is there any more pie?

Another Christmas season, another discussion about the tree…

Banjo Man refused to haul the three sections of the artificial, prelit 7-foot tree out of the shed unless I was going to decorate it with ornaments.

This year I put my foot down and said I was not going to unpack two tubs of Christmas decorations and decorate the tree all by myself.  And I was not going to remove all of those ornaments in January and restore them to the two enormous red tubs all by myself.

So there.

Impasse.

So last week, after a dentist appointment, I drove across the street to Simple Pleasures, my favorite gift shop (it’s huge!) to see what I could find for holiday cheer.

This little 24″ beauty awaited (as did a lovely pair of sparkly aqua earrings).

I put some battery-operated lights on the tree and plopped it in the middle of the kitchen island on top of a Christmas-y table runner.

Compromise.

Which is what marriage is all about.

Dealing with Banjo Man about technical stuff is never easy.  In fact, it should be avoided whenever possible.

Changing technical stuff–tv, cell phones, etc–is never easy either, but if you want to save money?  It’s absolutely necessary.

Last week I attempted to deal with both of these issues at once.  But first I had to talk Banjo Man into giving up his landline and only using his cell phone (which he’d been doing for the past five months anyway).

You would have though I was asking him to cut off his hand.  But how am I going to fax, he cried.

No one faxes anymore.  No one has fax machines.  You can scan on your phone, remember?

I also wanted to ditch our TV service and stick to streaming.  We’d used You Tube TV all summer and liked it.  This would leave one bill for the internet and I’d learned we could upgrade our speed for the same price we have now.

The other part of this Massive Technological Change was to switch to a cheaper cell phone provider.  I researched for hours and decided upon Visible, a Verizon sub-company that uses the same towers but is a lot cheaper if you already own your phones.

Banjo Man had no idea what I was so excited about.  He thought tv programs came from the cell phones.  He understood nothing I said, even though I explained it all to him, oh, sixty or seventy times.

I even drew a diagram.

His job in all of this?  Contact his clients and family and friends about his change of phone number.

You would have thought I’d asked him to build an airplane.

Every day he promises to contact everyone, but until he does I will not be able to “cut the cords”.  I did change the cell phone service.  I even learned how to replace SIM cards.

But the rest of my latest money-saving scheme is still on hold.

Can you hear me now?