Captain Mark and I have been married for over forty years and during most of that time we have had very LITTLE discretionary income. We started our marriage early in our college years, then the girls arrived, we purchased a home, then braces for the girls, then their college tuition – middle class suburban life in its truest form. Very early (like the first week) in our marriage Mark and I agreed that neither one of us would spend any amount of money over $20 without discussing the purchase with the other party. As the years passed and Mark’s salary rose above minimum wage, the spending discussion threshold was raised to $250. The process allowed us to discuss any “major” purchase in advance so as to determine if the purchase is indeed one we wanted to make. This respect for each other and common sense money rule worked very well for us until recently when I TOTALLY violated the established policy.I can excuse myself by saying that I did the deed while until the influence of mind altering pain medication, which would be true, however I must confess that I violated the money rule knowing full well what I was doing with savings book in hand. When we arrived back home in Indiana, I realized how much Mark really wanted/desired/wished to/enjoyed watching television. SO, while he was out of the house, I called Dog River Marina and re-ordered the Trac Vision Satellite system that WE had previously decided not to purchase due to the expensive price tag. Never have I done anything like this before and I really wanted the satellite system to be a surprise for Mark when we returned to Alabama. I know Mark well enough to know that he would not be majorly angry with me but he might be a little miffed that I broke our decision to not purchase the system. I was correct, he was too shocked to be angry with me - I think he was and still is in a state of total disbelief.
I am horrible in my ability to keep a secret so I ended up telling Mark what I had done before we returned to Mobile. I did not want him to arrive at the marina and think that the marina personnel had disregarded his cancellation of the work order. I would rather he know up front what I did. Now I could also rationalize and say that I would use “my money” to pay for the system but in reality, it is really “our money” so while I verbalized those words, we both knew the joke behind the words.
It took Mark a full day to program the system and the television picture is perfect. I can tell that while he says that it was unnecessary and way too expensive that he has enjoyed watching the Big Ten Basketball network and Meerkat Manor. However, as we have discovered much to my horror, we can not receive any programming from the four regular networks,but only the cable/satellite stations. What this means is that in order to watch Dancing with the Stars or Lost or The Office we have to either watch it on the computer or get those silly rabbit ears out of the trash. Don’t even ask me to explain the FCC rule that allows “recreational vehicles” and trucks to receive the network feeds via Direct TV but not boats. It just does not make sense at all. After my fifth telephone call to KVH and Direct TV to make sure that we understood the situation correctly, I was told that if I had an issue with the ruling that I should write my congressman – and I think I might just do that!
