No Points for Remembering

My anniversary is only two and a half weeks before Valentine's Day so it helps me stay focused and not forget. When all the Valentine's Day marketing kicks in (December 26th) I know to start thinking about Anniversary.

I have gone to great lengths to ensure I will never forget my anniversary. First I have it posted on my Google calendar, scheduled to repeat annually, and it sends me an email every day leading up to my anniversary for four days. It is also a recurring event on my work calendar and it alerts me the day before and the day of. And finally it is in my phone and alerts me two days before, one day before and the day of. Needless to say my bases are covered.

Our anniversary was on a Tuesday this year and we had gotten away the weekend before to celebrate. We had agreed on a budget for our anniversary and I that we would exchange gifts and cards on the actual day. Tuesday morning rolls around and my wife wakes me up at 5am to say goodbye. She's crazy she gets up that early to go to the gym before work, and I'm crazy enough to let her wake me up to say goodbye, normally this is not an issue because I'm hardly coherent enough to care. Most of the time I tell her good night, or physically push her or slap her arms away, as has happened on a few occasions. I never remember what I say or do, she fills me in when she gets home from work.

On Tuesday morning I had the awareness to say happy anniversary and bring her in for a big hug. I was so freaking happy that I remembered. I can't begin to tell you what a relief it was to have that not hovering over me all day. The pressure that would have caused to be sure that the first words I say to her when she gets home were "Happy Anniversary" is immeasurable.

During the day I had multiple conversations about how it was my anniversary with my coworkers. I even wrote my wife an email wishing her happy Anniversary just to be sure that what I believed to have happened this morning wasn't a hallucination.

When she walked in the door from work my first words to her were "Happy Anniversary" I was so pumped. Unbelievable relief that I had made it, remembered my anniversary; I was patting myself on the back so hard. After she had been home for about 30 minutes she walked out fo the bedroom and handed me a card...

I had been so focused on remembering the day, and in my excitement for my success of remembering the significance of the day I had completely failed to pick up a card and flowers. Needless to say there was nothing that could be done to relieve the disappointment that I had in myself, let alone her disappointment. Running over to Fred Meyer and getting a card and some flowers would have only made it worse. I to bear down and take my licks on this one, and believe me I'm still taking them and I deserve them. I have learned a valuable valuable lesson...A successful anniversary is about more than just remembering; follow through.

I made it up for her on Valentine's day, she got flowers the day before and the day of Valentine's day and a card. I even sat through a estrogen powered movie "He's Just Not That Into You" fitting as I was not into it all, but I was very into redeeming my monumental screw up.

I will say this for the movie, while it failed to show any kind of redeemable qualities as far as entertainment value for me. The droves of sappy "I talk to the characters in movies really loud" women that surrounded me made the price of admission totally worth it. It was a movie that exaggerate stereotypes, more than usual for Hollywood, and there were many many women in that theater that outed themselves as just as crazy as the characters who were carefully crafted to come off as desperate and crazy as possible. Is the female demographic not the easiest demographic to reach? That being said you flash anything that remotely looks like cleavage and you've penetrated the male demographic so its pretty much a wash.

Ladies and Gentleman, you're world in 2009. 2bro2b?