I know, let’s take a shortcut!
Never utter the phrase “let’s take the shortcut.” I should have learned that long ago, but I don’t know many shortcuts, so I don’t often take them. Tonight we were burned by a very long shortcut, which led to eating the worst dinner in the history of dinners. We would have been better off at Taco Bell and Taco Bell always gives me problems I shouldn’t discuss on a blog.
Tonight was our big anniversary night. We made plans to meet up in the city and go out to a really nice restaurant, but then Mike wasn’t feeling well and decided to come home instead of walking all over the city. Poor boy.
We thought we’d go to someplace close to home instead–a restaurant we’ve eaten at a couple of times and have always loved loved loved. It’s fancy enough that we don’t eat there often, but not so fancy that we would need reservations or anything like that.
So we get in the car, go to the first stop light and realize there is no way we are going to be able to pull out on the main drag in a timely matter.
No problem! I know a shortcut.
Apparently, so do 500,000 other people.
By the time we actually hit the main drag, going our shortcut way, we’d been in the car at least 20 minutes and had probably gone less than a 1/4 of a mile. Funnnnnnnn!!!!!!!!!
We realized that it would take at least an hour to get to the nice restaurant, a place that usually takes about 15 minutes to get to in normal traffic. I stupidly suggested that we go to another Italian restaurant that we might actually be able to get to in time to feed our rumbling bellies. We’d never been there before, but we’d seen their ads and figured that no restaurant could totally screw up a plate of $10 pasta.
Boy, were we ever wrong.
The bread was stale, my plate was dirty, my chicken was very pink in the middle and made me gag. Ewwwww ewwwww ewwwwww. The taste of the whole thing was utterly disgusting.
Mike said he had good pasta. He had it with salmon. Here’s hoping he’s not going to get some dread disease from eating rotten fish.
Sounds like a lovely anniversary, doesn’t it? Nothing can ruin it for us, though. We don’t really care about the big relationship markers. We’re happy from day to day and that’s what matters to us. We don’t need a fancy dinner to prove our love to each other. I just can’t believe we’ve only been married two years. I can barely remember a sad and lonely past that didn’t include the silly boy. We are so lucky to have found each other in the vast sea of the Internet. Cheesey enough for you?
We have decided to skip our “weekend away” plans in favor of going to the Toronto Freak Out (Internet meet-up) in August. Sure, it is hard to plan that far in advance right now, but we don’t care. We are going and that is that. If this baby in my belly decides to give us any trouble we’ll just. . . . . just. . . . . tell him to not give us any trouble. Original, eh?
I’m doing a dance of joy tonight (or would, if I wasn’t so tired I might keel over at any second) because I don’t have to work tomorrow! Mike has to have the car and I decided that I am not taking a cab because it is always a pain in the ass and I am usually late, which vexes my punctual soul, then I have to stand outside in the heat or the rain and wait forever at the end of the day. And yes, I order the cabs in advance and tell them the exact time to pick me up. They don’t care. Since I didn’t have anything scheduled ahead of time I decided I wasn’t going to play the cab game. Instead I’m going to work on my mom’s ugly quilt and try to get a lot closer to getting it done. I’ve decided that instead of making a bunch more blocks for it, I’m going to finish out the blocks I need to make a pattern, then get some complimentary fabrics and give it a bunch of big borders until it is big enough to be declared done. That way it might actually get finished before she goes to a nursing home.
Speaking of nursing homes, my grandma is going to be put in one just as soon as they have an opening. She tells my mom that it’s fine and that she knows it is for her own good and she tells my sister that she is going to learn how to get in and out of a wheelchair so she doesn’t have to go. I don’t blame her for not wanting to go, but at this moment she needs 24 hour care and my mom just can not handle her and her broken pelvic bone. She will only be in until it is healed up, so it’s not like she’s being put out to pasture yet. I know it must be very, very scary and I don’t blame her for not wanting to go. I just wish life wasn’t so sad.
I called to talk to her tonight and could tell immediately that she thought I was my sister (people can rarely tell us apart on the phone until we talk for a few minutes. My HS friends and I used to have to have a code so they would know they were talking to me and not my sister). She was bright and cheerful and called me “Sug.” She never calls me sug. She’s never bright and cheerful with me. She doesn’t like me, but she likes my sister. Of course, it’s because my sister needs her and takes her money and I don’t need her, so it’s all ok with me. It was just funny to hear the change come into her voice when she asked “how’s my little grandson?” and I told him he’d been kicking away in my belly the last few days. Then she knew it was me and the bright, cheerfulness was over. Luckily she had to go because her physical therapist came in, so I didn’t have to get a lecture about what an awful wife I am.
I talked to my mom as well, and she’s been getting the lecture about what an awful wife she is, even though she isn’t even married. She moved back in with my dad strictly for financial reasons, which suits him because he’s getting a dirt cheap maid out of the whole thing. Apparently grandma keeps telling my mom she needs to go home and spend time with my dad so he doesn’t “get hot and run away.” We were both hoping that “hot” meant angry. Neither of us said it, because it’s just disgusting, but I think we were both praying that “hot” didn’t mean horny. Maybe I’m just a perv, but that’s the first thing I thought of when I heard the words “get hot.” Or maybe I’m just around teenagers too much and from a completely different generation.