my Hastens bed

So my bed finally arrived today — this is the first mattress that I have ever purchased on my own! — and after almost ten weeks of sleeping on a 3" thick futon, you can surely imagine that this was an eagerly anticipated arrival. Since I was at work when it was delivered, I had asked the doorman to have the delivery guys take the box off and put the mattress on my existing bed frame. So I came home to this enormous bed perched on my little bed platform, and I was instantly reminded of one of those crypts in New Orleans, where they have to bury their dead loved ones above the ground because the water table is so low. Or high. Whatever. Either way, it was not a great mental image for something that I had been waiting for with bated breath.

Basically, the bed is too high for my very compact apartment. It's like it takes up too much cubic footage, and now there is not enough room for me to move about freely. The bed is always in my peripheral vision, which sort of sucks royally. After trying to digest the crypt-factor, I flopped onto the bed to at last try it out, and it was like belly flopping into a jar of Fluff. It is so soft! (not a good thing.) I had specifically requested a firm firm firm mattress on the phone with Rona over at the Hastens showroom in Soho, and she convinced me to get a softer mattress after I told her my stats (height, weight, sleeping patterns). According to her, smaller people need a less firm mattress for whatever stupid reason. Despite the fact that I prefer sleeping on a mattress that is pretty much like a piece of plywood. I like firm. And my new bed, with its 25 year warranty, is definitely NOT firm.

Which means that I might potentially have a marshmallow mattress until way past the time when I go through menopause. Which seems so freaking far away that I am shocked at how long 25 years is. And therefore how long I am stuck with this mattress. Which was custom made, since NO ONE apparently orders a bed in a full size anymore these days. It's queen sized all the way, baby. And then I had to be fussy and request gray checked fabric, instead of the ubiquitous navy check, so that it would match the gray wooden platform. All of which added up to requiring my bed to be made specifically to order, in Sweden nonetheless, and then shipped over to me in Brooklyn. Completely negating the claim that these beds have a "zero carbon footprint," which is pretty much impossible anyway, since as I sit here writing this post, I am making some sort of carbon footprint, I am sure of it.

I need to call Rona and let her know that my bed is pretty much like a gray check Peeps, and I am not sure I can sleep on such poofiness for the next 25 years. And in the meantime, I will be moving the mattress into storage and unfolding my perfectly acceptable 3" thick organic cotton futon from the top of my wardrobe, where I already stowed it, and I will sleep on that in monkish asceticism until I have a place where my bed can co-exist without intruding into my visual space every time I open my eyes.

Sigh…it is like I everything I do requires a do-over at least once, because I always seem to fuck it up the first go round. This is getting frustrating after 34 years.