Back in January, I had this moment of pure genius. The Boy and I had just returned from our Christmas break, loaded with gifts from our generous families. We had been generous with each other, too. We wanted for nothing. Unfortunately, between January and March, we have our anniversary, both birthdays, and Valentine’s.

We were cash poor. We were tired of shopping. We have been dating for just way too many gift-giving holidays and are running out of good ideas, and we’ve moved too many times to buy potentially not-useful knick-knacks.

My moment of genius? Let’s skip it all, take the money we would spend on each other, sign up for one of those no-interest financing plans, and buy an iPad!

It was exciting. It was fun. I really didn’t get to play with it too much because I was busy, busy and busier, and I was looking forward to sitting down once I graduated and really getting to know our new expensive toy.

Two days before I graduated, it disappeared. It was last seen on the kitchen counter, propped up with a recipe and an episode of Switched at Birth while I made dinner. Two mornings later, I couldn’t find it. We have all sorts of theories about its disappearance, but all evidence leads towards something so dumb I can’t even fathom it – in a fit of supreme cleaning madness before my family arrived, we accidentally threw it into the garbage.

Seriously. We are the dumbest humans alive.

Fast forward three+ months. We are faced with one ailing laptop (mine), one 10 year old desktop (his), a little extra cash, and that damn no-interest financing card.

Hello, iMac.

Our first family computer. How adorable. I use Firefox and he uses Chrome. Our music has been reunited.

The Boy’s comment:

“Well, at least we can’t throw it out.”