Yesterday my girls and I went to Target to pick out a Christmas gift for my husband. We didn't have a plan about what to get him. Well, that's only partly true - I was going to buy him socks. I went through his sock drawer this week and was shocked at what I saw. His socks are so bad that if I gave them to homeless people they would be offended. All of his socks are gray and they were not gray when they were purchased. I'm sure he doesn't even notice. So top of the list was socks. My daughters wanted to get him pajamas - they are on a pajama thing right now. We could not figure out anything else to get him. He likes video games but he has a Gamefly account, he has every game console you could want. Wii, XBOX, Kinect....a bunch of others. Whatever. He doesn't really have time to do extra things - so he doesn't have hobbies really. He goes to work, comes home and plays with the kids and helps me get them to bed, he watches some show on Netflix and then goes to bed. That sums up our days, pretty much. We are both so LAME. So we are walking around Target clueless and finally we just gave up and purchased a gift card so that he can buy something he wants.
When I got home I said to him, "You are really hard to buy for." He shrugged, "I don't want anything for Christmas." "Well, I almost got you a TV. They are selling a 32 inch at Target for $249." His eyes got big. "That's a good price. I mean - we paid $500 for this TV." I turned and looked at our little sad 19-inch TV with some damage at the bottom of the screen. "That TV is 7 years old, how did we have $500 for a TV? Weren't we poor?" He laughed, "That's when we had credit cards." Credit cards....how I miss thee. We cut up our credit cards 6 years ago and have had the policy of "If you don't have cash, you don't buy it." Because of this we are very deliberate. We are not the kind of people who buy TVs on a whim. My husband has been asking for a new TV for the past 18 months. Our TV is 7 years old and it's small. I love that TV, though. We paid $500 for it in 2006. It was flat screen and had a built in DVD player and it was a fancy TV for it's time. Now it's kind of sad. Something happened to the bottom of the screen and according to my husband the back light is going out. I am the kind of person that doesn't replace things until they are completely unusable - so I have resisted. But last night he looked at me with big eyes and guilt tripped me and finally I caved. I didn't go with him. I hate to see money exchanged OUT of our bank account.
When he got home there was a brightness in his eyes and a spring in his step. He looked like a kid in a candy store. He got a bigger, more expensive TV then the one I had talked out. I didn't even bitch about it. I smiled and said, "Wow! It's a really nice TV. It's HUGE" and then I added, "This is your Christmas and birthday present for the next 2 years." He laughed. He put it together immediately. The kids we soooo excited. We turned off the lights and watched a Christmas Carol. The kids were like, "This is like being at the movie theater." My husband curled up next to me. "Thanks for letting me buy a TV." I am glad that he is happy. He works REALLY hard and he deserves a little reward. Santa will be impressed, he may want to sit down while delivering the gifts and watch a Christmas Carol himself!
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