The other day I was killing time on a long flight and decided to peruse my date book. I've never really partaken of all the helpful pages in the beginning and end of the book - like the birthday guide, which has the birthstones and flowers and astrological signs associated with each month, or the health & fitness tracker, with its neat rows where I can keep drack of my target heart rate and the number of sets, reps and weight I lift. There was a page that I did find useful, however, as it listed the anniversay gift by year.

According to this list of traditional gifts, the first year should be commemorated with paper, plastics or clocks. Ok, it's just one year, no need to go overboard. Marriage is all about the long haul, so a little clock on year one, while not a gift I'd like to receive, is probably acceptable. But as I made my way down the list, the other gifts were equally as unattractive: pottery, willow or leather on the 9th anniversary. Furniture on the 17th. A musical instrument on the 24th (one of the most bizarre). But perhaps the strangest gift is the gift of groceries for the 44th year. 44 years? It's going to take 44 years for a man to go buy some groceries (for the record, in our house my husband does the grocery shopping - and we've only been married 13 years so I guess he's ahead of the game).

According to the chart you have to wait until the 60th anniversary for diamonds (and here I'd been trying to convince my husband that every anniversay is the diamond anniversary). The lesson here? Buy your own diamonds. You'll get them sooner and you'll actually get the ones you want. Besides, it lets him off the hook so he can figure out what to get you for anniversary number 46 - original poetry tributes.