerri, Lucy, and Ruby ready for our evening show: