Crazy Beddiness

This afternoon GK and I headed downtown to look at a new/used furniture store we'd seen advertised in our local classified weekly thing. We got there and started to look around and found two matresses that I really liked. One was priced at $150 (used) and the other didn't have a price tag, so we flagged down the store owner to inquire about the price. It wasn't too hard to get his attention as we were the only customers in the store and he was...uh....hovering. The owner looked at the matress for a minute and said "Oh I can't remember how much I priced that at, but it's probably about $125 or so." This matress was on the bottom of a pile of matresses (of course) so GK helped the owner move the the other matresses out of the way so we could get a better look at the one with no price tag. $125 is a pret-ty good price, especially as it was clearly the best matress in the stack and some of them were priced as high as $275. I told the owner that I was pretty sure I wanted it, so GK helped him drag it off of the main sales floor. It was at this point the price tag on the matress was located. It read $250, but the owner very graciously told us that since he had quoted us the lower price that's what he'd sell it to us for. I didn't have to pull out my rusty haggling skills (okay my non-existent skills) or anything he just shrugged and then told us that the price included a box spring and that we could have one of those basic metal frames (for some reason called a hollywood) for $45 because it was a multiple sized frame. Are you following this so far? I managed to get a bed and frame for $170 and neither one looked infested with anything or was stained or falling apart. I've seen some mangy furniture in my time (I am a seasoned dumpster diver, after all) and the bed I was getting was pret-ty darn good. After all, any softness/too firmness can be rectified with a trip to Walmart and Home Depot. The decision to purchase the bed having been made, GK and I were faced with a new dilemma: how to get it to my house. Oy. We thought about borrowing his Mom's SUV, but she doesn't like to drive GK's car and we remembered that GK's boss has a truck so we went to borrow that. The truck turned out to be not quite big enough to store the bed. It was at this point that GK and I power-walked the block and a half to Rite Aid to buy rope as GK's boss didn't have any rope in his truck (the bed of which was covered in a camper thingie). Then poor GK and the guys from the furniture place spent the next half hour or so tying the box spring to the roof of the truck and bending the top matress and smashing it back into the bed-covered-by-camper-thingie. At one point GK was half under the truck with his feet in the street, tying the rope around....some part of the truck that was able to have rope tied around it. Good thing the street was not busy! Anyway, that sucker was secure by the time he was finished. Side Note: during this tying down extravaganza I did what any good girlfriend would do: I stayed on the sidewalk and helped untangle the rope as it got tossed around or else stayed totally out of the way. At this point we realized that I only had twenty minutes to get to work so GK drove me back through town to the mall, all the while keeping one hand firmly planted on the box spring so he could see how much room it had to move when he made turns. Yes folks: GK drove twenty minutes through the freezing Oregon winter with his hand out the window. If there was ever a testament to whether or not this guy was keen on me, this would be it. Of course, after dropping me off, he then had to drive the half an hourish from the mall to my house (I live in the next town over), with a box spring matress tied to the top of his borrowed truck, and a regular matress sort of wedged into the back of his camper covered borrowed truck bed (the frame was smashed into the bend in the regular matress and helping to weigh everything down). And....he did it.....without complaining. I'm pretty sure this guy is a keeper. Part of me is eternally grateful that I have such a good boyfriend that he would give up his day off to help me obtain a new bed and then end up doing all of the grunt work to get it moved around. Another part (the evil part) wants to see what else he'll do before our "initial can't get enough of each other stage" (as one of my cosupervisors calls it) is over. I know that at some point he'll look at me and go "Oh hell no." But mostly I am just happy that I have someone in my life who would go through all of that just so I could have a bed that, when I left the house this morning, I wasn't even sure I wanted to find. This stupid bed.... I know that people buy new beds all the time for any number of reasons. I know that people go furniture shopping and enjoy it. I know that there are people who love to remodel and redecorate. I can be one of them sometimes. Sometimes. This wasn't exactly one of those times. I moved around a lot growing up. The room I have now, where my Mom lives--it's the closest thing I have to the room so many people have had "my whole life," and it is largely because of my bed. I've come home to the same bed since I was twelve. Even after Mom moved from our coastal town to here in the valley, my room still felt mostly like my own because it had my bed. My bed is where I go when I really need to feel safe. It is my comfort zone, that little twin bed that really is only big enough for me. Replacing it with a queen sized bed (read: a grown-up's bed) feels a bit like growing up too fast. It is an acknowledgement that I will not always be sleeping by myself and I am making room for that in my life. Who knew one stupid bed could cause such an upheaval? The good news is that everything is settled now, and all parties are happy with the decision. I finally made the decision to buy it with this sentence: "I am going to have to buy a bed eventually; I might as well buy it when I can get a good deal on it" Such hoopla solved with one sentence. Welcome to my world! It really is going to be a very comfy bed once it is all set up. Growing up is hard. It should come with a manual.... that is not authored by Dr. Phil, Deepak Chopra or Wayne Dyer. In other news: I downloaded the Lindsay Lohan album off of Napster. Cheesy lyrics and overly played pop-diva-karaoke background music. Does it get better?