I Was Going to Get Roses, But I Ended Up Getting a Ticket Instead
When Valentine’s Day, Loitering Dogs, and Cheapskates Collide
Actually, it was our dog that got the ticket. But I’ll get to that.
Two things you need to know about our marriage right off the bat:
- We are budget fiends. Both of us, but maybe me even more than my husband (all I know is that every time I spend more than I meant to at Costco, he is always there). We agonize over every filthy nickel that comes out of our bank account.
- Neither of us are really what you might call “romantic”. I have never even seen The Notebook, you guys. My favorite “romantic” movie is My Fair Lady. My second favorite is Napoleon Dynamite.
This combination means that we tend to count things like “getting an ice cream sundae and sharing it in the Costco food court”, and “going to Albertson’s and stopping for take-out at the teriyaki place on the way home” as “dates”.
Valentine’s Day is always a bit of a crisis. To observe it in the traditional sense nearly always entails spending money. Our official “stance” is to ignore it and save our filthy nickels for events like anniversaries, birthdays, and Christmas. But as the hype and pressure and marketing and profit-driven guilt-mongering loom larger and larger as THE DAY approaches, it gets harder and harder to stick to our convictions.
I guess this year’s story really starts with our birthday shopping trip for our daughter, who turns one next week. OBVIOUSLY, we overspent. First kid. First birthday. We took her with us. We didn’t stand a chance. Some other things have come up this month, too, as they tend to do.
“So, are we going to do anything for Valentine’s Day this year?” I asked.
“I was thinking maybe I could pick up some take-out from the teriyaki place on the way home on Tuesday — does that sound good?”
It did. Oh, it did. Take-out means that I don’t have to make dinner. But those filthy nickels slipping through our fingers …
But it wasn’t like it was a big, expensive night out. It was just getting take-out from the teriyaki place.
“For the love of mustard, live a little, woman!” I thought. “What, after all, is $17 worth of teriyaki, in the broad scheme of things?” I relented.
Then yesterday happened.
I knew something was wrong when, walking past our picture window, I saw two strangers in uniform, harassing our dog on our own front porch. Thanking my lucky stars that I had decided to actually get dressed that morning, I went outside to see what it was all about. As it turned out, the strangers were the sheriff and the dog catcher. Shosty had dug her way out of our yard and had apparently been “at large” for the last twenty minutes, barking and growling and terrorizing small children and old ladies —just basically making like a border collie Godzilla.
I mentally smacked myself in the head. For various reasons, she’s not really supposed to be left outside unsupervised, but I had wanted to get her out of my hair for a while, so I put her outside, lost track of time writing, and totally forgotten about her.
She got a ticket, of course. And when dogs get tickets, owners pay. Not only did we have the ticket to pay for, but Micah had to go to the good ol’ Depot of Home again (we seem to go there a lot these days) and buy a bunch of bricks to lay down in all the spots where she might think about digging out in the future.
“Maybe we should just … have a regular day tomorrow,” I said.
“Maybe.”
Sitting on the couch later, consoling ourselves with ice cream and lame History Channel documentaries*, Micah said, “Well … I’m still going to pick up teriyaki on the way home tomorrow. But I will probably have to skip the roses.”
“You were going to get roses for me?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s okay honey. The fact that you were going to get them is really just as good as getting them.”
And it is. It really is, you guys.
*Before you judge — we usually don’t watch HC documentaries because they are overly dramatic and narrative-driven, but we are working our way through the American Presidents, and you can’t be too picky when you’re trying to find something on, say, Rutherford B. Hayes. As it turns out, the History Channel has done a 6-minute mini biography on every President, complete with totally rad guitar riffing at every pause in the narration.
Read more about our super lame life. You know you are weirdly intrigued.
