Whoever said 'thrill of the hunt' should be shot

Published Aug. 20, 2007

We are always on a mission for something.
It seems we never have the right stuff, enough stuff or the stuff we have needs to be replaced.
Our most recent mission was for a new bed.
You may know the drill. One morning you crawl out of your bed and you realize you just had a pretty lousy night's sleep on a pretty lousy mattress.
And before you know it, you are obsessed with a hunt for a new bed. You pore through the pile of glossy ads that spill out of your Sunday newspaper.
And, I don't know how it happens but it seems that those Sunday advertisers always seem to know the object of your hunt-of-the-week.
For every other ad that spills onto your kitchen table includes a page of mattresses on sale.
We studied those ads but after a couple Sundays, brand names and prices all began to run together, sending me into the second stage of the hunt.
The Internet.
There, "customer reviews" offer insight into brand names and prices. Theoretically.
Trying to figure out what bed is best by what customers say online is like trying to find out which bed you want to sleep in based on what Goldilocks has to say.
And so, finally, you are at the third stage of the hunt: Getting in the car and actually going to the store.
And, in our case, once we started lying down on mattresses, brand names, customer reviews and even prices were of little consequence.
We fell onto one particular bed and we knew it was the one we wanted - even if it was a brand I had never considered at a price I had been unwilling to pay.
But we bought it and finally our mission was accomplished.
Momentarily.
You see, we bought a king-size bed to replace a queen-size bed, therefore setting up another series of hunts, starting with sheets.
The drill was the same. Look in the Sunday ads. Look on the Internet. Go to the store and buy some on sale.
And then we needed pillows.
You see, king-size bedding needs king-size pillows.
"Let's go the mall," I said to my husband late Saturday afternoon.
"The mall, I don't want to go to the mall. Why do we have to go to the mall? I don't feel like ..."
An hour later we were at the mall standing in front of a wall of pillows. I'm not kidding. As far as the eye could see upward and outward were pillows - down pillows, alternative-down pillows, down-surround pillows, firm pillows, medium pillows, soft pillows.
Some cost $7; some cost $27 and some cost $157.
It was a hunt for a master hunter. I pulled down a pillow and squeezed it. Then I smashed my cheek against its plastic sleeve. My husband was doing the same at the far end of the wall.
Two hours later as we were trudging out of the store laden with bags of pillows (they were buy one, get one free), I lost sight of my husband.
I put down my pillows and looked around.
I could see the top of his head across the furniture department so I made my way over to him.
He was sitting on a sectional sofa.
"You like this?" he asked, brushing his hand across the seat of the sofa.
"I think it would look good in our living room."
And so begins another hunt.
But we should be able to pay for this one with the proceeds from that garage sale we plan to have.
A garage sale sure to include an old sofa and lots of queen-size bedding.