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Health & Fitness

High & Dry (Mouth)

I would have screamed, but I couldn't open my mouth. And I hate humidifiers!

Our new house is nice and cozy, and even on the coldest days of winter, it was toasty warm inside.

However, I had been waking up feeling like there was peanut butter on that toast, because evidently, turning the heat on sucks the moisture out of the air like Mitt Romney sucks the personality out of a room.

Worse, our dog Toby was making these sounds in the morning like you might hear from a 90-year-old man who can’t find his dentures.

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So we went to Bed, Bath & Beyond (slogan: "Remember Linens & Things? We sure showed them, didn’t we?"). My wife was armed with those ubiquitous BB&B 20% off coupons that come in the mail every day and make you pretty certain that everything in the store is marked up an extra 20%.

We went directly to the humidifier department, pleasantly surprised to discover that there was a humidifier department. Imagine! An entire department filled with humidifiers! How exciting! What’s more, it was actually manned by a knowledgeable salesperson, which is about as rare these days as a driver who actually signals that he’s about to make a left turn before you get stuck behind him while he’s waiting for a break in the oncoming traffic that’s big enough to get a freight train through and meanwhile, no one in the right lane is nice enough to let you in, some of them even speeding up to prevent you from getting in, and finally the guy makes the friggin’ left just in time for the light to turn red.

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But I digress.

The man in BB&B showed us a number of models and highly recommended the Sharper Image Cool-Mist Ultrasonic Humidifier for a number of very logical reasons that I didn’t really follow. When I pointed out that we have owned a few Sharper Image products over the years and they all had in common the slight drawback of not working, he informed us that the Sharper Image name had been purchased by some other company and wasn’t really Sharper Image anymore, which made me wonder why a quality company would buy the rights to use the Sharper Image name and isn’t that kind of like getting the rights to use "Edsel" or "New Coke?"

Where was I?

Right, so we purchased the Sharper Image (but not really) model (and saved 20%!) and brought it home and filled it with water and I was immediately reminded of the reason I’m not a huge fan of humidifiers.

Oh, the gurgling. It was like sleeping in the same room as a babbling brook. Some people might find that soothing, but it not only kept me awake, it made me have to go to the bathroom all night, which actually did solve the original problem, because I was no longer waking up with dry mouth since I wasn’t really getting to sleep in the first place.

But the relative humidity was up around 40%, at least according to the digital Max-Min Thermo-Hydro monitor thingy the guy at BB&B also sold us (at a 20% discount!).

I think it even rained in our bedroom once.

For more on our adventures as first-time homeowners at age 57, and moving to Stamford, visit http://theupsizers.wordpress.com/

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