The Gift – or My Wife the Hero

My birthday was about a week ago.  I went out of town with 4 of the kids to a birthday party for my goddaughter.

When I returned around 6, my wife had my gifts ready to open, two of them.  The first was a box of Good & Plenties, my favorite.  The second, and the one my older daughter had hinted was to be really good, was……..a set of headphones.

“I thought you could use them on the treadmill.” Patty said.  Well, I tried to be enthusiastic, but honestly wasn’t sure that I really needed or wanted headphones.  True, I like real headphones better than the earbuds I had been using to listen to books on tape, but still…

“Why don’t you try them on the treadmill?” she said.  Now at this point, I am thinking that I’m pretty sure their isn’t even a headphone jack on the treadmill, but still trying to show how much I like the gift, I head for the basement.  Immediately I turn to pick up a Playaway from my desk.  (A playaway is an audio book preloaded on a simple mp3 player)  So I’m messing with the playaway, trying to see if the headphones will work with it, and the kids have all followed me downstairs, and Laura says”try it on the treadmill.”  I turn toward the treadmill and notice that the basement is neat and clean.  “this place looks good” I tell Patty.  Then I notice that the tv has been moved to the side wall.  Now that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, cuz I’m not sure Malcolm will be able to walk and watch TV, which is a large part of the reason we got the treadmill in the first place.

Finally I head over to the treadmill and only then does it register, mounted up on the wall in front of the treadmill is a brand new, 19″ HDTV!  Its just like at the health club, where the tv’s are all mounted high above the exercise machines.  The picture is great, and with an extension the headphones will reach so I can watch tv and exercise early in the morning while the kids are sleeping without waking them up.  And the DVD player is hooked up ready to go.

The amazing thing is, Patty almost never does home improvement stuff.  So the mounting of it is an even better gift than the purchase.  She spent 4 hours working on it while I was out of the house. 

The level of my cluelessness in noticing the gift was also great, since Patty and Laura will be able to tease me about that for years.  But what a great gift, and what a great surprise!

BTW, weigh day was today, and I stayed exactly steady from last week at 165.6.  I really ate poorly this week, so it is a good thing I have been exercising.  This week will be better, I’m sure, especially with fasting on Ash Wednesday.