Lately, I’ve been feeling inadequate about a few things. I have been compensating said feelings with doing things I am good at: drinking beer and sleeping. However, I’ve recently decided that the beer drinking, not such a good idea, or my next activity will be shopping for bigger jeans. I am not good at shopping (unless I can point and click and receive packages in the mail).
So. That leaves the sleeping as ego-boosting activity. Now, you should know, it’s pretty remarkable that I’m not only good at but enjoy sleeping because, despite being 34 years old, I sleep on a futon. A crappy futon I inherited from a former room-mate, to be precise. Note that I have not had a room-mate since 1997. The futon is so crappy that when I first started sleeping on the futon, I decided it needed something more, and I bought some 6-inch open cell foam for under it. Except the foam didn’t come in a double size, so I bought two half-double sized chunks. So, in addition to the crappy futon, we have saggy foam, which periodically slides apart and thus creates a lovely trench in the middle of my bed.
And yet, I sleep! But, I also wake up with a sore back from time to time, and I’ve been lusting after grown-up sleeping solutions for a long time now. A real bed isn’t going to happen, what with three feet of space between loft and ceiling. But I lusted all the same.
And then today, I saw a mattress store! My dislike of the whole shopping experience means that I don’t go to the suburban temples too often, but I had to go to Canadian Tire (I wanted to see how big a box for a wind generator is, an errand that made me feel far more important and interesting than I am!). And across the parking lot from the village-sized Canadian Tire is a new mattress store. And as I bumbled out of the hardware store (new purchase: a power bar, so I don’t have to unplug the phone if I want to use the computer up in the loft), I realized I wouldn’t even have to *drive* to go to the mattress store. It’s *right there*.
Yeah. Sucker. Innocently, I wandered in. Eagerly, the salesman met me. Confusedly, I looked around. And then, in a rush of fun, I was on a hard, a medium, and a soft bed, to determine my bed preference. Honestly, I couldn’t really tell the difference between hard and medium, and I hated the soft. Salesman told me that hotel beds are often the hard kind, because it’s more durable (and Johanna’s mind: more durable? Good investment! And I sleep well in hotels!).
So, now we had narrowed the choice of beds down to a subset, marked with a particular colour dot. Now it was time to educate Johanna: I learned about things like pocket coils (“do not disturb” is a key feature), king coils (the grand-daddy of them all) and posturpedic coils (something about head to foot and less sag in the middle over time). And then there was much bouncing, and much nap potential evaluating, and suddenly, I lusted after a $700 mattress!
But I was still being reasonable. I needed to *think* about it, on account of definite rosy glow of love spreading over me at the thought of the mattress. So I muttered about, won’t fit in my car and the like. Salesman brightly chirped “we deliver!” I equally brightly told him I live in Campbellville (while giving the coveted mattress an affectionate pat). He said “no problem! And we’ll take your old one away for free if you want!” And I?
Sigh. I pulled out my wallet.
I feel terrifically grown up! First, winter tires. Now, a big-girl mattress.
Up next: buy a third pot for my kitchen. Okay, maybe not. That would require cooking to justify. I sleep every night. I can justify the outrageously expensive mattress (please note, by mattress store standards, not expensive at all. Do you know you can spend more on a mattress than I spent on my first all-my-own car? You can. You can also buy much, much cheaper ones at non-mattressy stores... but, free delivery! Take away my old stuff!)