I took Mark to see Patton Oswald for his birthday.

He is turning 50, a big one, and impossible to buy for, and experience gift seemed like the way to go.

My friend Barb was shopping for gifts for her husband over Christmas, which made my heart catch a little.

I cannot think of a single deeply meaningful gift, that I have ever given Mark ( and I am a really good gifter, usually).

He is just one of those people that buys himself the things he desires, and he is terribly unsentimental, so it makes him my great challenge and failure, which is doubly terrible, me being me and taking that sort of thing very seriously.

So when I read on Facebook that Patton Oswald was performing in May, in Portland, I snatched up those tickets like a crazy person.

I got one for Maxwell, too, since he just had his big, meaningful 18th birthday and comedy is something he shares with his father.

I was WINNING, as the slang goes.

I also bought a ticket for myself, which was highly unusual.

I am typically so frugal, so cheap, that we have in 20 years together rarely done things together.

In some ways my neurosis around money has been good.

We almost own our home outright.

We have no debt, and money in savings.

But in some ways it has been damaging to our relationship.

I am terrified of debt, homelessness, wreck, ruin, failure, that ominous rainy day you always plan for.

TERRIFIED

Living with real and imagined danger around every turn is wearing, and I know it has been hard on Mark to navigate my fear of spending money.

So this time I shocked him and went along and we had a terrific time.

I did not complain, or fret, I just went and even purchased a teeny plastic cup of $9 wine for me, and a $5 bottle of water for him.