Situation: The spouse wants beef stroganoff for dinner.

Dan’s version: After hearing Sara’s request, he goes to Whole Foods and buys all organic products. His wife is allergic to random things and he wants to make sure she enjoys the meal without irritation. He brings the ingredients home and lovingly slices everything. He makes the sauce from scratch, using fine wine, and lets it marinade for the maximum amount of time in order to bring out all the flavors. Total prep and cooking time, 6 hours.
Sara’s version: After hearing’s Dan’s request, she orders chinese.

Situation: The spouse is in the mood for Italian.

Dan’s version: After hearing Sara’s request, he goes to the store and buys the ingredients to make hand rolled cannelloni. He fills each with a mixture of cheeses and spinach. He prepares a fresh side salad and buttery, hot garlic bread. He adds extra Parmesan to the sauce, because he knows Sara loves Parmesan.
Sara’s version: After hearing’s Dan’s request, she orders pizza.

Situation: The spouse wants a birthday cake.

Dan’s version: Dan gets Sara’s favorite chocolate cake recipe from his mother and lovingly bakes the cake from scratch. He doesn’t like fruit filling in chocolate cake, but knows that she does, so he makes fresh raspberry filling and drizzles it between the cake layers. He serves it warm, dripping with gooey chocolate icing. He uses stuff they have at home, so the cake costs him little more than $10 in total and about two hours of time.
Sara’s version: She finds a cool looking cake online that is three tiers and involves modelling chocolate, spun sugar and multiple cake flavors. She goes to the local baking supply store and spends $25 on cake decorating tools. She then heads to Michaels to buy another $20 worth of cake decorating gadgets. She heads to the grocery store and spends 30 minutes wandering the aisles, trying to find things she’s never heard of such as meringue power and low-fat buttermilk. She gets into an argument with an employee about the fact that corn syrup is with pancake syrup instead of near baking supplies. She calls mom to ask about the difference between light and dark corn syrup. She almost picks a fight with the smug housewife who laughed when she overheard her calling mom to ask about the difference between light and dark corn syrup.  She waits in a long line, finally forking over $50 on her cake ingredients. She heads home and is entirely too exhausted from the ordeal to do any actual baking. She’ll do it tomorrow…   Total cost: $95 plus gas. Total time: 3 hours plus whatever she spends once she actually bakes the darn thing.

We have a gift closet. Let me rephrase that. Dan has a clothes closet that I have taken over and filled with gifts. Where his jeans used to be, lovely items grace the shelves, waiting to be wrapped and handed over to the intended recipients. If you open the sock drawer, you will find the makings of Christmas cards. The top shelf alone is jam packed with gifts for our niece and nephews. Anytime I find something cool that I think they’ll like, I buy it. It goes on the shelf, patiently waiting for a celebration of some sort.

I made a stop at Michael’s today, planning on buying just stuff to make a cake and nothing else craft related. (More on that story later, after Dan’s birthday has passed.) Instead, I found myself wandering through the kids’ craft aisle. There were some neat storybook kits, paint-your-own piggy banks and temporary tattoos that caught my eye. I only bought one thing, a Disney Princess art kit for our niece. As I paid, I patted myself on the back for finding her birthday gift so early in the year. As I drove home, I mentally ticked her name off my gift list. As I proudly carried the gift into our gift closet, I eyed the shelves to find a safe spot to store it.

Hm…there’s the bedside lamp I bought for her birthday. I guess this will be a Christmas gift.

Oh…there’s the art book and finger paint set I bought for her Christmas gift. I guess this will be a random “yay for you” gift.

Oops…there’s the exact same Disney Princess art kit that I am currently holding in my hands.

Alright, so maybe there’s a teeny tiny flaw in my system. I buy the gifts so far in advance that I forget I’ve purchased them. However, I’m choosing to view this as a good thing. Now I get to return the item and spend the money at Michaels for something else crafty! Yay me!

I’m all about positive thinking.

I’ve recently tried my hand at being a matchmaker. I say “recently,” but in truth it’s been a few years. A few years of miserable failure.

Example #1 – I tried to set up a close female friend with a customer from the gas station I worked at. He came in every night and we had struck up a friendship of sorts. I knew he had a job and a car, so he wasn’t a bum who would use her for her money. He was funny and nice, so I hoped he wouldn’t break her heart. I planned a group outing and was dismayed when during the night, she said she wasn’t interested. Plus, she was insistent that he liked me. Nope, she had to be dead wrong. My gut feeling was that he liked her. One year later, we got married.

Example #2 – When planning the wedding, my mom decided she would set up the friend from example #1 with the son of her best friend. No way, Mom. Those two would never get together! A year later, we were sitting at *their* wedding.

Example #3 – I was noticed how flirty two mutual friends were being. They spent a lot of time together and seemed to be really close. I couldn’t understand why they weren’t dating. When I approached my female friend, she said she viewed him as a brother and dating him would be too weird. When I approached my male friend, he also said dating her would be too weird since she was like a little sister. I was shot down before either gave it a chance. (For the record, I still think they’d make a cute couple. But, whatever. It’s not like they know best or anything.)

Example #4 – When lamenting to a friend about how my career as a matchmaker was crashing, he told me to pretend to introduce him to a mutual male friend. As I made my introductions between the two heterosexual guys who had been friends for years, they locked into an embrace. Success! Even if it had been their way of mocking me.

I take what I can.