If you’re anything like my father, you spend quite a bit of time working around the house. You wake up early and immediately start messing around in the garage, tending to the yard, working on the pool, or otherwise fixing something that probably doesn’t even need to be fixed. If you’re anything like my father, you’ll get yelled at by your wife for forgetting to bring along the lowes coupon she left on the kitchen table.

Now normally my parents get along swimmingly, but when they don’t, it’s usually for one of three reasons:

  1. Daddy-O got into the chocolate cake when he wasn’t supposed to.
  2. My brother and I did something wrong to upset them (Correctly read as My brother did something wrong).
  3. Daddy-O came back from the store with new stuff for the house (and Momma Bear found the receipt). 

You can usually tell when my mom is upset with my dad over reason number three because she uses the phrase “What did you buy now!?” (She even has a special tone and facial expression for that exact question). It’s quite funny, but completely avoidable.

Now my mother isn’t the most frugal; in fact, she does the majority of the spending. The thing is that my father is constantly going to Lowes and coming back with something, anything really, that my mother views as a waste of money. Usually he gets a pass if he doesn’t spend too much or if whatever he came home with benefits her (say a part to fix the hot tub; convenient right?). 

If I had to guess, I would say about forty percent of their arguments could be avoided if he just stopped going to Lowes and coming home with random things, but that will never happen; my dad is addicted. But if he would just take the coupons that my mom finds for him, that might help out too!

He actually did take the coupon my mom left for him once. He came home with some new toy and since he had saved so much, mom wasn’t even mad; that is of course until he got into the chocolate cake.