Flea-market Find

A couple of years ago when we were at a low ebb financially, we had an urgent need for a mattress.  Being the shrewd shopper that I am, I hunted down a cheap one at a perpetual flea market near us.  It was only $219 (including tax) and came with a five year warranty.  What was I thinking?  We actually bought a mattress set at a flea market.  Seriously.  Although the thought did occur to me that the warranty was virtually useless, the price certainly was right so Jerry strapped those suckers to the roof of our car and off we rode.

Ever wake up feeling like you've spent the night sleeping in a cardboard box?  The next morning I wanted to be shaken out, uncrumpled and given a good ironing.  And things got worse.  Over the next few months whenever we sat down on the mattress, we would hear sprongy noises and sometimes in the night we'd hear sounds suspiciously like wood splintering.  Turns out buying the flea market mattress set was not our finest hour.  Go figure!

As time progressed, fortune again smiled upon us and we decided to purchase a new mattress and relegate the flea market find to the guest room.  This time we purchased a memory foam knock-off from an internet site.  It came vacuum packed and when we opened the plastic, it exploded into the mattress that we know and love to this very day.

Now that I was once more enjoying blissful slumber, I began to feel guilty about our guests' visits.  We shop at all the high class places (I guess that's obvious by now) and at one of them we found a piece of one-and-a-half inch memory foam padding, which we bought for the handsome fee of $29.99.  Nothing's too good for our friends and family.  Imagine my surprise when our visitors started telling us how well they slept!

Kids can sleep anywhere!

The story ought to end there but it doesn't.  When we moved south, we realized that our beautiful bed with its antique headboard would not fit into the master bedroom of a house built in the 2000's.  We were forced to put it - with its wonderful internet memory foam - in our guest room in the basement. 

So now guess what we're sleeping on again?  I'm pretty sure that some night Jerry is going to roll over and the box springs will implode underneath us, but until then I'm sure happy to have that inch and a half of foam between me and the flea market mattress.