I recently purchased a new mattress and bedframe.

The above sentence is an inadequate summary of a two-day period full of very first-world problems that wore me out, infuriated me, and, in hindsight, was probably quite funny to anyone who wasn’t experiencing it first hand. That last bit is why this story is showing up here. Otherwise I would prefer to just forget about the whole thing rather than relive it in detail.

The lead-up to my two days of stress started several months ago when I realized our eight-year-old mattress was probably a large part of the reason I’d been sleeping so poorly lately. Waking up with stiff joints, a sore back, and feeling exhausted isn’t a great way to start your day. I would often lie awake for hours trying to fall asleep. I’ll admit, some of that was insomnia (still is). However, another part was the fact that my body didn’t like sleeping on an incline. The mattress sloped down in the middle toward where my husband usually sleeps. This was the final impetus toward mattress shopping because I’m 100 pounds heavier than my husband. If anyone should be creating sizeable depressions in a mattress, it’s me, not him.

Since a new mattress was finally in order, we upgraded. We’d been sleeping on a full-sized mattress ever since we were married and had discussed long ago that when the time came we’d get a queen. This meant a new bedframe as well. I settled on a Casper mattress for two reasons. One, the few I’d slept on in Airbnbs were delightful. Two, they deliver straight to my door in (what I thought was) a reasonably sized, compact box. This got rid of the necessity to go to a showroom and lie down on mattresses (not a good way to shop for one anyway) and kept me isolated from the many people in my community who do not believe COVID is real or serious. A third reason, less important than the first two, was that Casper was having a small sale.

I purchased the mattress first, then verified the dimensions (60″ x 80″) so I could track down a bedframe on Amazon. I didn’t want a box spring and had checked that my new mattress wouldn’t need one before buying, so I picked up a bedframe similar to one my mother has – no headboard, just a platform constructed of metal bars and raised off the floor so I can store totes and other items underneath. By sheer coincidence both items were scheduled to arrive on the same day. I eagerly awaited their arrival from our living room couch, which was where I’d resorted to sleeping for some relief from the morning soreness.

The morning of the day the mattress and bedframe were scheduled to arrive, I got an email from the Post Office at 7:30 informing me my bedframe was undeliverable. This was a little confusing because 1) I’d had large packages delivered by the Post Office before, 2) the postman doesn’t get to our house until 11 am or later, and 3) why the hell was an Amazon Prime item being delivered through the Post Office??? Especially right now, with all the shit the Post Office is going through. I couldn’t really blame the Post Office. It was a freaking bedframe after all. I knew it was probably a large, awkwardly shaped, heavy box. If it didn’t fit in the truck, it was probably too difficult for one person to muscle out of the truck and carry to our door. It’s winter in Wyoming. The postman could have slipped on ice or hurt their back or something. No, I was more pissed at the seller for choosing to use the Post Office over UPS.

Since the bedframe couldn’t be delivered, I had to physically go to the Post Office to retrieve it, which opened up a whole new range of issues. My husband and I do not have the stereotypical Wyoming transportation. I have a two-door Chevy Cobalt and he has a Subaru Baja. A Baja is the tiniest of the tiny trucks. The truck bed is maybe a quarter of the size of a normal truck bed, and its usefulness is always less than one might expect due to the wheel wells and the presence of a topper (which is otherwise very useful for keeping snow and ice out). I knew my only hope would be using the Baja, but I also knew the box just might not fit. So, I called the Post Office and asked the very friendly lady who answered the phone if she could get me the box dimensions. She said sure and went off to find it, returning about a minute later.

“The box says the dimensions are 60 inches by 80 inches by 14 inches,” she said.

This confused me. “Wait, is the box really that big?” I asked. “Those were the item dimensions given on the website. Was it shipped completely put together?”

“Oh no, it definitely needs to be put together. Don’t worry, it’ll fit in any truck bed.”

It was at this point I knew the woman I was speaking with had no idea what a Baja was and didn’t understand how a “truck” might not be adequate. I conceded the battle, thanked this very friendly but very unhelpful woman, and hung up hoping the box would fit when I retrieved it the next day. While I was worrying about the bedframe, my mattress was delivered. I don’t know what delivery service Casper uses, but it isn’t the Post Office, so the mattress appeared on the top of my front stoop with a little bit of scuffling, a clang from a two-wheeled handcart, and a solid knock on the door.

I opened the door to find a three-and-a-half-foot-tall, one-and-a-half-foot square, blue and white Casper box. I tipped and drug it into the front hall and shut the door. I say “tipped and drug” because it was HEAVY and there was no picking it up. I slid it across the tile to the bottom of the stairs, then stood there considering my next move. I needed to get the box up the stairs. My staircase is carpeted and split in two sections where the top section makes a 180 degree turn. I’m used to doing a lot of things on my own – I moved myself several times in college with no help, I fix the furniture I can, and I’m the one who carries the heavy stuff. I’m stubborn. But. I. Could. Not. Get. This. Box. Up. The. Stairs. I tried pulling from above. No. I tried tipping it and sliding it up the stairs from below. No. I tore one of the handles on the side of the box and bent a nail back all the way. After several minutes I stood staring at the box mocking me at the foot of the stairs.

