Friday, May 13, 2011

Story time

Well, I don't blog for a week and then Blogger gets rid of the one post I do make yesterday. Meh, at least it wasn't a very important post. In case you missed it, it basically said "I'm fed up with drama and I can't even vent to my blog because I don't think this drama deserves to be splashed all up on the internet, and because of said drama I haven't even knit much so I don't have that to blog about either". As an aside, I think said drama has been dealt with, the ball is in the other person's court right now and a lot is riding on their response, which could seriously improve our relationship, or seriously damage it. I'm getting through this by channeling Emma Woodhouse (Jane Austen for those who are less classically inclined).

But I promised a story (because there still isn't much knitting or crafty stuff to blog about yet), so here goes:

Yesterday was my 6 month anniversary with Bruce. We both agree if feels more like somewhere between 6 days and 6 lifetimes. We'd also both sort of forgotten that our anniversary was creeping up on us, so there were no big plans. I kind of like that we're both forgetful of these things. Normally I'm not, normally I'm really on top of that kind of thing (I think it's a girl thing) but with Bruce, it feels like every day is a celebration of our love. Anniversaries are sort of an afterthought. And I guess these little ones (3 months, 5 months, etc) are sort of an afterthought. But half a year is a pretty big milestone, so we felt that we wanted to do something to celebrate.

So we decided to go out to dinner. Being super frugal, going out usually means burgers or $3 burritos, but we'd just gotten my tax refund so we have a little extra right now and we decided to go to a South American restaurant that Bruce had been wanting to try - he'd found one of their paper menus blowing around a parking lot a few weeks back and decided they sounded really yummy, so we've been looking for an occasion to go ever since. We didn't have an exact address, only a good hunch that it was located in a certain shopping center. When we drove there, we couldn't see it, so we parked and started walking around to see if it was hidden away in some corner.

As we were walking, I started relating a story of another anniversary dinner I'd had with an ex in a different restaurant in the same area, a seafood place that specialized in crab. Yeah, it seems weird to talk about an anniversary dinner with a former flame on our anniversary, but Bruce is the kind of guy that regards stories like that as just part of my history as a person. He's very awesome like that.

I was telling Bruce all about how we'd gone to this place with high hopes of a romantic evening, only to encounter the bitchiest and most sullen waitress ever. So bitchy and sullen that she put a real damper on the evening. Then we were surprised by the bill because it turned out to be more than we were expecting (though still within what we could pay) and the quality of the food was only good. Not really good, not excellent, nothing to write home about, just good. We ultimately decided to have a word with the manager about our waitress's bad attitude, and when the manager on duty came to the front . . . it was our bad waitress. Noticing that we were about her age, she immediately tried to get all chummy with us talking about how stressful life is and how "we know what it's like" as an excuse for her poor service. Wrong thing to say to us, my ex was working in food service at the time and I worked at a busy but high end shop in the mall so we did know how stressful things got, and how damn important it is not to let the customer know that! It was made worse by the fact that all through dinner we could see another waitress coming in and out of the kitchen and you could tell just by her face how exhausted she was and how much she did not want to be there, but as she rounded the corner into full public view she made a visible effort to center herself and put a smile on her face. If this girl could do it so well, it must not be so terribly hard, right? We decided never to eat there again, and my ex went back the next day to lodge a proper complaint with the owner.

Bruce found the story amusing, and just as I was finishing it up, we ended up walking right past the restaurant in question - which we then realized had been bought and converted into the South American place we'd been searching for! Giggling over the irony, we went inside to find out that a good friend of Bruce's worked there and would be our server for the evening. The owner himself came over to explain the specials and recommend a wine for us, and the whole evening was simply amazing. Excellent food, to die for wine, good service (from everyone, not just Bruce's friend) reasonable prices, it was the perfect romantic fairytale dinner. Even Bruce admitted that that was the most he's ever paid for dinner (he's more used to eating frugally) but that it was worth every penny.

We took it as yet another sign from the universe that we were meant to be together, and we simply cannot wait to see what the next 6 months brings for us, and then the next 6 and the 6 after that . . .

3 comments:

  1. What a lovely story! Thanks for sharing it. I was kind of bummed that I couldn't read your last blog post, so it was nice to see this one.

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  2. Sounds like a great restaurant to eat at. Glad you two had a wonderful dinner after a good walk.

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