When Marty decides to buy a major item for the house, there are three things that are guaranteed:
1) He will research the options (which is easy for him since Consumer Reports is leisure reading for him)
2) From the time I hear about the idea to purchase it until it arrives at our door will be anywhere between 10 seconds (time to get it out of the car) to 24 hours (first available delivery)
3) It will usually be more expensive than the price first quoted to me

These things used to be a problem for me, but the longer we're together the more I've adjusted.  I've learned to go along with the item he's selected unless there's a very strong reason to suggest something else.  It usually doesn't matter to me very much, and if it does I just say so.  I understand that by the time I've heard about the purchase, it may have already been made.  If I strongly disagree, it can go back (with the exception of cars, hence the "car buying ban" of 2005).  And I've really learned to ask a lot of questions as it relates to price, because there are always add-ons.

Before we moved into this house, Marty explained to me that he would need a riding lawn mower with a snowplow attachment.  The yard is much bigger than at our last place, and the driveway would take forever to plow with our old (meaning the one we bought when we moved into our first house two years earlier) snowplow.  Knowing that Marty's time away from work would be in short supply, I agreed.  Having a way to reduce the time it takes to do these things means more time with him doing other things.

He picked out the mower and snowplow attachment.  And one other thing.  An aerator.  With an aerator, he explained, our lawn would look like a golf course.  He'd always wanted one, he said.  After hearing the price, I relented.  It wasn't really that much to make "all his dreams" come true.

In the spring of 2005 he came home with a bag of golf course grade fertilizer that we make at work.  He spread it on the lawn and aerated the yard, taking the time to go back and make a second pass in a few areas.  A little rain and a few sunny days later, designs like green crop circles began to appear in the yard.  Damage to sprinkler system in 2005: $250.00

Lawn art, 2005

In the spring of 2006 he brought home another bag of golf course grade fertilizer, spread it on the lawn and made another pass around the yard.  This time, he tried to hit the areas not covered in the previous year which created a second set of lawn swirls.  Damage to sprinkler system in 2006: $300.00

In between the two seasons, Marty loaded the aerator onto a trailer to store it when not in use.  As he was loading it, he somehow jabbed one of the sharp tines into the joint under his knee.  He went into the emergency room, got a tetanus shot, and was immediately sent to an orthopaedic specialist to make sure that it didn't turn into a staph infection that would travel to his artificial hip the results of which could be nothing but bad.  Total cost: Unknown to me, not admitted by Marty.

This fall he brought the aerator back to the implement shop and asked if they would try to sell it for him.  With no luck on the resale front, two days ago he went back and just traded it in.  For this:


We brought it into the basement so that the kids could drive it during the winter.  Too wide to move through a doorway, we spent quite a bit of time with driving lessons trying to teach Martin how to turn it around.  Now I just hope that nobody smashes into the furnace, the replacement of which might even top the unreported hospital bills.