Wednesday, June 1, 2011

THE DOMESTIC SYNDROME

HOW THE "TIGER BED" CAME INTO BEING

The apartment into which we moved, besides having the heat turned off and having no hot water, also lacked a bed in the bedroom. The wonderful elders who trashed - I, mean, who inhabited the place before we moved in took the frames for the two double beds and threw the mattresses into the dumpster out front. We were under the necessity of buying an inflatable mattress (shown in a previous post) and sleeping "on the floor", as it were. This was OK because we spent about $85.00 on the thing. It has a built in motor and fan, powered by the energizer bunnies, which fill it up very quickly. And, the air supply is controlled by a good nozzle. We only had to pump the mattress up once a week or so, and that was only for 20 seconds or so. However, getting up from the floor for this old 62 year old body was rather difficult, especially during the middle of the night - a joy that, thanks to a water pill, could be upwards of three times a night. (That was also dependent on how much guzzling I did at the end of the day.) Finally, we broke down and went to a furniture store (or two) and found a frame, box springs, and mattress at a reasonable price. That is code for "frugal" with the Jan unit. We ended up at an old institution located on Arctic Drive called,

"The mattress Barn!

The establishment from the parking lot across the street.

High class decorations on the Mattress Barn

We borrowed a pickup truck from the mission vehicle fleet, secured the mattress and box springs in the back and drove it crossed town to our apartment. A pair of elders met us there and helped us tote the "stuff" into the apartment and into the bedroom. They even put the frame together for us. Bless their hearts.

The Campbell Senior Missionaries then transferred their bedding to the new bed, and voila! Instant queen size bed at a normal, civilized world height!

The bedspread is explained in a previous post. (We love
our loving, fluffy tiger.)

Here it is again "artfully strewn" with paraphernalia.

Now, the only problem with getting the bed is that it awoke the "nesting" instinct in the wife unit. She thought, "If we now have a bed, I want curtains too! So the next thing we knew, we were shopping for curtains and curtain rods.Of course, the expectation was the the Rod unit was going to cooperate and hang the rods. (Rod -- rods Gee, life is so full of coincidences!) We had to bring the drill home from the office, buy a new chuck and appropriate bits for it -- and appropriate grabbers -- which naturally took a week or so. But, her Ladyship now has curtains in the living room and bedroom.