Dear Readers,

I have a most sorrowful tale to tell.
As you may or may not know, yesterday was a big day for me. I bought a bed. It was between a bike and a bed, and I decided the latter was the more essential purchase.
It was a large purchase by my standards: $150. Not exactly a luxury bed, but after a week of sleeping on a mattress on the floor, I decided I wanted to wake up in a higher place. The time had come for an upgrade, and off I went to Albrook -- haven of budget stores and shopaholic tourists -- for my bed.

Well, fast forward a few hours and Carmen (the maid) and I attempted to put the bed together but realized about 45 minutes in that success was not within our reach after all. Carmen said the bed seemed a little flimsy and that when I had a boyfriend she hoped he had his own place or I could just move the mattress to the floor cause we’d end up there anyway as she had her doubts the bed could hold two people, much less in any kind of amorous state. We shared a laugh but thought nothing more of it.

Fast forward even more hours. Panchi came to my house to put together my bed because Carmen and I put screws in wrong places and caused some serious damage, though Panchi reassured me it wasn’t irreversible. The instructions were in Portuguese, so putting the bed together took four hours. Finally, after a lot of guessing messing around, our mission was accomplished at 12:45: My bed was built. Actually, more like Panchi’s cause I just passed the screws and was fired from hammering after a few unsuccessful minutes. But anyway, you can imagine my joy at finally having a real life bed to sleep in. I don’t know why, but it’s nicer to wake up three feet above the ground than on it. I haven’t been able to figure out the reason, but it is.

However – and this is when the story takes a turn for the worse -- upon placing the mattress on the frame, a terrible realization dawned upon me: My twin mattress was about three inches too big for the frame!

It turns out I had bought a child’s bed and you have to have a special child’s mattress to go with it. I should have known when I saw how thin the boards were, but my denial and desire for a bed of my own ran deep. Plus, as a nearly dwarf height person, the bed looked normal to me. My choices were to sleep on a 30 degree incline on my newly purchased bed or swallow my pride and return to the floor. Well, I tried sleeping on the bed, I really did, but sleeping on a slope like that made me feel like all my blood was rushing to one side of my body and I kept thinking how stupid I must look sleeping on an incline in a child’s bed. It’s like seeing a football player sitting in a kindergartner’s chair or something.

So this morning I woke upon on the floor again. I guess I’m only living large in some areas of my life.