Two for the Road

Last week, my hubby and I celebrated another anniversary. In this era of seventy-two day marriages, I thought thirty-one years of togetherness was worthy of a night on the town (or, at the very least, a dinner out that didn't include a waiter asking me if "I would like fries with that") but trying to figure out a suitable way to celebrate our milestone didn't come as easily as you might think.

If it had been up to me, we would have driven thirty miles to this French restaurant I've been dying to try but since my husband is allergic to driving long distances to eat when there are "plenty of good places that won't waste a half tank of gas getting there", I knew that was not in the cards. (Last year it killed me to forfeit our $80 Groupon to said restaurant. Now it looks like the only way I'm ever getting there is if we ever find ourselves somehow in the vicinity of the North Shore or if I get some terminal disease that forces him to grant a last request).

The other half of my equation would have been happy with something a little more intimate - a home-cooked meal (guess who would be home-cooking it) and an action movie in our very own theater room. Since that scenario was also off the table (if he wanted to make it to thirty-two years), we decided on one of those lovely compromises that pop up every hour or so in a long-term marriage; we would go out to an actual movie theater (I haven't seen the inside of one of those since we put that damn screen up in our basement) to see an art film called The Trip to Italy and try the gourmet restaurant that is part of our local community college's culinary school.

Don't ask me how either one of them were. We didn't make it to either one. We ended up spending the day cuddling our new grandson, shopping for comfortable shoes at DSW (don't judge me, I had a coupon that was about to expire), and ordering a salad and something called a "Buddha Bowl" at our local Standard Market. It would have been a nice Saturday afternoon if it hadn't been our anniversary (and it hadn't been on Wednesday).  Now I'll have to wait until next year to have a shot at that restaurant and I'll have to invent another excuse to get him to take me to see that movie.

I wonder if he'd fall for the idea of celebrating our 1613th week anniversary.