I should just be grateful for the little things. Like, for example, the fact that Tim doesn't have extremely long nose hairs and he doesn't gamble.

 

We weren't married too long, maybe a few months...I remember I was fairly pregnant, so maybe it was about 6 months...when Tim came home with his first "find".

 

I should have been prepared. Tim was a bachelor until he was 33.  There had to be some odd quirks he'd built up in the years between living with his mother and living with me.  It should have been a warning sign the first time I cleaned out all the boxes in our garage that had been sitting since he had moved in with me after our wedding day. They'd been sitting for a few months and Tim hadn't touched them.  I emptied them and kept the things that looked important or even of slight interest, and threw the rest in the trash.

 

Tim hit the roof when he found out.  Naturally.  Turns out I threw out a writing pen that was very important to him.  It had a little ship that went up and down as you turned the pen over. Nice but not only was it laying in the bottom of a box with a number of extremely old grocery and gas reciepts, it didn't have any ink left in it and no way to refill the ink.

 

However, it belonged to one of Tim's dead uncles.  He gave it to Tim. It was the last thing he gave to Tim.

 

Fourteen love-filled years later and Tim still hasn't forgotten about it.

 

Anyway, Tim came home one day early in our marriage and called me out to the car.

 

"Look what I found," he said, with a big grin on his face.

 

He reached in the car and drew out a humongous, metal...hook.

 

Huh?

 

"What's that for?" I asked.

 

"I don't know. I'm sure I can think of something," he said. "But it only cost two dollars!"

 

"Wow." I said. "It looks like something you'd hang a cow on. Or a car engine. Or something. Where are we going to store it?"

 

"I'll think of some place," Tim said.

 

If I'd only realized, I wouldn't have been so enthusiastic. 

 

Since then, a plethora of "treasures" have passed thru our home. I have always decluttered at least twice a year.  This has never been Tim's favorite thing about me.  But it's kept us from being buried under fantastic buys and terrific finds.

 

I don't even want to begin to amuse you by the lists of things that have found their way into...and out of...my house.

 

The hardest for me to swallow, tho, was the 25 foot yacht. 

 

We don't do boats. Mostly because Tim gets seasick. He was in the Coast Guard for a while, and recieved citations for heroic rescues...but had to leave because the seasickness just got to be too much.

 

So why this huge yacht in my driveway?

 

Because someone gave it to him.

 

What?! Who gives someone else a yacht?!

 

We couldn't even get into the thing without a long ladder.

 

They messed around with it for months, Tim and the kids, until I finally convinced him that we couldn't really use it since we didn't have a trailor to transport it, and besides, didn't he get seasick?

 

He found someone else to give it to (oh! that's why someone gives away a yacht...they have a practical wife).

 

And a year later, he dragged in another boat.  Free again.

 

This one was just a shell. No trailer. Tim dragged it across town in our little utility trailer, the back end scraping the pavement and sending up little sparks. Kind of like a one float parade.

 

There was nothing to this boat, except that it was free. Tim set it back in our back yard for a yard toy.

 

OK. I've been trying to convince this guy to build cute little playhouses and forts and wooden play structures, but he was never interested.  Instead, he hung a huge boat rope from one tree with a boat hook on the end of it, and stretched one of those long, yellow fasten down things that semi-trucks use between two trees.  He also made a teeter-totter out of a large section of palm tree that he shipped back from Puerto Rico...a tree on our property that fell during Hurricane Georges.

 

All the neighborhood kids loved our yard toys. 

 

With the boat shell, it began to look like the beginnings of a junkyard.

 

To me.

 

The boat shell stayed for a couple years.  I was finally able to convince Tim that I was a little, tiny bit tired of it, and he gave it away to two college guys who were psyched about building their own boat.

 

You guessed it. 

 

Tim brought home yet another boat today.

 

It wasn't free, though he didn't pay any money for it.

 

He figured it this way.  He has a number of guns.  His brother is really into guns and buying and trading, and a lot of money was going toward guns his brother was finding for him...without asking first.  So we agreed that Tim wouldn't spend any more money on guns. He could trade but wouldn't use money.  I never understood the need for so many guns, tho Tim explained to me patiently the use for every single firearm, including the civil war era rifle.

 

So Tim figures...Shurleen doesn't really like guns.  If I sell two guns and use it to buy this great speed boat that will seat our entire family along with two sets of waterskis (even tho no one in our family has ever waterskiied and isn't likely to) and a few fishing rods, Shurleen will be thrilled.

 

Or so he tried to tell himself.

 

I could tell by the look on his face when he walked in from work that something was terribly wrong and he was looking for pity.  He had such a hangdog look on his face that I decided not to mention the obvious.

 

1.  He wanted us to have a garage sale next week because we just have too much stuff!

 

2.  He gets seasick.

 

"Oh, Tim," I said. 

 

"Come out and look at it," he said. "You'll change your mind when you see it."

 

Trying not to grumble "No way, Jose", I followed him outside and saw what looked to me like every other speed boat I've ever seen.

 

"Wow," I said. 

 

"C'mon Shurleen," he said. "Don't be such a wet blanket."

 

"Tiiim! This is the third boat! And we don't boat!"

 

"We've been living it your way for fourteen years," he said. "It's my turn now."

 

"Living it my way? We've been living it your way entirely!"

 

"Boloney! You've told me yourself you have everything you ever wanted. That's proof we've been doing it your way."

 

"Tim, I only want six things," I said. "You want 1,533,538 things."

 

"That is such an exaggeration," he replied. "Start naming the things I want and you won't even get close to that number."

 

"Wanna bet?" I said. "Let's go look at what they have on eBay."

 

Tim laughed. "OK. You win.  After 14 years, this part of you should be endearing to me, but..."

 

We both laughed. And looked at the boat.

 

I sighed.

 

At least it wasn't another hook. And Tim's nose is still relatively free from renegade hairs.