The boy will wake up from his (blessedly long) nap any moment, but I absolutely had to take a second to tell you what HRH got for me as an anniversary present:
A big red metal toolbox, with a full set of new tools, all for my very own.
Squee!
See, my toolbox has been one of those marital points of contention. I had a fully stocked kit when we got married. And I used it regularly. (This is just one of the many things that makes me so darn cool. Did you know that until he went out and bought himself a cordless DeWalt for this job, I owned the only drill in the house?) Over the past seven years, my toolkit has been slowly eroding as HRH “borrows” this and “uses” that and it gets left somewhere… And having been raised by my father, who insisted that every tool I used was placed back exactly where it came from promptly after use — well, I get snarly when I have something I need my tools to do, and I go to my toolkit, and what I need isn’t there, and in fact cannot be found anywhere.
So HRH said he was sorry in a magnificent way by giving me this kit (it has three sets of screwdrivers! each a different size! and he won’t borrow any of it because he has his full kit downstairs!).
Plus I got roses, too. I love the juxtaposition of roses and tools. It says so much about me.
“I don’t know who is cooler,” said Ceri to him when she found out, “you or your wife.”
I got him the three original theatrical Star Wars films on DVD, so he definitely wins the Coolest Gift award this year. (Not that we try to top one another; in fact, most years we don’t buy each other anything at all, or even do anything to celebrate at that.) But HRH claims that no anniversary gift from either of us will ever top the X-box I gave him two years ago, with an extra controller so that we could game together. He’s probably right.
And thank you for you good wishes yesterday, everyone, posted here and emailed privately!