bait and switch
like i mentioned before, we are planning on a bunk bed for paul. so... on saturday, we dropped paul off at his grandparents' house, borrowed their creaky old van and took off for ikea to buy the unfinished $99 one i've had my eye on (as well as pick up the cabinet we bought to make paul a kitchen set).
because the creaky old van is a creaky old van, cam opted for surface streets. it took us an eternity to get to carson from san pedro. we parked and headed into the holiday tent because i wanted to look for gift wrap and tags. it was freezing in that tent, and it was with a sense of relief that we took our gift wrap (no tags in sight) to the register. cam reached for his wallet and stopped short. surprise! of course he had left his wallet -- and i left mine, too -- in our car, parked in cam's parents' driveway. so back into the van we went, cam apologizing all the way. he took the freeway back and we could barely hear each other over all the squeaks.
we ended up taking our own car back to ikea. cam felt bad that i didn't want to go back to the tent to get my gift wrap, but it was already late and i just wanted to get what we needed and get home.
i've been waffling on the bunk bed issue. i know i said i really liked it -- and i do -- but i've been wondering about the sagacity of putting a child that small into a bed that big. there's a new "junior" bed available (but not in carson, alas) that i've been admiring, but i've been unsure about that one because i didn't know if it could support my weight in addition to paul's. (voice-of-reason cam said that we could try sitting on the toddler beds at carson. if it felt unstable, we'd pass and then just buy the bunk bed.) i've also been iffy about the smaller bed because, well, do we want to have to buy a new bed again in just a few years? but then cam said that if we bought the smaller bed, we could keep it in our room, so i was pretty much sold at that point. however, i still wanted to see the bunk bed because who knows, maybe i'd fall in love with it again once i saw it.
when we got to the bed section, we just stopped dead. completely dead. the $99 bunk bed was no more. in its place was a shorter, more compact and solid bunkbed for more than twice the price. omfg. the reason for the priciness of it was that the bunk bed could be separated into two twins. plus it was already finished (clear coat). i was in shock. sure, i was 75% certain we weren't going to buy the bunk bed, but to have it just mysteriously disappear was a little shocking. it didn't even occur to me to ask if they still had some of the $99 one in stock because, well, i was in shock, and this was clearly a better bed. we kept walking.
cam sat on a toddler bed. bounced on it. it held. i should have been thrilled, but i was still musing over the new bunk bed. now i'm torn. we'll make a trip out to costa mesa or burbank to see the new toddler bed, but i have to wonder if maybe we're meant to get this new bunk bed. clearly we weren't meant to get the old one. argh. i know that what ikea wants for the new bed is not that much. it really isn't. (cam's parents pointed this out, too. cam's bunk bed cost about $600 almost thirty years ago.) but i have a certain idea about what ikea costs should be and this one sort of surprises me. cam says his sense of sticker shock at ikea was lost when we paid for our kitchen cabinets, but those are kitchen cabinets, you know? i'm kerfuffled. i don't know what to do.
but at least there was a nice note to the evening: i found my gift wrap -- along with others i had liked but were not available in the tent -- right next to the registers. unlike the old bunk bed, these rolls of gift wrap must have been meant for me.