Once again, my wife Erin is an avid green thumber. 
Only puppies make her happier than pulling weeds and watching things grow. 
About all I do in the yard is mow the grass, but my neighbour Jackie has managed to beat me every single year we’d been here with having grass slightly greener than mine. It’s not a competition but it is, you know? And the grass is always greener on the other side…
In a recent win for the Kopes our flowering crab apple tree is absolutely glorious right now, but even that comes with the curse of a million crab apples we (Erin) has to clean up every year while our neighbour looks on in amusement. A blessing and a curse. 
So I dejectedly walk behind my mower to come in second place like I do every year which is called LOSING. 
Our yard is kept very well because of the labour of love Erin puts into it. This year for her birthday a bunch of Venue girls bought her a crazy generous gift card for Bluegrass, the trouble is she’s too cheap to use it. 
That place is quite the racket… I went in there with the Budget Queen and saw other tormented husbands wandering hopelessly around behind their wives happily splashing the cash for yard items definitely not on sale. I guess they know if you have the only hot dogs on the block you can charge whatever the heck you want…. said the guy with two Ducatis. 
So I get it. A little. 
The trouble is, Erin can’t seem to spend her gift card because she secretly knows she can probably find discounts somewhere else. She went there yesterday again, bought nothing, then found plants at Superstore they were clearing out for $1 each. 
For anybody out there who is worried I’ll get sued by Bluegrass, rest assured this is a perverse sort of advertising for them because every woman reading this just made a mental note to go there and spend money just to make me pay for being a man or something. .. 
Said the guy with two Ducatis. I get it. 
She saw a fountain and I said I thought she should buy it with her gift card. I thought the price was ridiculous, but was myself under strict orders from Venue women she was to spend it on whatever she wanted. So I told I could build a stand for it off the front deck in her flower garden,
but Erin couldn’t pull the trigger. 
That fountain is now sold to someone else for full price. 
She saw a cute yellow (maybe it was yellow) bike to put in the garden with baskets for flowers (I assume) on it. The bike was like $460 and you couldn’t even ride it!!!!!
I looked at it, trying to keep an open if unappreciative mind, touched it and thought “This bike is made out of tinfoil.”, then said out loud “If you want it go for it!! But (I literally can’t NOT speak my mind. It’s a plague), it doesn’t seem very sturdy does it?” 
That was enough to put her off. 
So now she still has a ridiculous amount of money left on this card because she found one of the Venue grandmas had an old bike in her yard and offered her $25 for it. $36 of baskets later and she has something cooler and sturdy enough to actually hold plants. Put that in the suck-it bucket Bluegrass!
I hit the jackpot with Erin because her idea of a spending spree is $20 at the Thrift Shop. She’s not fancy, and it’s been said by hurtful people that I’m probably more fancy than she is. 
Correction, I don’t like spending money either so I shop at the clearance rack for clothes just to find that secret Diesel brand shirt some other sucker bought for $90 that is now on clearance for $12. And I still hate spending that $12, but at least I’m winning. 
(It’s not really winning unless somebody else is losing.)
So back to our initial problem: Non Fancy Erin can’t spend her dang gift card and it’s stressing her out. 
It’s stressing me out because I have to hear about it. 
I recently had a cash card for Blackfoot Motorsports and had no trouble spending it whatsoever, and because I’m a great husband I wasn’t tempted to tell Erin about it!Granted, my one Ducati needed brakes and a new chain etc so it was better than cash out of pocket, but I still feel like I deserve some credit for not putting our marriage under the low hanging cloud of an unspent gift card. 
So I think I’m secretly hoping Bluegrass starts carrying:A. Hamburgers, orB. Ducati parts:)