Hi CT,
I am curious if you can approach this another way. Does your wife have a hobby or persuit that you 100% ( be it buying purses or shoes, bingo, whatever ) go along with and not give any input into how it should be done. If so , perhaps that would give you some lee-way here.
Cheers, Greg
Greg,
It's interesting you mention that. My two hobbies are computers and now Audio stuff. Hers consists of sewing, and scrapbooking. I have spent my last few bonuses at work on her. I bought her a kitchen table and chairs, a solid oak entertainment center, a new sewing machine, a serger, an embroidery machine, an awfully expensive 1 Mb memory card for the embroidery machine, along with a usb reader for it. She regularly goes out and buys countless notions, threads, needles, yards of different fabrics that end up getting shoved in a closet for months at a time. I even recently got her a new network enabled Canon printer and scanner so she could print photos from the digital camera for her scrapbooking habit from both HER computer I built for her, as well as my own. I've bought her scrapbooking programs, and fonts, and scissors, and cutters, etc.
We used to have an agreement that if she would let me buy computer stuff once in a while that she could buy scrapbook and sewing stuff. I have kind of wondered what ever happened to that agreement. It seems like she still gets to get whatever she wants whenever she wants, but if I mention that I am thinking of getting something either computer or audio related, I get the look, like oh no you don't. Or We'll see what money we have after the tax return comes, and then proceeds to tell me what things we NEED to get out of that money, and it invariably ends up being nothing or next to nothing left. :-( Owell, at least last year's tax return I was able to get my Marantz stereo, Pioneer DVD player and my 3 bookshelf speakers. It wasn't much when you think about it, I got some great prices for it. I think it ended up being about a grand all total. It was MUCH more than a grand for everything else I've given her... The dumb thing is, I LOVE giving her stuff that she can use, because she makes very good use of it. She does a wonderful job sewing stuff, she does a great job with her scrapbooks, and it's fun to read over what she has done, so it's not like this is all going to waste. I get stuff out of it too, and I try to convince her that she is going to get stuff out of the computer and audio equipment too, but she doesn't see it that way. To her it's just some expensive toy, where her stuff is a useful tool for the household. I guess I can sort of see her reasoning, but gosh, it just doesn't seem right somehow....
-capT
