Our First Bed as a Married Couple...

This story has two parts...first, to tell you about our first bed as a married couple, then, to tell you about our first bed as a married couple.

Let me explain.

When J and I got married we weren't rich. Not that we are now or anything, but at that time I had been working a "real job" for about 6 months...J had been working as a private investigator not making much money either. In any case, we bought a mobile home a few doors down from my sister in a nice park (seriously...never would have EVER thought I'd EVER say that...but...as it was, it was a nice place to live AND we sold it for a nice profit when we moved into a single family home two years later...certainly more than we could have said if we had been in an apartment). Anyway...no savings, lots of debt, lots of stuff to buy as a married couple. Jason moved in a few weeks before the wedding, straight from living in a home provided by my in-laws. A few days before the wedding I started moving my stuff out of my parents' home. We had an old futon Jason brought into the marriage...queen sized...but as we didn't have any other furniture we decided to use it as a couch in the living room. So, we lacked a bed...and most other furniture. Through conversations and people getting rid of stuff we managed to find a dining room table (at least 3rd generation...), a couch, two love seats, and two overstuffed leather chairs. So, we had enough seating. We had a few pieces of office furniture, two entertainment centers, and two TV's, all leftover from our childhoods or donated somehow. But we still had no bed. So, we did what did with all other things...we took what we had and made it work.

That meant that a day before the wedding or so my dad caught me carrying two twin mattresses out of my bedroom at his house. He asked where I was going with his furniture (and rightly so...) and I explained that we needed something to sleep on. Mind you, I was just taking the mattresses...no box springs...no bed frame...two twin mattresses. At that point he told me to get my stuff and go shopping with him...right then and there. Knowing my dad he probably would have sprung for a mattress set, but I didn't have any money and for a few reasons told him I couldn't go. What I instisted was that I didn't have any money...we couldn't afford to buy one. But I knew he'd probably buy one for us or at least split it with us, and although I didn't say anything to the point I didn't really want to burden him with our starting out. I was a really motivated barely 21 year old. It wasn't "right" for me to expect someone else to pay for my home. (side note...I almost got away with buying the house without anyone knowing...I had this grand plan of bringing everyone to my sister's house and then walking to our home and surprising them that it was ours...it didn't work out because the only fax I had access to was the one at my parents' house and they figured it out).

So, when we got back from our honeymoon we slept on two mattresses on the floor, pushed together, with a plush mattress cover holding them together. Shortly after my sister got rid of her then mattress and we were able to inherit box springs. They were box springs for a king...believe it was eastern king. In case you aren't aware a king bed is about 18 inches or so longer than twin mattresses. This left an 18-inch gap or so from the top of our bed to the wall. We filled it with body pillows and used the king-sized mattress cover and fitted sheet to kind of hold the mattresses together. Of course that didn't work too well, but it worked enough. Every night when our dog did laps through the house he'd jump on our bed in a way that it would knock one of the mattresses off the box springs...so almost every night we had to push our bed back together before going to bed. Those were the days when we went to bed together almost every night.

When we moved to Dallas almost two years later we still had the box springs with the twin mattresses on the floor. At some point we discussed purchasing a new mattress, but we were/are diligently paying off debt, so we didn't want to spend the money. And, J set his mind on buying a tempurpedic mattress, which was expensive. And our mattresses worked.

Only a short time later J built a bed frame that picked our box springs up off the floor. So now we were about another 12 inches off the floor but everything else was the same, including the body pillows filling up the space between the top of the twin mattresses and the wall.

It has been another four years since then. That is right. We've been married for 6 years next month and have always slept on two twin mattresses pushed together. It was our deal. We kind of adopted it. When we went to stay somewhere else we had a problem sleeping on those beds because they didn't have the inevitable crack in the middle. Our First Bed was charming.

But, it was time, I suppose, to finally purchase our own bed. Labor Day weekend we decided to go shopping for a mattress, looking at what was out there. J was still sold on a tempurpedic after all these years. We still visited many stores and tried out many more mattresses. I just couldn't justify spending the money on that type of purchase...our twins worked fine. After a few days we finally agreed to purchase the Tempurpedic Deluxe mattress...afterall we had saved up a little and it was on clearance and it was comfortable.

It took two weeks for us to receive our mattress but we had the pillows right away to get used to. They were different. But, after a few days we loved them. When our new First Bed arrived...the First Bed we purchased together...the First Bed that actually consisted of only ONE mattress and one, matching box spring arrived, we fell in love instantly. It has been heaven ever since. They say it can take up to 30 days to get used to...not for us. We got used to it right away.

Now, the question is, what to do with 4 body pillows that have never actually been used for anything other than space filler.