At this point I had one more possible solution up my sleeve before I had to wait for my husband to come home and help. It had been snowing most of the day, so it wasn’t my favorite option, but I put on my shoes and coat and trudged out to our townhouse’s storage shed for our two-wheeled handcart we’d bought the last time we moved. It was wedged between a pile of wood that’s been waiting to be turned into a series of shelves and a stack of plastic drawers, requiring me to rearrange that entire area. There was lots of swearing involved. I finally got it out of the shed, into the house, and under the mattress box.

I made my first attempt at pulling it up the stairs…and the wheels got stuck on the lip of the bottom stair. A lip that every stair in my staircase has. What I didn’t have was a strap to keep the mattress box from falling forward when I gave a big enough tug. I had a sudden vision of the box tipping forward and knocking a giant hole in the wall just below my electrical panel. Begrudgingly, I left the whole setup where it was and waited for my husband to come home, which wouldn’t be until 8 PM.

One thing I could do was prep the bedroom to receive the mattress. Even though we wouldn’t get the bedframe until the next day, I fully intended to sleep in my bedroom for the first time in several days that night. I lifted our old mattress and box spring up and leaned them against the wall. They blocked my closet (they’re still blocking it) but I haven’t used any of the clothes in there for over a year anyway (thanks COVID). Then I dismantled the bedframe and vacuumed. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but I was sweaty, pissed, and tired by the time I was done.

When he got home, my husband wasn’t enthusiastic about hauling the mattress up the stairs, but acknowledged the necessity of the task, particularly when I informed him the old bed was already dismantled. I’m the burlier one, so I lifted from the bottom, and he pulled from the top. We went up one stair at a time. Fourteen stairs, fourteen heaves. In the process he somehow managed to hit his head on the handcart. When we finally got it upstairs we wheeled the mattress box into the bedroom and started opening it. Tugging the vacuum-sealed mattress out of the box took both of us. We tore the plastic off and maneuvered it in place on the floor to take its first breath and expand. It was ready when we went to bed several hours later.

The next morning my husband drove my car to work and left me the Baja. I took the tiny truck to the Post Office. The bedframe box was indeed large, awkward, and heavy, but at least I could lift the damn thing. There was a team lift warning on it, which is probably why the Post Office took one look at it and said, “Fuck no.” I typically ignore those warnings anyway, and I was able to get it out of there by myself, but this was also the first time where I saw the purpose in that warning. It was a big box. I had to angle it awkwardly in my arms, while also dangling my purse from my forearm because it wouldn’t stay on my shoulder, and it was too wide a box to get a good grip on.

I managed to maneuver it through two sets of doors, down a ramp, and into the parking lot before I finally lost my grip and dropped it three parking spaces from the Baja. I left it where it fell, walked over to the Baja, threw my purse on the hood, and opened the topper and tailgate. Then I walked back to the box and slid it over to the Baja through the snow, still not certain if it would even fit. It almost didn’t. I measured this box later, and the dimensions came out to 41 inches by 30.5 inches and 7 inches thick. The wheel wells in the truck bed made it too narrow for the box to lie flat on its shortest dimension, so I had to prop it up on one of them. If it had been much thicker than 7 inches it wouldn’t have fit because the topper wouldn’t have closed. This took me several minutes in a busy parking lot to figure out. In the process I dropped the key fob to the Baja and it ended up so far under the truck that I had to crawl on my hands and knees to reach it.

I finally got it loaded and drove home. By this point I was audibly swearing as I drug it out of the truck bed, so much so that one of the neighbor families who were coming home could hear my across the parking lot. I managed to haul it to the front door without dropping it, though it was a close race. Then I slid it into the front hallway. I was not going to try and haul it upstairs, so I opened it in the hallway and took the bedframe up in pieces. It was a lot more manageable that way.

Then came another logistical problem. The mattress was already occupying the space the bedframe needed to be, and there was no more extra space. I picked the mattress up and started lifting it toward the wall, and that was when I realized that memory foam mattresses have less structure than traditional mattresses. It took me three minutes of inching my foot forward, heaving, and putting my back against the yielding material before I finally got it upright against the wall. I lived in fear over the next twenty minutes that it would tumble forward while I was putting the bedframe together.

The bedframe construction was the least frustrating part of the whole process. No tools were required and the wordless pictograph instructions were pretty easy to understand. The most difficult bit came when I had to put the mattress on it. The bedframe came with non-slip tape to keep the mattress from moving too much. Pretty useful, except it was only me muscling the mattress on. So every time I lifted or adjusted it I had tear it off this tape. Then I had to slowly, oh so slowly, inch the completed bedframe and mattress back toward the wall. This was literally done an inch at a time since there were no wheels on the frame and I was pushing it through medium-pile carpet. But I was finally done!

A new mattress and bedframe now live in my bedroom and I sleep much better. Good thing too, because I was exhausted, as much from being frustrated and stressed as from the physical exertion. Our old mattress and box spring are still blocking my closet. As clearly demonstrated above, we don’t have the vehicle necessary to transport a full-sized mattress and box spring to the dump, so we’re waiting for a day when one of our very nice, very helpful, very patient friends who does have access to a vehicle like that can come help us take them away.

After two days of first world problems, bitching, and exhaustion, we finally have a new bed we can both sleep on. I’m quite happy with my Casper mattress so far and don’t anticipate any issues. Of course, that doesn’t mean they won’t make themselves known eventually, but right now I’m living in ignorant bliss of possible future issues. I’m going to go take a nap.