musings.schelley.org

In my opinion, one of the coolest things about my condo is the murphy bed. It's given me some flexibility - mainly that I don't need a true second bedroom and still have a real guest bed. Also, the idea of a murphy bed is really cool: the bed folds up into the wall. Really, is there anything better than that?

The builders supplied the enclosure; I had to purchase a mattress. And in a hurry - I had been out of town, Rachel was coming in a few days, so time was not on my side.

First stop: Sleep Country, which was closed for "Employee Appreciation Day". The purchase was put off for a day.

Second stop: Costco. While prices were great, I only needed the mattress, not the box springs, and in typical costco format, I would have been forced to over buy.

Third stop: Sleep Country. This time, I met up with a the quintessential sales guy: "hey, I'm going to sell you and while doing so, completely BS you 'cause that's my MO." One question yielded a five minute answer, of which four of those minutes were spent repeating what he'd said in the first minute. I learned that Sleep Country isn't too flexible with the delivery schedule, but they also haul away the old (and stained) mattress to donate to children's charities. "We donate the highest number of mattresses to [insert name of favorite children's charity]". Right. Somehow, he mistook me for caring about the children. I couldn't deal with him, plus Pete convinced me that first, this was a guest bed, so not used a lot, and second, I would most likely sell the mattress with the unit in 3-5 years, so why spend a lot of money?

Pete can be cheap at times, by the way.

Fourth stop: IKEA, despite my better judgement. But, I did find a mattress that I deemed to be good guest quality (i.e., I would sleep on it) and that wasn't too expensive. I asked about delivery, and when we discovered that it would be $50, Pete convinced me that I could save myself the money and "we can tie it to the top of my car." The oh-so helpful sales guy chimed in, "Yes, and we have guys with twine that will tie it to your car. Our service to you." I guess he wasn't paid on commission.

We wrestled the mattress onto the cart, paid for it, stopped for soft ice cream (delicious and btw, IKEA does have good food. I'm especially a big fan of their meatballs and from their food store, pickled herring and mashed fish paste in a tube) and then wheeled the mattress to the loading area, where the youngish twine guy set to work tying the mattress to Pete's car.

It turns out that the twine guy didn't really know what he was doing.

About a mile down the freeway, the mattress started to dance in the wind, supplied by mother nature, the semi trucks and natural drag on the car. We opened the sun roof, trying to hold on to the mattress with the twine, completely useless. Finally, Pete pulled over, we opened the windows, grabbed onto the handles on the side of the mattress, used the GPS to find a route home that didn't require freeways and drove 12 long, very long, miles back to my house.

It must have been quite a site: two people, driving a low-end luxury car, with the windows open, grasping tightly to a mattress haphazardly tied to the top of the car.

I couldn't stop laughing the entire way. About 2 miles in, I turned to Pete, giggling: "we are now one of those people".

Pete's car sporting the matttress: