My wife and I watched the animated film Up a few weeks ago. In the film an introverted boy named Carl meets an outgoing girl named Ellie. She has made an Adventure Book that lists all of the things she wants to do and see. Eventually Carl and Ellie get married. Throughout their marriage Ellie comes up with ideas for things that they should do and Carl always goes along with it. The whole time she maintains her Adventure Book.
When we saw that film I told my wife that it reminded me of us. My wife is the family social director. She comes up with adventures for us to have and I'm pretty much just the lucky guy who gets to go along for the ride. It never ceases to amaze me how my “Ellie” can turn an ordinary day into a fun adventure. Sometimes we travel a bit on our outings. We've walked the shores of all of the oceans that surround this continent and the Great Lakes as well. Together we've traveled through most of the major mountain ranges in the U.S., crossed a couple of deserts, panned for sapphires and rubies, spent time in ancient pueblos, seen the Old Man of the Mountains before it slid into oblivion, strolled through the House of Seven Gables, the Winchester Mystery House, Kit Carson's house in Taos and Andrew Jackson's house in Nashville and have seen and done a lot more things than I have space to mention here.
Sometimes, though, our adventures are a little closer to home. Take today for instance. It was the last day of the month. We had blown through most of our spending money and were kind of marking time until payday. We didn't have anything planned for today, though, so Ellie opened the Adventure Book and we set out to have a small change adventure.
We decided to eat breakfast at home because we had some quiche left from yesterday's lunch and we couldn't afford to get anything better than that if we ate breakfast out. Then we headed out to a thrift store where my wife likes to buy decorating material and I like to buy used books. I didn't buy anything but she was able to get an old birdcage for a few bucks that she planned to use as a garden ornament. It was such a beautiful morning that we didn't want to spend anymore time inside, so we headed to our favorite park for some free exercise and people-watching.
It was nearly noon when we finished walking the park and we were both starved by then. We had brought our trusty bag of coupon books along and decided to have lunch at the local Genghis Grill. Even though we used a BOGO coupon, that still took about half of our cash. The restaurant is in an open air mall so we took advantage of the nice weather to get in an after lunch stroll through the mall. Mostly we just window shopped but Ellie had a 30% off coupon from Kohl's and ten dollars in Kohl's Bucks so we stopped there and got about $18 worth of stuff for around $5. Our cash was dwindling, but we felt like we had gotten a good deal for our money so far.
We left the mall and went to the local library. We spent some time there just checking out the books. Ellie borrowed one, which didn't cost anything, and I bought three hardcovers from the used bookstore for a total of three dollars (they were having a buy one, get two free sale). None of the books was any older than 2003 and, when they were new, the total cost for them was about $75. You can't beat a deal like that.
With our last five bucks we bought two cups of coffee (BOGO) and two allegedly gourmet cupcakes (another BOGO) and chowed down on them while we sat on the square and watched the touristas oohing and ahing at overpriced stuff in the local shops.
It was a fun day that hardly cost anything and didn't take us any further than twelve miles from home. But that's what you can do when you have your own private Ellie and she has her very own private Adventure Book.
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