excessive spending saturday

Today I spend $1502...

And while I was aware of the rough ballpark figure while I was spending it (since it took about four hours to do), it was only really when I got home and added up all my receipts that it really sunk in...

I also managed to do it all with a very slight headache/hangover... I'm such a cheap drunk... two shots of tequila last night and I was feeling all warm and tingly, but not even the least bit drunk... but this morning, a tiny bit seedy...

But back to the excessive purchases...

As I said last weekend, after having seen a suitable bed frame at Ikea, we decided that today was going to be about finally getting me a new bed... and if things went to plan, the red chair I've been drooling over for months too.

So supermarket, blah blah, Whittakers chocolate (very tasty), blah blah blah... we then went off to Dreamland to look at mattresses... I didn't actually realise that it had been 9 months since we were last there... I knew it had been a while, but the quotes that I got last time were now useless... in fact the first one on the list isn't even being made anymore. Anyway, the nice lady (a different nice lady than last time) took me around the store and made me lie down a lot... most of the time I didn't even get a chance to work out if it felt okay or not before she declared the mattress in question "not right" and whisked me off to try another one.

Eventually it was decided that the best mattress was a Sleephaven "Dream Bedzzz" Twilight (actually I had no idea was it was... it only says "Twilight" on the receipt, and the whole incident is something of a blur... it was only after doing a bit of googling that I realised what it was). Part of my brain did go "seriously, I have to have a bed named after the worst vampire movie ever?" when she mentioned the name... but it was the most comfortable, the nice lady said it supported me properly (and the top of it has pretty stars embossed into the fabric) and before I knew it I was saying yes and being upsold a slightly pretentious "mattress protector"...

Then I was flinging my ATM card across the room (by accident, it slipped out of my fingers as I was pulling it out of my wallet) and attempting to run up $1116... except the transaction wouldn't go through, and none of us could work out why... I had more than enough money on the card, but it kept being declined. Finally Ma remembered that there's a limit on how much you can spend on one of those cards in a day... turns out that it's $1000. Who knew!? Not me... I've never even come close to spending that much in a day before, let alone in a single freaking transaction. So after $1000 worth of EFTPOS and $116 in cash, I headed out of the store mumbling "$1116" to myself with nothing more to show for it than a piece of paper and a potential delivery date of next Saturday.

*deep breath... hold it... and relax*

So, the deed was done... but now I needed a bed frame to go along with the spanky new mattress I just bought...

So after a quick sidetrip to Arndale (there were supposed to be teeshirts... there really weren't teeshirts, stupid trixy catalogue) we headed down to Ikea for the second time in as many weeks.

Our first stop was the restaurant (a reasonably good veggie quiche and chips for me... but I really, really, really need to stay away from that horrible Princess Cake)... it was getting to be about lunch time anyway, but I think I was suffering from low blood sugar or something... all that spending of money, with more to come...

Once we were finished eating it was the most streamlined, focused, confusing and expensive trip to Ikea we've ever had...

First, find the Tullsta chair, write down the measurements to check if it will fit in the back of Ma's car and the spot to find it in the Big Racks of Swedishness...

Second, find the Heimdal bed (seriously, do these Ikea names actually MEAN anything, or is it just made up gibberish?), get the slightly useless transexual who works in that department to write down everything I needed to know (she was only useless because she not only took FOREVER to write down the details for me, she also got two of the item locations wrong)...

Third, make the long, long, long trek from the bed department all the way through the rest of the upper and lower floors of the store until we got to the Self Service Furniture Area where it all seemed to get overly complicated.

I'm sure once you know how it all works, it's fine (as I do now), but I wanted to get the big stuff delivered (the bed head and food and the sides), so I wasn't sure if I needed to schlep it all through the checkouts or what. Turns out I did... but because the stupid bed lady had pointed me in the wrong direction, I ended up having to have conversations with three different Ikea employees and frankly I felt kind of dumb by the end of it.

While all this was going on I'd sent Ma out to measure the car (and she managed to snag one of the Tullsta chairs that was already on a trolley before she went out, since she spotted one of the employees adding some more stock to the floor)... then I collected all of my Heimdals and Skorvas and Sultan Lades that made up the bed and once she got back we proceeded to the "5 items or less" aisle (what, I had exactly five items!) and paid out $318, then headed over to the home delivery counter while Ma went to get the car, got served by both of the prettypretty boys who worked there, and was charged another $68 for delivery ($48 for the delivery and an extra $20 because their normal delivery time just happened to include the hour we're at the Cabaret Festival tomorrow and for the extra fee I could get it delivered at whatever fricken time I liked... and really, by that point in the day, an extra $20 was pretty much chicken feed!)...

Then we had to get my Tullsta and my Sultan Lade and my Skorva into Ma's car, which was much easier than I thought it was going to be... but by this point it was 3pm... so much for the "short day" we originally planned...

I spent most of the drive back to my place making random noise and repeating the insane amount of money I'd spent, but like I said at the top of this post, it was only when I got home and added it all up on my mobile phone's calculator that it really started to sink in... so "one thousand, five hundred and two dollars" kind of became a catchphrase for a while.

On the plus side, not only am I getting the mattress delivered for free, but for a small fee they're also going to take my gross old bed away... woohoo. Also, after I finally managed to unwrap the chair from it's vast cocoon of plastic and cardboard, its very comfortable... not quite as comfortable as the one in the store, but mine is brand new, whereas the one in the store has probably had a couple of hundred people a day sitting in it for the last however many days. But it'll wear in (I just need to get some of the Scotchguard stuff... not like I was going to do when I bought the little red sofa and never got around to... I need to actually do it)...

On the down side, next Saturday will involve varying amounts of "waiting for mattress delivery", "constructing new bed", "moving old bed", "cleaning spot where bed was" and suchlike. There are also the double issues that I'm going to have a new bed in four different parts taking up space in the apartment for a week... and it made more sense for Ma to take the old busted rocking chair (and it really is old and busted... it's as old as me and pretty much falling to bits) when she comes down tomorrow, that way she doesn't need to take it out of the car when she gets home and she can work her old lady magic on whoever she needs to to make it find a dumpster somewhere... which is better than me just putting it out on the footpath.

I am a tiny bit concerned about sleeping in a bed with slats though... every other bed I've ever had has been of some other variation, and looking at the big pile of slats that are currently sitting on my dresser, they don't look very, very, very sturdy... and you add to that the weight of me and the mattress... and, yeah...

The other thing that keeps floating through my mind is picking the right person to help me "christen" the bed... I can think of a couple of highly desirable candidates, but none of them are high on the possibility scale... oh well, whatever happens will happen I guess...

So that was my very expensive day out... big love to Pat, Peta and Kylwoo for helping me spend a shitload of money...

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