Adventures in Instant Gratification

I recently moved to Kansas City. After an amazing beautiful summer I was privileged enough to make the sojourn to the mid-west with my wife. In our vows we promised to go on adventures with one another and to take each other on adventures. Moving here is an adventure. Here we’re poor and unemployed. It is a beautiful reminder to me that there are people in this world who do not have the ability to be instantly gratified. Let me elaborate.

We moved into a great old Kansas City house. Washington doesn’t have many houses like this and they are missing out. It’s a fabulous old place except my wife and I were not very keen to the color of our walls. Not a big issue though. We can buy paint, we can visit Home Depot, pick out our favorite colors, buy that paint, paint those walls, and done. Not we have beautifully colored walls that match our comforter and curtains. I am gratified.

Now for phase two of the instantly gratifying story. We moved into a great old Kansas City house but oh wait, the bed we were told was a queen is in fact a full. Again I am not gratified so after the room is painted my wife and I head out to every mattress outlet in Kansas City, we visit Goodwill, we check the classifieds. I must say we found some incredible deals but once you get that frame, box spring, mattress, combo going there you might find that you don’t need an incredible deal but that you need an impossible deal. That’s how phase two of this story ended anyway.

I lay on my full sized bed next to my wife closer than before as space permitted as our postropedic mattress cover hung over the edges wondering if the bed was in fact a double or if a double and a full are not actually the same thing . . . I realized that I could not be instantly gratified. A fantastic revelation really. I have said in the past that I am not a material person. I have boasted about in but in reality in the past when a “have or have-not” situation arose you could count me on the “have” side. I realized on that full (possibly double) sized bed that I don’t want to “have,” I want to make myself contented with what I already have instead of purchasing objects to alleviate my neediness. I’ll be ok living without a microwave and I think I can take the bus to work everyday. It’s an adventure for me really.