Valentine's Date

Mr. Awesome and I had a lovely Valentine's date last night.  Let me preface this by saying that last year at this time, we had a two week old baby in the house, my post partum (which only lasted a week, but it was still a HORRIBLE week) depression had just kicked in, and you could say I was acting like one of those people on the commericals with the sad music. Um, they are not kidding about that apparently. I was acting so bad that Ian got me a card, a rose and he chose to leave the rose in the garage because I was so horrible.  Apparently not only did I have depression that made me sad, it made me mad as well. Like, really mad and mean. So, as you can see, last year - not so great.

So fast forward one year. This year in honor of surviving the first year of parenthood, we chose to go all out.  I made chocolate dipped strawberries with TWO colors of chocolate, bought champagne and champagne glasses, lit little rose colored candles all over the kitchen, had a CD with all of those great old love songs on it (my personal favorite - "You make me feel....You make me feel...You make me feel like a NATURAL WOOOOMAN!" Haha so ridiculous but funny) and we got dressed up in our finery. Finery meaning jeans (tight ones, not boring ones! For me, not Ian.) and nice shirts. I was NOT wearing glasses, house slippers and grey sweatpants, so already, Ian was pretty much stoked.  I bought Ian new guitar strings and a tuner, you know, so he can start singing me all of those songs that made me fall in love with him again.  We exchanged carefully sought out cards, after last year, Ian bought me a card with an ape on it - which I was NOT happy about, and have been periodically reminding him about on and off, for about a year. (My card was good - YOU just try finding a card for the father of your child, who you are living with, but not married to, and who you have two step kids with. Let's just say I searched early and hard.)

We started the night at Scotties Brewpub.  Oh, the north side meat market with overpriced drinks, how I have missed you! Even though it is over priced, I don't know how they do it - it is always packed and crowded here, no matter when you go.  So you are pretty much guaranteed a good time.  This part of the evening I will call "making small talk like a couple that does not live together." You know, at first you sit down and get a drink, and really, what can you talk about? We live together and have a baby. But it was fun to pretend like we didn't live together and have a baby.  And we talked about sports and friends and whatever else you would talk about on a date.

The next part of the evening I will call "having dinner at Eddie Merlot's and paying too much for it but not caring."  Some days, you just have to kick up your heels and live a little.  Let's just say that last night, we kicked up our heels and kicked up everyone else's heels on the block as well.  But it was so worth it!! Dirty martini's with stuffed olives!! The best soup of my liiiiiiiiife, lobster bisque - heaven in my mouth.  Steak, steak, steak. Drinks, drinks, drinks. Love, love, love.

When you are in a relationship, it's easy to not try at this stuff anymore. Just settle in and take the other person for granted. Get jaded about it and laugh it off and say it doesn't matter. But if you look back and say, What if there was ONE day of the year, that we showered the person we love with over the top, ridiculous shows of emotion? That would be great.  And it was pretty great. Hey - I got twelve roses instead of zero this year, so right there you could say it was a pretty amazing night. ♥