Still Blind

This Friday Blondie and I had plans to celebrate Valentine's Day. Yep, that's right we didn't celebrate on the 14th of February with everyone else...and we haven't for the last ten or eleven years. We decided long ago that we didn't like competing with everyone else for dinner reservations, paying outrageous prices for flowers, etc. etc.

At any rate Blondie, who normally works Friday nights and Saturday/Sunday afternoons, got a rare opportunity to have Friday night off. So plans and reservations were made, clothes were laid out and I actually got home at a reasonable hour so we would have the entire evening to ourselves. When I got home Blondie hadn't returned yet from the last minute errands she was running, but we had high hopes for a rare night out together. As I sat at home waiting for Blondie to get home my energy, that was unusually high at the end of a long week at work, started to wane a bit and after about an hour of waiting for Blondie to get home I started to feel a bit ill, but soon Blondie arrived home and the energies of getting ready for the evening were back in full burn. I started to put on my freshly pressed pants and shirt but as I started putting on my socks I really wasn't feeling well. Reluctantly I told Blondie that I really wasn't feeling well and I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to go out.

Needless to say she was disappointed and put off that after all of her efforts to get the night off that I was going to ruin our plans for a romantic evening. The more time she tried to convince me that I would feel better once we got out, the worse I felt. Finally she told me that if I needed to stay at home, she was still going out even if she had to take one of our kids with her. I was in no position to tell her otherwise but by this point I was feeling downright awful and although I knew it was going to be a great disappointment to her I really had no choice but to go lay down and try to get some rest. I went into our bedroom, got into my PJs and turned on the T.V. to see if I got my mind off of how I was feeling that I might be ready to go out in an hour or so.

I woke up several hours later to find Blondie double-checking my temperature and blood pressure (she loves to worry)...which was just fine. I learned that she had taken Alicat and Puddy to dinner with her and she started going about her nightly routine of tidying up the house before going to bed. I felt terrible that I had let her down but couldn't help but fall back asleep. After yet another couple hours of unconsciousness I woke up to the sound of Blondie doing the dishes and sending the children to bed. In my mind I thought to myself how nice it would be to have her come to bed with me in just a short time. But as I lay there waiting for her I could hear her turn the T.V. on in the living room and queue up Fraser that she has saved on our DVR. I knew that while she knew I was sick that I had still hurt her feelings, first by missing out on our date and then letting her be responsible for the normal nightly tasks that she handles every night...not much of a rare night off from work.

Sheepishly I came out to the living room and apologized that her evening hadn't gone as planned and vowed to make it up to her Saturday night, since she had already arranged to get off early that night as well. She gratefully, but disappointingly acknowledged that we would try for a romantic evening together the next night.

Saturday dawned cold and cloudy as I got up at 6 a.m. to get E-Bear to church by 6:45 so that he could meet his Scout leaders for the Klondike. It wasn't really a big deal for me to get up early since I'm normally up at 5:15 during the week. After returning from dropping off E-Bear I was in an especially good mood, the clouds had cleared and the morning was turning out to be sunny and warm. I really wanted to go back into the bedroom, kiss Blondie awake and start getting ready for the day, but I decided instead to let her sleep in an unusually quiet house with the boys gone for the day. As the morning passed she got up and we made plans for what we needed to get done before she needed to get ready for an abbreviated day at work. Thankfully, my only chores for the morning were cashing my check and getting Blondie a special Valentine's gift.

I had just the thing in mind. Something romantic and reflective of the years that we have been married, but as I went about the relatively few vendors in our small mountain community, what I wanted to get her wasn't to be found on any of their shelves. One merchant offered to order in the gift but it would be a couple days before it would come in...and I needed a gift today! As I went from store to store I felt more and more dejected. Not only had I spoiled a perfectly romantic evening together, but now on my make-up chance I wouldn't have a special gift for her. After some time sulking and panicking about what I would do other gift ideas came to mind.

More often than not when we choose a restaurant to go to, one of the deciding factors on where we will dine is what the dessert menu is like. The establishment with the greatest depth of dessert selection more often than not wins out over another with perhaps a better dinner menu. With this in mind I stopped into one of our local bookstores and searched for a no holds barred dessert cookbook. Finally with one selected I went on to another store to wander the isles for another gift idea. After some time I ended up in the DVD isle at a local chain store...I know not very romantic or original, but it just so happened that they had a box set of Fraser. A rare find any time of the year except Christmas, I grabbed the package and it just so happened that the offering was for the one season that Blondie liked the most in the whole series. I thought to myself that I was saved and quickly checked out and started heading to the local electronics store where I was going to pick up a new DVD drive for my computer to replace an old unit that had been giving me trouble for months.

