Sad times

After eight years of marriage, Dean still thinks that he needs to wow me with my presents. He has a fantasy in his mind that I will open his gifts, collapse in joyful tears, and, I don't know, I don't want to go farther into his spousal fantasy life. Suffice it to say, this reaction has been elusive during his gift-giving history. Even when he presented me with an almost 2 carat diamond on the top of an Appalachian mountain, there were no joyful tears. There was a nervous "yes" and some pictures where I look like a deer frozen in the headlights, the monumental weight of what I agreed to hitting me squarely between the eyes.
So yesterday, Dean got me a really beautiful reed diffuser with an unusually delicious fragrance that I had admired at a local shop. You would think that I would accept gratefully and get down to the business of enjoying it. But I knew that every time I inhaled, I would smell the scent of overpriced boutique. I tried to put on my best face and thank him, all the while calculating how many five dollar reed diffusers I could buy at T.J. Maxx for the price of this one decadent one. Then, since I am too stupid to keep things to myself, there was the slow hissing that was the sound of his pride deflating into a puddle on the floor. I suck as a wife.
The really sad part of the story is that the store does not accept returns. You might have thought that he learned his lesson after he picked out, bought, and laid basement CARPET as a surprise Christmas gift to me. I think you know where this is going- I thought it looked like something out of a bad seventies den and there was the big bang of his dreams exploding once again.
We have mutually agreed that from this day forward he will enclose a small slip of paper detailing the fabulous surprise he WOULD have gotten for me.