They say that in every successful marriage, one person is the spender and the other is the saver. It’s not that I’m cheap per se – or at least, I don’t think I am – it’s just that of the two of us, I’m the one more likely to flinch at a price tag. Part of it comes from upbringing. A lot of it comes from working as a freelance writer for almost ten years, never knowing exactly what my income will look like from one month to the next. My natural instinct is to squirrel away nuts for the winter.

The flip side to that equation is that Kristi likes nice things and is a lot more willing to test the financial waters in the name of something nice and old that she found at the local antique shop.

When we first began sorting our wedding registry – even before I moved to California – one of the very first selections we settled on was the china. True to nature, my wife to be informed me that we were registering for nice china, whether or not anyone actually bought us the stuff. It wasn’t a hard fight for her to win; we both felt that once we’d passed the thirty mark, our days of fine Target kitchenware had been numbered anyway. So we registered for Wedgwood china, which runs retail for about $225 a setting, but can be obtained for about half that when it goes on sale.

We were pleasantly surprised to have actually received several settings for our wedding in July, as well as for holiday and birthday gifts. Between those, gift cards and some last minute MAJOR scores on end-of-summer sales, we’ve recently rounded out a full ten place settings.

(And I’m telling you, we seriously scored: three settings at $100/each at Macy’s. If we buy or receive two more through Macy’s now, they give us about $150 of free and very nice stuff. Ah, the holidays..)

So these ten boxes of china have gradually accumulated in the kitchen cabinets because we had nowhere else to put them. And since about March, Kristi’s been jonsing to buy a china cabinet for the dining room. Every so often she’d find one she liked at the local antique shop, would come home and broach the subject of plunking down X dollars and I’d balk. Can’t do it, babe. We’re slammed on wedding bills, and besides, the world’s probably coming to an end next week and so let’s settle for something flat pack from Target. And then she’d fix me with that cold stare of death that she slings out whenever the subject of flat pack furniture ever seriously enters a house conversation.

The business had a good week this week. Ended Friday with a newly signed contract, a deposit check on its way, two other solid prospects in negotiation and several clients scheduling out billable hours for October. We were both tired after a long week but upbeat and generally in a good mood. So we decided to get out of the house on Saturday and drive up into the mountains, up around the small Calaveras mining towns like Angel’s Camp and Murphys. It’s nice and relaxing to just spend an afternoon up in the Sierras, browsing the little local shops and playing tourists and enjoying a winding mountain drive among the big redwoods. We ended up at a little shop in Arnold full of odds and ends and bits and pieces, some inexpensive, some not.

And there we finally found a china cabinet that we both liked. It was the right design, size and feel for our dining room. It cost slightly more than the antique shop one we disagreed on back in April. And it took several moments for Kristi to pick her jaw up off the floor when she pointed at it, said “I’d like that” in her I-know-I’m-not-gonna-get-it way, and I simply said okay, I’ll go pay for it – let’s figure out how to get it in the truck. I think she still doesn’t believe it.

Our new china cabinet, in its new home and full of Wedgwood china:

I like surprising my wife sometimes. It’s fun.