Deidre's all excited about her birthday today, and we had a great time last night. Hehehe, I'm still chuckling to myself as I remember.

On the way home from work last night, I was 'revving her up' about how I hadn't gotten around to buying her a gift for her birthday. And then I was talking about how I could go to the "$2 shop" and get her a couple of gifts there. We need some new egg rings for cooking poached eggs, so I was saying I could get her some of those at the $2 shop. She was getting frustrated, but I kept on smiling all the way through. I kept this up all night, even while we were at AD&D roleplaying. While I was setting up the laptop for wireless access (via the WAP at Matt's place, where we play at) she was complaining to the others there that I just didn't have a clue about buying for birthdays. Ben reassured her that I was a romantic, so he'd be very surprised if I didn't already have it planned out and presents bought. The general suggestion, however was that if I hadn't spent quite a few hundred dollars on her, then I didn't care enough. Everyone was talking about the hundreds of dollars they had spent on their significant others, or that had been spent on them.

You see...

This is the problem with living in a commercialised society, where love only means something if it comes with an expensive gift. My philosophy for most of my adult life has been that I don't need to buy an expensive gift one or two times a year to prove my love. I prove it every day, in many different ways. But that doesn't mean as much, it seems, unless expensive gifts are bought.

I've told Deidre a number of times that I never buy gifts. I was using that during the fun I was having last night. It's a little disappointing that she, like many western people, seems to feel more special when something is bought for her at her birthday or xmas. She may be disappointed in the future when I don't get into gift-buying as I have done this time, but I've made an exception from my principles simply because this is her first birthday with me in her life, and this first year is to be 'extra special'. Yes, that's my belief too. What we do in the beginning of a relationship sets up how we do things in the future. And what I'm doing is making sure she understands that she's special to me, but I am certainly reinforcing in her an understanding of my beliefs about this subject. Eg. buying gifts is not something I'm going to do all the time. Or if I do, it'll be at odd times, rather than just her birthday.

We had sex last night, and just as we'd finished, I looked over at the clock. It was 12:02am. "Happy birthday," I said, and she couldn't stop laughing. No one had given her 'birthday sex' quite like THAT before... Hehehe.