Jonathan at the AT&T Store in The Highlands of Arlington is awesome. I just thought I’d get that bit out of the way first.

Now to the real point:

I love my husband. Fuzzy adores me, supports my creative endeavors, still flirts with me after almost 21 years of marriage, and even remembers to recycle cans and boxes most of the time. he’s also Midwestern, which means “It’s okay,” is high praise, and making a decision is an agonizing experience.

It has taken him since September to figure out how to allocate his birthday money.  (He couldn’t figure out what he wanted, so we agreed that he could spend the equivalent of the cost of my guitar on something he wanted.)

When I asked him what he wanted for Christmas, he told me that he’d like to combine his birthday money with his Christmas gift and get a new iPad. This was a perfectly valid request, as Fuzzy has never had a brand-new iPad. Usually, I get a new iPad and he inherits my old one, largely because I’m a power-user, and he just plays games. I was happy to agree to his suggestion.

However.

He couldn’t decide which iPad he wanted. The current version of the iPad Air would be an upgrade beyond my Air, but the Pro was launched earlier this summer, and it’s really pretty.

Finally, on Christmas Day, he said he needed to go look at them.

But we were both exhausted and spent Christmas weekend in blissful lassitude, reading and puttering and not leaving the house.

And then he had to work.

Today, when his half-day of work was over, we trekked to the closest AT&T store, where the salespeople, who  I will not name, included a woman who kept pushing us to buy DirecTV, even though we already have Uverse, and love it, and a man who was saturated with cologne. (And I do mean saturated. Seriously, it would take him a week to sweat away all the scent he was wearing.) It turned out that they didn’t have the make and model he wanted, so we left.

Then we went to Best Buy, where they told us there would be a 40-minute wait.

There are very few pieces of mobile technology that are worth waiting forty minutes for on New Year’s Eve.

But the time in both those stores wasn’t entirely wasted. He decided the Pro was too large to be used the way he likes to use tablets.

I went online and learned that the other AT&T store near us, the one in the shopping center that is also home to our favorite movie theater, had ONE  128 GB iPad Air 2, but it was gold. “Fuzzy,” I said, “they have what you want in gold. If you REALLY want silver we’re driving to SouthLake or  Frisco.”

“Gold is good,” he said. For him, that’s almost excitement.

The Highlands AT&T store is newer, and much more spacious than the one nearer to our home. It caters to a slightly more affluent clientele. While we still had to wait, there were tables and chairs, plush benches, and lots of other things to look at.

(I might have had a brief affair with a Microsoft Surface 3. Don’t judge. I liked the fact that the keyboard, while small (which is actually good for me – I have tiny hands) was satisfyingly clicky. )

I also had a conversation with a wild-haired customer who was ranting about how AT&T is changing all their plans to scam you out of more money and how if you cancel your service while you have an installment plan on a device, you have to PAY OFF THE BALANCE!!!!! (He said it in all caps, I swear.)

And seriously, is that news to anyone?

I mean, really??

Finally, Fuzzy got his iPad and we went to the grocery store to get napkins and recycling bags and a gazillion other things, including the ingredients to make empanadas, because YUM.

So we spent a good chunk of the afternoon in the AT&T store, but that’s okay, because even in the AT&T store you can find a touch of holiday romance, like the light in your beloved’s eyes when you tell him, “Yes, sweetie, you can buy whichever one you want.”