The other day, I walked up the stairs and found Elijah reading HamannEggs online. He looked at me lovingly and said, “You haven’t posted in a while, dad.” To which I lovingly said, “Shut your face.”
Yeah, sorry. I have no excuse other than sitting in the same place, staring at the same computer for 14 hours a day is a little de-motivating when it comes writing about poop and pee stories. But I got one today.
The difficulty of Diana’s birthday is it comes right on the heels of Christmas, the time of year that we try to purchase every present on the planet. Plus, Diana has a secret “fun fund” that she uses to buy all the stuff that I object to. We have a very happy marriage.
This year, when asked, Diana sincerely said, “I don’t want anything for my birthday. I am utterly content. I need nothing. All I want is your love.”
I think we can all agree that answer is hogwash. So now I had to do actual thinking. The boys were no help. They thought she might enjoy a new gaming mouse. In a late night bit of inspiration, I remembered Diana enjoyed music so I bought a new record player for the cabin. It also lines up with my desire to become an insufferable jackass who talks about why vinyl is the superior way to listen to The Beatles.
In case Diana saw through my transparent gift to myself, I went to my Diana go-to: The Anthropologie website. I found a purply sweater that looked like a Diana thing and a cute little yellow thing that looked neat on the 78-pound model. When I checked out, the site informed me my items were not eligible for return. Being overconfident, I clicked “buy.”
The items arrived and I piled them in my office, away from Diana’s prying eyes. Over the course of COVID, I’ve taken over our little home office. All the cute little wine maps and Rachel Maddow merch has been replaced by Rick and Morty dolls and Blood Pressure medicine.
I just had to figure out how to get them to the cabin without Diana seeing. Because now Diana’s desire not to have presents was a thing to exploit. I put Eli and Luca in charge of stashing the stuff in our car, plus they had to write her a card because it was the very least they could do. Getting the gifts in the boot was simple because we have a rule that Diana can’t pack the car. She’s terrible at Tetris.
We got to the cabin and started a fire and opened up some wine. I gave Eli the “Luke Skywalker nods to R2D2 on Jabba The Hutt’s sail barge” signal and he snuck out to the car and returned with the gifts.
Diana was genuinely surprised and delighted by the cards, the record player and the sexy Prince albums I added at the last minute and the Anthropologie sweater. When she got to the cute little yellow thing, we realized it was in fact, a crop top. More befitting a 7 year old child than a real woman.
As punishment for my ignorance, I was forced to wear the crop top for the rest of the evening. I felt kinda cute.
