Matress shopping, not fun.

I solved my lack of bed problem last week with a trip to the local furniture store. Well, more accurately, a trip to every furniture store in Moscow, but I found the bed I ultimately purchased at the first store I visited.

Mattress shopping's hard. I'm indecisive, so most major decisions are hard. But this one was especially harder because I knew if I got it wrong, I would have to live with it every night for the rest of the time I have the mattress.

A lady at one of the stores told me you should lay on a mattress for 15 minutes before deciding if it's good for you or not. I wasn't taking any chances so I laid on the one I bought for 34 minutes before laying on a few also rans before deciding I had made the right decision.

After my selection, I paid for my new mattress and was told it'd be a few hours before it would be delivered. I used this time to pick out new sheets and a comforter. The day before I had looked at Bed, Bath and Beyond and Wal-Mart but hadn't really seen any that I was too impressed with.

My mom happened to call me as I was leaving the furniture store and we were discussing other places I could look in town as I drove by the mall and saw Ross and thought they would be a good place to look. I went into the store and wasn't sure where to even start looking for blankets and sheets when I saw a lady walk by me with a comforter in her shopping cart. I asked her where she got it from and she pointed me in the right direction.

I was hoping I could get by with a bed-in-a-bed-type system but I didn't like any of the sets they had there. But I did find a comforter I liked, it's a purple shade that I'm sure has its own name, but I'm a guy and therefore only know a handful of color names and they don't include the 40 various shades of every color in the spectrum.

After I found a comforter I liked, I had to find sheets to match. I've never been good at color coordinating things so this process consisted of me finding a color of sheets that I thought might go well with the comforter and asking the lady in the next aisle rather or not I was right. I only had to bug this nice lady three times before I selected a set of green 500-thread sheets.

My next thought was I needed a box spring cover. I franticly walked up and down all the aisles trying to find one without any success. Then I called my mom again and she told me to look for something called a dust ruffle. While I had her on the phone, I asked her what a sham was and if I really needed two. Turns out it's a fancy name for pillow case (someone else later told me it's a fancy name for a pillow case that goes on top of the pillows you don't sleep on. This doesn't make sense to me as I don't have display pillows, I only have pillows that I sleep on.).

I couldn't find dust ruffles so I tracked down an employee and she had yet another fancy name for what I was looking for, but I've since forgotten what she called it and it turned out they only had two colors in two sizes that I didn't need.

I gave up on the idea of a box spring cover, or whatever it's called, but then I started to question my sheet/comforter selection and wonder if even if they did go well together, if they looked too girly.

This other lady shopping ensured me that they did go well together and called my selection masculine. I attempted to send my mom a picture of my choice using my cell phone but that picture didn't turn out really well. As I was taking that picture, the lady asked me if I was sending it to my girlfriend.

I told her I was sending it to my mom and if I had a girlfriend, I wouldn't be shopping by myself. Which reminds me, I'm getting married before I make any more major purchases or decisions that require color scheming.

After my bed was delivered and set up, I immediately made my new bed with the sheets and comforter I purchased. I opted not to use any of the pillow cases or shams that came with the sheets and comforter, instead choosing to keep my current ones on my bed, including my Spiderman pillowcase.

So now I officially have a grown up bed with a grown up bed set and a Spiderman pillowcase thrown in for good measure.

I like the pillowcase, I had a Spiderman twin bed set sent to me shortly after I arrived in Iraq because I wanted something fun in my room there and haven't felt the need to replace it yet.