My husband and I have gift-giving issues. As in, he never really needs anything except, occasionally, new underwear and (currently) a new pair of shorts to replace the ones he's been wearing since college; and I always want things we can't afford. Like a Vespa. The consequence of this is that I never know what to get him, and he usually winds up giving me jewelry (much appreciated, but when you work at home the Fed Ex man is just about your only audience) or electronic gadgets that he really wants to play with himself.
So anyway, my birthday is on Sunday, and what I really, really want is a new entertainment center for the living room. This annoys my husband, who is of the opinion that there is Absolutely Nothing Wrong with our current entertainment center. His standard for Nothing Wrong is "still standing"; mine is a little higher. The piece in question was bought at Ikea pre-kids, which makes it roughly 10 years old. Ten years is nothing in furniture terms, except if you're dealing with the low-end Ikea stuff, in which case it's a looooong time for something made out of cardboard with a fake wood veneer. The back of our entertainment center gave out several years ago; the glass doors have never hung properly; the drawers have lost their little slider supports and now just sit forlornly on top of each other (if you stack them very neatly you can almost not tell), and in general I have gotten so tired of this fake blond wood (what WERE we thinking?) monstrosity that some days it's all I can do to not walk over and kick it. But if I did, it would fall over and that might hurt the TV.
Not long ago I found a gorgeous entertainment center at a furniture store that was going out of business. We didn't have any extra money in the bank then, either, but this thing was $600, marked down from something like $1,500, and when I saw it I wanted to lie down on it and say, "Mine! Mine!" I immediately whipped out my cellphone and called my husband, whose job is to say "no" to me at such moments. (Hey, what's mine is yours and what's yours is mine, and he gets a vote on major purchases, so spare me the feminist empowerment speech.) David did his job. He did it that day in such forceful terms, citing the giant sucking sound that was our checking account that month, that for a few minutes afterward I felt like June Cleaver after a spanking by Ward. But you know what? I'm sorry now I didn't buy it anyway, and damn the torpedos.
Because here we are, six months later, the publisher is taking its own sweet time getting the next installment of my advance to me (it's August, everybody in New York is lying comatose on a beach, so I'm not even bothering to call up and ask when it's coming), the Ugly Entertainment Center is still uglifying our living room, and I want a new entertainment center for my birthday. Which is Sunday. So, as you have figured out by now, I am not getting my birthday wish.
I caught David the other night looking at new Plantronics headsets for my desk phone, which was tempting, except that to truly upgrade the one I have would cost about $300. I should have let him buy it anyway, because it gives him such pleasure to buy electronic gadgets, but what I suggested instead was that we not spend that $300 on a new headset and instead put it aside for....a new entertainment center. So now I have accomplished the trifecta: I'm not getting what I want, I'm not even getting anything I don't want, and David didn't get the pleasure of hitting the "one-click" button on Amazon (which is always a thrill).
Instead, I put in a request that on Sunday night I be absolved from childcare duties so that I can watch the entire Spike Lee documentary on New Orleans (I missed the first two segments), and David has agreed. Usually, Sunday nights are reserved for ESPN or whatever baseball game David can find--so that's my birthday present this year: this Sunday night, I get to hold the remote.
Oh, yeah, and I guess while I'm watching I can remind myself that my biggest problem is that I don't have a new entertainment center, as opposed to having a house held together by a few molecules of mold. Puts things in perspective, don't it?