Mattress Mess

We had our first overnight house guests on Friday night. To prepare, we blew up our tried and true queen-size inflatable mattress--which we already knew had a leak, but which we hoped to fix before my in-laws arrived. No such luck. The air leaked out, and we couldn't figure out from where, so we went to Plan B. We decided to buy another queen-size inflatable mattress to replace the leaky one. I bought a relatively cheap one, which was labeled as a queen and had the dimensions on the package. When I blew it up, I found it barely bigger than a twin-size mattress. I had Jeff look at, and he, too, thought it was awfully small. We then looked up mattress dimensions online and found that the dimensions on the package were actually full-size dimensions. But, when we got out our handy-dandy tape measure, we found that it didn't even meet those standards. I grumpily deflated the mattress and returned it to the store. I then went to a different store and bought a more expensive, name-brand, queen-size inflatable mattress, with actual queen-size dimensions printed on the box. When I blew it up, I also found it lacking. And the tape measure test confirmed: a full-size bed masquerading as a queen. I was outraged at the blatant false-advertising and the attempt of the inflatable mattress people to so badly rip off the faithful consumers--namely me! Jeff felt the same way. So, we deflated and packaged up yet another inflatable mattress and determined that we were getting out of the inflatable mattress business altogether. Instead, we instituted Plan D, which was to go out and buy ourselves a new king-size mattress and move our old one up to the guest room. A bit extreme, I know, but it was the ultimate plan anyway, and it was worth it not to have to deal with anymore crummy inflatables.

The morals of the story are these: Don't believe everything you see in print. Do not trust inflatable mattress people under any circumstances. And, we have a super-comfy guest bed, so don't hesitate to come visit!