princess and the peahead

I came down with a most strange, unidentified virus this week that impelled me -- against my will and all prior training -- to spend great towering piles of money on home furnishings.

Egad!

It started with my growing displeasure with our continued use of a fifteen-year-old futon as a couch. The damn thing was so uncomfortable to sit on that I usually opted for the floor directly in front of the futon, and only found the futon itself only useful as a backrest. Sure, the cats liked it -- they ought to, it smelled so strongly of them.

In the manner peculiar to such left-over-from-grad-school furnishings, the thing was covered in several layers of blankets and tapestries, so as to cover the proverbial multitude of sins. This meant that the several layers of fabric had to be yanked back up over the frame several times a day, as they tended to sag.

So I finally got the momentum behind me to buy a real, honest-to-god couch. Amazing what having a real, honest-to-god salary will do.

I flirted with CraigsList for a while, but discovered the truth of the axiom you get what you pay for. There is a reason some couches can be sold for only $20. An icky reason.

So I made friends with our local purveyors of brand new furniture and made my purchase. Now, although the futon makes a lousy couch, it makes an outstanding bedframe. So, once my glorious, brand-new, ultra-deluxe couch was delivered, I chucked the raggedy old double bed I had been suffering with for five years and replaced it with the futon.

The idea was to put the old queen size mattress I had in storage at my mother's house on the frame to make it more like a real bed, but close inspection of THAT mattress proved hazardous due to large colonies of MOLD. So I slept for a couple of nights on just the futon frame and fifteen-year-old futon mattress, spinning fitfully and wondering HOW THE HELL I USED TO SLEEP LIKE THIS ALL THROUGH COLLEGE AND GRAD SCHOOL.

Honestly -- for a long time, I slept with just a futon mattress on the floor! Sometimes I engaged in significantly more energetic pursuits than just sleeping on this torture device! This is now unfathomable to me.

Back I went to our local purveyors of fine furnishings. Just like in those awful Hummer ads, PING! went my elegant little forefinger towards an ultra-luxe, premium-thickness, 600-coil, memory-foam, queen-size mattress.

PING! went the cash register! RIP! SLAP! I wrote my check and whapped it down on the counter, using all my feminine wiles to connive the fine young Brazilian manager to deliver TONIGHT not TOMORROW but alas! I was doomed to one more night on ye olde futon.

Sick at heart at the thought of one more night of being forced, through searing back pain, to accept that I am so very much not nineteen any more, I pulled out my trusty old air mattress/guest bed and inflated that on top of the bed of nails I used to call a futon.

The next night I had my premium mattress securely placed under my premium ass.

And hey! Turns out you also need to scheck out fifty more clams for a proper mattress pad! Who doesn't know that?! Everybody knows that!

And what the heck! While you're wandering aimlessly and somewhat embarassed around that section of the department store, dollar bills simply BULGING out of every orifice, don't you REALLY NEED new curtains?

And heavens! what luck! The very bedside lamp you've been looking for!

And what ho! A sale on 400-count sheets, you say! Lay on, MacDuff!

I stopped myself just short of the marble-topped mission-style vanity. I think I pulled a muscle, I stopped so short.