A fair trade

It all started with me falling in love with a pair of heels. So basically, it was a normal day. I blame this particular incident on David.

I was walking around Bebe at the Gateway mall in Salt Lake City looking for something to get my longtime friend Summer for her birthday. It was then that Dave came up to me with a sleek, black beauty and said, “Check out this heel! Have you ever seen a heel this skinny?” My eyes met the dainty shoe and that was it. I snatched it out of his hands and tried it on and sure enough, a perfect fit. I started to whine to him about how badly I “needed” these shoes and how I can afford them (I couldn't) but like any good and very frugal boyfriend would do, he reasoned me out of it. He reminded me of why we were there and eventually, I walked away from the heels heart broken and resumed my search for Summer's present. But I never forgot them.

A couple of weeks and a paycheck later, I decided it was time to reunite with the Naina Peep Toe Pumps. Since I looked online and they didn't have my size, I called the store to see if they had a pair in stock to order from. The girl there told me that they didn't but they knew of another store that did so they could order them for me to be delivered to the store in Salt Lake and then delivered to me. I was delighted and I started to give them my card number, but for some reason, at the time I felt like I should wait and order them the next day because I would get paid from my second job and then I would feel less guilty. Later on, I met up with Dave and told him about my plans to buy the shoes. This was the response I got:

Don't do it.

Why?! I have the money.

Just don't.

You can't tell me what I can and can't spend my money on, we're not married!

Lisa! Just trust me, don't buy them!

David, let me worry about my own finances. I gonna get them so just get over it.

LISA oh my gosh seriously, do I have to spell it out?

I was very frazzled and confused at this point but the look on his face told me that I wasn't understanding something. But since I am immuned to the obvious, I continued to question him until he finally admitted to me that he was planning on getting them for me for our upcoming one year anniversary (I know, so cheesy). Now I felt bad. I always seem to do this. I can never let anything go until I get an answer that I often ruin surprises for myself. I apologized over and over to Dave and tried to reassure him how excited I was that he was going to get me the heels, but no matter what I said, he was down for having to ruin the surprise. Poor, sweet guy...

I needed to redeem myself. I knew that we were going to do something little like dinner to celebrate our twelve months of togetherness, but I wasn't sure if we were going to do presents so this revelation was indeed a surprise to me. Now that I knew that Dave was going to get me something that I truly wanted, I needed to wrack my brain for what he would really want. I then remembered that he had been talking for about the past week or so about needing an air compressor pretty bad. It shouldn't be expected that I know what this is. All I know is that Dave is a true man in the sense of the mechanical side of his brain always going and going. He has rebuilt whole motorcycles and finds constant enjoyment in the taking apart and putting together of things big and small. So for a the past little while, this air compressor seemed to be his latest need for his collection of fix-it gadgets. So thus began my search for the simple sounding tool. Simple enough, I thought...

Well for starters, I would've rather gone to the mall and picked out an entire oufit for him from head to toe without any helpful hints or sizes. Who knew that going online and searching “air compressor” would give me a bajillion amount of results. First off, David being a frugal and practical kind of guy mentioned that he would want to buy one used since they would then be about half price. So I went to the Classifieds and also Craigslist to seek out a used but in good condition compressor at a good price. Little did I know all the many things I did not know about this tool.

Six gallon? Eight gallon? Twenty gallon?! Electric? On wheels? Pancake style?!

Needless to say, I quickly became overwhelmed at the prospect of choosing the wrong thing. I started asking male coworkers their opinions and it surprised me how much these guys didn't know either. Searching online and asking around became the theme of my day until I decided that I was going to cheat. I called Dave. I told him my frustrations and my true intention to redeem myself by getting him the compressor but had no luck and needed his help desperately. And by help I mean him going online, finding the exact air compressor he wanted and then emailing me the URL so that I could call the seller and buy it. Luckily Dave was happy to help and sent me the link. Turns out that even after I had the info I needed to buy it, I still needed to deal with the situation of getting it because I work two jobs and rarely get off work before 8:30pm. Dave came to the rescue again. He went to go pick it up and I handed him that cash for it after I got off work that night. Surprise! To make our anniversary presents sistuation stranger, Dave ended up needing to call me for the phone number of the Bebe store that could order my shoes and also needed the size and name of them.

All in all, our presents ended up in the proper hands with happy and grateful attiudes on both parts and we celebrated the evening with our orinigal plans by having a lovely dinner out. But I wouldn't necessarily say that the gift giving was romantic in any way...rather, a fair trade :)