I'm pulling my hair out, trying to come up with a killer, unique gift idea to surprise my husband with for Valentine's Day. Mark, or as I like to call him, "Mr. Bossy Pants", is very tricky to shop for. It's not that he doesn't have hobbies; it's that his hobbies are so highly specialized that you just about need a secret handshake to get past the door. He loves to ride his bike. Not like normal people, mind you, who go out for a leisurely spin and maybe even swing by Ben & Jerry's on the way home. No, Mr. Bossy Pants suits up in this skin-tight body armor stuff and takes off on muddy, boulder-strewn trails that even animals have sense enough to avoid. He actually took out an entire tree not too long ago, cracking a couple of ribs in the process. Fun! And he races on these trails too, with other like-minded lunatics, all of them dressed like Aquaman's hyperactive goth cousins. The girls and I went out to cheer him on a couple of weeks ago. It was raining, of course, and all of the riders were wet and spattered with thick, gooey mud. I'm not a priss or a couch potato, and I don't let bad weather keep me from running, but seeing the increasingly desperate faces of the riders as the race went on had me wondering, hmm -- exactly which circle of hell is this? (Side note: my bonus son, Eric, also raced that day and came in fourth. It was his first race! I was very impressed and proud.)

So anyway, back to Valentine's Day. I don't dare buy him a bicycle-related present because I can't even identify the function of most of the products sold at his favorite bike shop. The standard gifts -- cologne, jewelry, cheetah-print mesh underpants -- are out. He just doesn't like that kind of stuff. And even if he did, I can never pull off a surprise. He has some weird sixth sense that sets off an alarm any time I step foot into a retail establishment. All I have to do is cross the threshold of a Gap store and bam! My mobile phone starts ringing.

Mark: What are you doing? Me: Um, answering the phone? Mark: You're at the Gap, aren't you? Don't even try to deny it.

I'm beginning to suspect that he's put one of those GPS tracer-type devices on my car.

I've tried asking him what he wants for Valentine's Day and he always says, a Porsche, or a motorcycle, or some bizarre after-market car part to make his engine louder or faster or whatever. He carries on about how high-maintenance I am, but hello? You can't even buy the man a cd. He already has everything and besides, what he wants is generally some random EP by a band of socially maladjusted Swedes whose one hit single got a little airplay on the Fuel Channel. It's hopeless. Any ideas?