I celebrated my 22nd birthday just a little more than one month after Jeff and I met.
When I got home from my night shift at the paper he handed me a huge moving size box. It was light, but filled. With Chex Mix. Every kind I could think of.
I thought it was absolutely cute that the new guy I was dating noted one of my favorite things in the world (at the time) and ran with it. My heart fluttered.
“Dig to the bottom of the box,” he said that night.
So I did. To my surprise, there was what is now an old-school digital camera. Six megapixels. That thing could take a whole two photos per 60 seconds. I loved it. In fact, that little Nikon is still in a drawer in our house, I’ll probably keep that thing forever. It was a really nice gift.
Jeff is a good gift buyer. He’s really good. (I have a cute ring from Tiffany & Co. that he picked out all by himself to prove it.) Which is why it’s adorable and mind blowing all at once that he FREAKS OUT every year around my birthday. And he does this in his own little way. Like by, on the days leading up to my birthday, asking me if I want a certain thing every 45 seconds. Yes honey, I want all the things you’ve been listing; just get me what you want to get me. That’s the point. Plus, I want to be surprised, I don’t want to know before my birthday gets here what I’m getting.
My birthday is on Saturday and he will do this to himself up until the last second. Then he’ll act like he didn’t get a gift at all. Then after he gives it to me, he’ll question for another week whether I like it. He’ll even go so far as to say, “You hate your birthday gift” randomly out of the blue.
So there we have it, this is birthday week.
