That went well, although it was a little sad. I'm tied up all weekend with the Pinewood Derby, and I'm gone Monday, so I got out the Spending-Money-on-Silly-Wimminz's Day crap early. A gigantic oversized card full of all kinds of gushy hoobah that I signed my name to, a dozen orangeish roses in a big red urn-shaped thing with a teddy bear hugging it, and a huge ass Hershey bar.
I bought the card at a truckstop of all places, as an impulse buy. It was a little sad, because the cashier actually broke down and cried. "Sob. I wish I had a man to buy me a card like this. If I got a card like this, I would frame it, and I would touch it every day, and I would cry and cry and boo hoo hoo hoo bawl sob sigh."
I got the huge ass candy bar because a huge ass card needs a huge ass candy bar to go with it, and to make up for the months during which chocolate was strictly verboten for poor SWMBO. The teddy bear urn thing was an impulse buy because it was next to the roses. Wal-Mart sure has made buying a dozen roses an easy thing. I once paid $52 for a dozen roses in a florist's shop, back in college, when I was earning $3.80 an hour. I'm all for Mom and Pop staying afloat, but roses die after about 2-3 days whether you pay $100 for them or $10. Even with one of those schmoozy Lee Valley flower recutter flummies (which I bought for SWMBO as a guilt gift while I was ordering some tools.) That $52 dozen was dead inside 12 hours because they drank up all the water, and she didn't water them. Ugh. If these share the same fate, I'm only out $18. What the hell.
So I set up the huge ass card in such a way that it hid the huge ass candy bar until the last. She pulled the card out to read it, and then she took two steps back and squealed like a, well, like a girl.
We had a crappy anniversary, and she had a crappy birthday. I didn't buy her anything for either fete because of all the hoobah we were dealing with after her hospital stay and whatnot, so this was her Annibirthdaversarytine's Day pre-blowout blowout. For the blowout proper, I'll take her to some restaurant we can't afford tomorrow and blow $100 for a bunch of crap I'd rather not eat, and hopefully get hammered on margaritas somewhere in the process.
The other depressing thing was today, when I bought all this most recent batch of crap at Wal-Mart. The cashier got all teary-eyed and depressed. Not as maudlin as the first one, but it was obvious she was hurting. She asked me when I stopped being interested in my wife, and I didn't quite take her deeper meaning, so I made some smartass comment, and broke her heart even further.
Well, it's not like I'm ACTUALLY thoughtful. I don't give a rat's ass about Valentine's Day, or any of this other touchy feely lovey dovey crap. I just bought her all this junk because I knew it would make her happy. It did, but that doesn't mean I'm swooning with passion or anything. I can't help it that most men are insensitive pricks. I really feel sorry for women who are dumped on, and I sincerely wish I could be with each and every one of them, to be there for them, and give them strength, and make them happy by wasting money on completely frivolous, utterly useless, pointless romantic crap for them. But I can't. I'm already spoken for, and SWMBO does NOT want to share. I don't have time to give more than one of these critters the attention they deserve anyway, or the money for that matter.
I'm lucky that SWMBO is a cheap date. I've got a gazillion tools in my shop, and I think nothing of dropping $100 or much more on something for me, whenever I happen to be in a position to spare it. When was the last time I spent $400 on something for her? The dryer doesn't count. The really nice thing about SWMBO is there isn't much she even *wants* that costs that much. Not desperately deep down gottahaveit wants anyway. She likes getting overpriced pieces of metal and rock with no cords and no moving parts (completely useless IOW), but she doesn't require them. She doesn't say my $500 table saw means she has to have a $500 ring. I'm really pretty damn lucky. Plus she puts up with my shit. I'm hard to live with, folks, in case you haven't figured it out. I'm locked away inside my own head a lot of the time, thinking my own thoughts, and I'm largely oblivious to all the little mini monumental doings and goings on that her life revolves around. Who's screwing whom at work, who's pregnant, who's getting divorced, what color the wall border should be, how the toiletries are arranged in the salon de crappée...
I guess the big joke on all the whiney cashiers in the world is that I don't really care much either. I just buy useless crap once in awhile to show I remembered I was supposed to do that today. Somehow that passes for sensitivity. Or maybe is *is* sensitivity? Am I sensitive?
I have no idea. Probably not exactly sensitive anyway. Oh well, 15 years and counting, 11 years of connubial bliss and stuff, I guess I'm doing a good job of faking it anyway. Maybe that's the key to this whole thing.