Andi LaBrune

The holidays are a contact sport. Between the travel, the cookie-exchange politics, and the relative who still thinks your job is “the computer thing,” most of us limp into January running on sugar and spite. This year we had a secret weapon tucked into the corner of my house, wrapped in twinkle lights, quietly running at 170 degrees.

Adding a four-legged friend to your household is no small decision. Choosing one of the great family dogs can mean the difference between Instagram-worthy snuggles and replacing your third couch this year to those who want a dog to bring joy and companionship and teach children responsibility—without turning your home into a dog hair museum or your garden into an archaeological dig site.

We have a complicated relationship with memory foam. We love the way it hugs and hate the way it holds a grudge, meaning the way a traditional foam mattress absorbs every degree of body heat you give it and hands it right back at 3 a.m. like a wet, warm blanket you didn’t ask for. So when SweetNight Mattress rolled out the CoolNest Ultra, a memory foam mattress whose entire personality is “we fixed the heat thing,” we wanted to see whether the pitch survives contact with an actual hot sleeper.