Just A Little Something

When we moved to Boston, Bart said he wanted to institute one day a month where we gave each other some sort of small gift. It could be any day of the month and any kind of gift.

You may remember that both Bart and I get kind of stressed out by gift giving. I wondered how this would go.

But, we decided to try it out, calling it “Bart Day” and “Janssen Day.”

In September, I was out in the parking lot of our apartment, getting some things out of the trunk. I turned around and saw Bart just arriving home from work (I may have, um, screamed a little. I am super jumpy, all the time). He had a nice bouquet of flowers for me. Janssen Day!

A few weeks ago, I stopped in at Williams-Sonoma and bought two jars of Muirhead’s Pecan Pumpkin Butter, the key ingredient for these dessert squares. For the past two years, we’ve gone to Williams-Sonoma the day after Thanksgiving and both years they have been passing these out as samples. And both years, they were completely sold out of the Pecan Pumpkin Butter. This year, I thought if I went in before Thanksgiving it might still be available. And what do you know? It was. I printed off the recipe and left it and the two jars on the kitchen table for Bart who was returning from a trip to Wisconsin. Voila! Bart Day.

What’s not to love?

Tuesday was a rather rotten day, including a lovely incident where I set off the car alarm and could not turn it off. It wailed on and on, and I finally had to just give up and take the other car, which put me in a mega bad mood.

Yesterday morning, just after I finished up my classes for the day, I got a text from Bart informing me it was Janssen Day.

Later in the afternoon, when I checked my email, I found a note from the Hornbook Magazine confirming my new subscription. I have been longing for a subscription for about two years now, sitting on the floor in the UT library stacks reading back issues, and hunting down copies at the public library (always without success as they do not like to lend that magazine out).

It was an extremely thoughtful gift and just the perfect antedote to Tuesday’s bad mood.

Now to begin plans for November’s Bart Day. . .