Surprise! Surprise!

After supper recently my husband said, "I bought you a treat." Now, this is always scary. Sometimes he brings me treats from his forays into the big world, but they are usually gleanings from the table of his wine functions—little friandises that I adore but shouldn't eat, for one reason or another. It's seldom that he actually goes to the store and buys a treat. So I said, "Where were you?" And he said, "No Frills." And I knew right away what the treat was. When the Insider's Report from Loblaws comes out we always look through it to see if there's anything worth a trip. Usually there's nothing, but in the most recent one they described a chocolate-fudge-nut ice cream. I made the mistake of saying, "If you must buy something from this flyer, I wouldn't mind trying this ice cream. . ." So I knew right away that was the treat he had brought me. We each had a dish of it. And Reader, I'm here to tell you: don't bother. Just don't bother.

 

His post-supper announcement of this treat had been foreshadowed by the announcement, before supper, that he had bought me a new iron. Mine is broken, so it was on my list to get an iron. My list.  You'd think, given the fiasco several years ago of his buying me a new vacuum cleaner that I hated—you'd think he'd have learned his lesson. But no-o-o. He bought me an iron. So I went through the "thank you but I wish you had let me choose my own iron but I appreciate the thought but I really am picky about irons."

 

Now, this is a fine line to walk. You want to say thank you. But you don't want to encourage him in his retail therapy ways (especially the part about using you and your needs as an excuse to buy something). But you also don't want to make him feel bad. Or to make him angry ("I was just trying to save you the trouble . . ."). And here we are at anger and confrontation again. Well, YOU devise a speech that incorporates everything you need to say here: gratitude, annoyance, and a strong suggestion that this sort of behaviour should stop—all to be delivered in a level tone of voice that doesn't trigger defensiveness.

 

So the whole iron escapade happened before supper. And then after supper we ate some of the dreadful ice cream.

 

And then he did the dishes while I practiced the piano, feeling better and better about the Bach Partita in C-minor as I ironed out the difficult parts (over and over, I hasten to add; every day I re-iron them and then they come back the next day. Perhaps I need a new iron . . .?)

 

Copyright 2009 Ann Tudor   

www.anntudor.ca
http://scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com