jambaloney's V-day gift

before we get to jambaloney's V-day gift, i need to give you a little history. right from the moment that we first started dating, we were constantly buying each other little gifts. i have a penchant for faeries and bumblebees so anytime he saw something with a faery or bumblebee he would get it for me. he has a penchant for anything with a fish on it so whenever i saw anything with a fish i would get it for him. for the first few years that we were together we did this all the time. we also got each other birthday gifts, christmas gifts, valentine's gifts, etc. at the time i guess you could say we were still heavy consumers and hadn't made the change over to more simple living.

anyway, i was working 12-14 hour days every day for a long time. and i totally missed his birthday. even though it is only 7 days after mine. but i was so tired and so stressed at work and a walking zombie at home that i missed his birthday. i got up at 4:30 am on the day of his birthday and realized that i hadn't remembered to pick up a card or a gift. what on earth was i going to do?!?!?! too early to go shopping and as i had to be at work for 8am there wasn't much time to make something. and if i tried to throw something together, he would know that i had forgotten. so i decided to bite the bullet and be honest.

because that is when i remembered that we both love laughing. and we laugh at similar things.

i am very sentimental and have kept lots of things from my past. i still have my catechism scribbler with pictures of Jesus wearing red and looking like Santa - thank goodness it was in the house, not the basement, during the flood or i would have lost it. i had cards from when i was a little girl, hundreds of them - sadly, those were lost in the flood. but back when i forgot jambaloney's birthday, i still had them.

i carefully went through them and picked out the best for jambaloney's birthday. the card said "Happy Easter to a 6 year old girl". it was perfect! i simply scratched out easter and wrote "birthday" and then put a line through "to a 6 year old girl". inside the card, i simply scratched out what my Aunt E and Uncle R had written, and then wrote to jambaloney on the other side.

next up, i got a brown paper bag and filled it with all kinds of delights - a stapler, a used matchbook, 3 tacks, some fishing line, a cotton ball, a hersheys kiss and a few cat treats. perfect! then i tied the top of the bag with some fancy ribbon and waited until 6am to wake my man up for his birthday surprise.

needless to say - we both killed ourselves laughing over the card! to this day, whenever we feel it is appropriate, we say to each other "happy easter to a 6 year old girl". no one ever knows what we are talking about and we like it that way. as he reached into the bag and retrieved each individual item - we laughed harder. we laughed and laughed and he understood that the days had just gone by too fast for me and that i had completely missed his birthday.

this was a good thing as that is the time that we talked about having enough "little gifts" and did we really need more. that is the time that we started to consider becoming less into consumerism and more into simple living. and it was from there that we began caring about what we ate, wanting to grow our own food, eventually finding Framboise Manor and then making the biggest decision of our life - leaving our jobs and retiring here. so it was a really good thing that i forgot jambaloney's birthday.

since then, we only buy each other a gift when we see something that we know that we want for the house. our new freezer and washer is each other's gift to each other - and they will cover our birthday gifts/Christmas gifts, etc. for all of last year and a few to come. those two appliances are true gifts to each other!

anyway, for some reason yesterday i decided to resurrect forgetting jambaloney's birthday. and made him a Valentine's gift. he loved it!

first up - the card. jambaloney recognized it as soon as he saw it. he bought it for me roughly 6 years ago. when he bought it he was tied between it and another card. he bought both of them and gave me the other one...and this card has been kicking around ever since.



here is the inside. it's a really pretty card. "fyg" stands for "forever your girl". i have signed every note, card, email whatever with "fyg".



here's what i wrote on the other side "baby - i'm writing this in pencil becuz, you know, i might have to re-use this card next year" - he roared when he read that!



here's the front of the envelope:



here's the gift, wrapped in a ripped open brown paper bag. another inside joke for us because i wrap gifts better than a professional wrapper!



here's the elastic band "ribbon" for the front of the gift:



and here it is in all of it's glory: THE GIFT! the box is from about 6 years ago - he got it for me as it has a bumblebee on it. and inside the box is some old, used lipbalm, a nail, a pretzel, a Q-tip, a quarter and 3 little chocolate eggs.



i know. i outdid myself. and we laughed until our stomachs hurt. and then went and got into the hottub.

ladies, if you are looking for Valentine's Day gifts for your men for next year, my services are free. your welcome.