captain_slinky | The Bed Thing

khristle and I have wanted a new bed for nearly as long as we have been together. The one we bought was a rush purchase, not thought out, and bought at a "Matress Factory Outlet Express SAVE!!!" type-of place near the mall. The type of place that sells "imperfect" and "Non-name brand" matresses. The types of lines you hear from the salesmen there include "This is the same type of matress they use in hotels", "I don't know, I couldn't find anything wrong with it, but it usualy sells for $3000 and they have it marked at just $300. I think it's a typo or something but hey, why not take advantage of it?" and "'Sleep-A-Lux' is just the before-market name for 'Beauty Rest'... it's the exact same matress!"

We had always said that the first thing we would buy if we ever won The Lottery was a brand-new, name-brand matress. Oh, by the way, I wn $1000 on The Lottery this past week. Did I forget to mention that? Yeah, I won. And yeah, I suck because I didn't post about it. But I had good reason to not post about it!

Frst off, it was just greed. We knew that everyone would suggest different things we should do with the money, so we decided to have it spent before telling anyone about it. We went and ordered a nice King-Size matress that cost al of the winnings plus some. A *good* matress! But then, Saturday night, I got to feeling guilty.

My parents are in a bit of a financial lul right now with no real signs of anything getting any better. They are living off Social Security and the money that my Dad makes running the local Food Bank, and he may need to retire from that soon due to his bad hip. And of course my parents would never ever EVER let me just give them money! So a plan was devised wherein we would buy my Mom a nice (cheaper) bed and trade her for the king-size waveless waterbed matress that she currently has! That would take some financial strain off my Dad (who would end up paying for a new bed once my Mom bought one anyway), give my Mom a new piece of furniture that she has been wanting fr quite a while, and it would give us a much better bed PLUS $500 left over for a new TV or something! Genius! We set the wheels in motion, called my Mom and had her go window shopping for a bed while we got ready to go up to their place to pick up the old bed, and we would go pay for the new bed when we got there.

Unfortunately, after doing all the math of combining the Waveless Waterbed with our existing Captain's Bed frame, the bed would have been just under 6 feet tall. No lie. Plus, according t my Brother Butch, the Waveless Waterbed (which had previously been mine) would take at least two loads to transport. And it's heavy as sin because you can't actually take the water out of the bed for some reason.

So we called my parents back to break the bad news to them, but it was too late; Mom had already bought the new bed. And she was almost as pissed by *this* phone call as she was by the one where I had to tell her that Khristle and I had eloped. She then ended the call so she could call the Bed Store and tell them to cancel the order.

I caled her back immediately and explained that I had won the Lottery and that I had wanted to do something nice for them and I was sorry that it all ended up so bad, and so the conversation turned to joy and happy and (of course) my parents telling us we should just go ahead and spend the money on ourselves for smething we want. Why do people in my life make it so hard for me to spread my god fortune???

So we got our new name-brand $1000+ matress delivered today, and guess what? IT DOESN'T FIT IN OUR BED FRAME!!! Now i have to go and see about modifying or something... we LOVE this bed frame and head board!