My wife bought eleven bottles of seltzer this week.

My wife is not, I should say, a carbonation junkie on a bender. Nor is she a freak about coupons, buying only what is on sale and thereby creating a maelstrom of random food purchases that result in weeks on end where the only meal is beef jerky and Spaghetti-Os served on commemorative dog breed china. She doesn't own stock in the seltzer-producing company, and neither does she need the bottles for an arts-and-crafts project with the kids.

She doesn't even drink seltzer.

My wife knows, however, that I like seltzer. She knows that I add it to any and all juices (and she knows about my pathological fear of orange juice). She knows that sometimes I get a late-night craving for an egg cream. And she knows that our local grocery store often runs out of seltzer, and that I am therefore often forced to subsist on non-spritzy beverages for weeks at a time.

So her special trip to the further-away grocery store to purchase eleven bottles of seltzer was, I believe, and act of pure love.

I hope she knows how much I appreciate such efforts on her part to make me happy -- and this is really the least of such efforts. And I hope she knows I try to do the same for her.

And I hope she understands that I have only just now thought to thank her properly and tell her I love her. And I hope she doesn't hold it against me that I am doing so on my blog.