As I hastily selected the drive that met my requirements at the most reasonable price I remembered that I hadn't gotten a card to go with Blondie's gifts, and I was pushing the time when I needed to be back at home to watch the children before she would head to work. Then it came to me, a custom card. So I went into the stationary isle to look for some really nice paper and as I thought about what I would write another idea came to me. I was going to write her love notes instead with a redeemable coupon on each. I quickly picked out a pack of fancy looking blank business cards and ran home, just in time to hide my gifts in the house before Blondie showed up to drop off the kids before heading to work.

Once she was on her way I went about my normal Saturday routine and let the idea of making custom love notes fall into the back of my mind. After a time I was done with my normal chores and sat down to play a little computer when I noticed the time, Blondie would be home in about two hours and I hadn't even started on her love notes. I quickly turned on the computer and brought up the manufacturers website where they were to have a custom template just for the business card I had chosen to help me with layout so that the final printed versions would look their best. When I found out that the particular card I had chosen was so new that a template wasn't available from their website I was even more worried that I wouldn't be able to finish Blondie's gift before she would arrive home. After some trial and error using a basic Microsoft template I finally had a blueprint that would work nicely. With little time to spare I put on each card something I loved about her and a coupon item that she could redeem for a special service from me.

I had just finished printing the final version of the cards as she pulled up into the driveway. I quickly gathered my gifts to present them to her, but realized that in all of my shopping and preparation I had completely forgotten to get any kind of wrapping paper or gift back. Hastily I found a little plastic container that Puddy uses to keep some of her toys in threw in Blondie's gifts and garnished the top with red confetti paper. As she took off her shoes and pulled her into our bedroom to present her with her gifts. I let her know that the cookbook wasn't just something for her to use as a reference but pledged that once or twice a month we would pick out a dessert to cook together. As she dug deeper into the plastic box she found the DVD set of Fraser, which she loved. As she wrapper her arms around me to give me a Thank You hug I let her know that there was still a little something more in the box.

The love notes were a hit! She loved them. Not only that she could redeem them, but what I put something unique on each one that I loved about her. There were ten in all, and on the tenth the thing that she could redeem on that coupon was another set of ten "Things that I love about you"...the title phrase on the top of each card.

Now that things were going nicely we quickly readied ourselves for our Valentine's night out, even Puddy wasn't upset that we would be leaving her at home with her older brothers and sisters for a rare night out by ourselves. Blondie decided that she definitely wanted to go out for a dinner and a movie, but that we would have to be swift if we were to get in dinner before the movie started. As luck would have it the restaurant that we had selected for the evening, a French-American bistro on Main Street had no waiting and we got right in. After some time going over the menu we selected some wonderful sounding items that were just a bit exotic. The imported cheese platter and vinaigrette salad with breaded goat cheese were magnificent! As we completed out salads it was apparent that it was getting late and that we would have to hurry through the main course if we were going to be able to also fit in a dessert.

Unfortunately the fillet minion with pepper sauce that we decided to split took much longer than expected and as it was served we only had about fifteen minutes before the movie was going to start. We thought that we would be OK with time since the theater was close, but it was obvious that we weren't going to be able to stay for dessert. The fillet was perfect, although a bit underdone for Blondie, but she made the best of it and I thoroughly enjoyed the extra pieces that Blondie passed my way that we too underdone for her taste. As we rushed to finish our dinner and get a check the restaurant that started out only partly filled had ended up completely packed. While our waiter did his best to get our check and change to us quickly it was fifteen after seven before we got our coats on. Making a seven o-clock movie on time was already out the window but we decided to make the best of it, we would only really miss out on the previews and opening credits if we hurried.

We made it to the theater in good time and we hadn't missed much of the movie, but we had poor seats in a small cramped theater...which we thought was a bit unusual since the movie had only opened the previous weekend. The first thing we noticed was how badly the picture was distorted as the movie that should have been shown on a wide screen was crammed onto a screen that had to have easily been built in the 70s. The picture was horribly clipped and each character was stretched into unnatural proportions. About five minutes into our sitting down I asked Blondie if she wanted to stay and 'watch the Gumby show' or if she wanted to leave and get a rain check for another time. After already missing out on our evening together the night before and having put that much more emphasis on our going out THIS evening we decided to stay. Not only was the movie badly distorted...which we eventually became accustomed to but it was horribly boring. There wasn't much to be admired in the show.

As we left I told Blondie I was so sorry that things didn't turn out the best for our Valentine's date together. She simply smiled at me and said that she had had a wonderful evening with me. We went home determined to see at least one good movie that evening and decided to stay up extra late and watch a movie that we rented that we were really looking foreword to seeing together. What we thought would be a refreshing romantic comedy turned out to really be a drawn out melancholy drama...that I fell asleep on about half way through. Tired but happy to have spent the evening together we retired to bed.

As we woke up this morning I again apologized to her for the unwrapped present, the rushed dinner, a distorted and boring movie and a depressing video at home. After having a good laugh together Blondie told me what a wonderful evening she had the night before, and you know what I had too.

Which makes me realize, that even after almost fifteen years of being married...we are still bind to the little disappointing things around us...and just love the time we have together.