Massage revenge

If you're familiar with this blog, you know that Rob gives my family's idea of present-giving a solid F.

So when it nears any occasion necessitating me giving a gift to Rob, I start sweating about six months in advance. I mean, really, why would he want something other than a package of his favorite Pilot V7 pens? Except that if Rob wants something, he buys it. If I want something, I arrive at the store, bemoan the price, ask myself if I can make due without it, reflect on the consumerism that has overtaken this country and skewed our perception of need vs. want...and walk away without buying ________.

You fill in the blank:
a new shirt
more scrunchies
socks
a coupon sorter
deodorant (just kidding....although my sister seriously made my Christmas one year by giving me a value pack of ChapStick)

So I've learned to step up my game when giving presents to Rob. And it STILL backfires.

Birthday 2009ish: Quality hiking shoes (the one thing he kept talking and talking about and actually never pulled the trigger, so I consulted and researched and purchased...). Returned.

Birthday 2006ish: A certificate for a miniature bonsai tree (random, but Rob loves any decoration Japanese-related and also complained he had no desk plant). Never used.

Anniversary 2011: An awesome blank canvas (okay, so this one was mostly my fault). Still blank.

Birthday 2002ish: A private flying lesson (he was contemplating a career change of joining the Air Force to become a pilot...but had never actually flown a plane...so voila!). Unused.

Anniversary 2002ish: A massage (back when we were dating and his family found me SO awesome and wanted to make sure I stuck around and actually married Rob, his mom always brought me to get a massage each time we flew down to Texas to visit...actually I think in reality they were praying for me as I was a Christian who believed in evolution and my parents occasionally voted democratic and I was from liberal Madison, of all places, but that's beside the point...and Rob occasionally complained that I had gotten all these massages because of my awesomeness but he had never had even one). Unused for almost 3 years.

And then one anniversary (the math would make that 2005ish...I should add his family admired my brilliant brain skills as well - those premarital massages had a lot riding on them), Rob gave me a massage certificate for the same location as his own (because he was too nervous to go by himself). Ooooo, a couple's massage. Swanky.

So we showed up for our massage and two therapists walked out to greet us. The first had to have been named something along the lines of Helga. Helga looked as though she came straight off some German farm where she single-handedly wrestled sheep and sheared them with her teeth...between bites of blutwurst and chugs of Hefeweisen. Ja.

The second was about the size of my femur bone, slender in all the right places and absurdly curvy in the rest. .....Ja..... Her name was Bambi or Candi or something.

One guess to whom Rob was assigned.

So while I was knuckled and battered into a pile of limp weinersnitchel on the table, Rob was caressed by someone who could double as an emergency flotation device. Unused for almost 3 years Completely backfired in my face. Stupid anniversary present.

So I do have to say that when I went in for a massage two days ago (a terrific Christmas present from my brother-in-law Brent), each time my male masseuse purred Yacoba (How is the pressure, Yacoba [purr purr]? or Yacoba [purr purr], roll over while I hold this sheet.) in his foreign accent, a little part of me felt a small, small slice of satisfaction. Retribution. Revenge. I got a guy with an accent. Yeah, take that, Rob.

As if Rob even cares anyways. He'll probably be more appalled that I didn't ask the guy where he was from and ask him over for dinner in an attempt to wiggle our way into an open invite to visit the country and stay with his family for free.

There's no winning.