Valentine's Day

I know I'm a few days behind on this post, but I wanted to talk a little about how I spent my Valentine's Day.

Patrick and I have been together almost 3 years (and married for almost 2,) and during that time, we've had the privilege of spending 3 Valentine's Days together. For the first Valentine's Day, I honestly cannot tell you what we did but if Patrick asks you, It was extremely magical and romantic. for the second Valentine's Day, I can't remember exactly what we did, but I know it involved a bed. Now now, don't go jumping into the gutters people. I was on bed rest last year while I was pregnant with Haley, so most of my life revolved around a bed at that time. All I was allowed to do was get up to take a shower and make myself a sandwich, so I'm sure that Valentine's day consisted mostly of TV watching and eating chocolate because, really, what's Valentine's Day without chocolate?

This year, Patrick and I were looking forward to spending a special Valentine's Day together since this would be our first "official" (aka not on bed rest) Valentine's Day as a married couple. Since we have the most perfect, wonderful baby in the world (I'm a little biased, but it's still true) we were lucky that one of the girls who does daycare at work volunteered to watch Haley for us so we could go out. What to do? We decided to have a nice dinner at J. Alexander's and then see a movie afterward. I even convinced Patrick to dress up some - he wore a collared shirt - it's the small victories. Being V-Day and all, we decided to go to dinner at 4PM so that we had enough time to catch our 7:30 movie. For those of you who are math illiterate like me, that means we have 3 1/2 hours between dinner and a movie. Plenty of time, or so we thought.

We get to J. Alexander's and like a good husband, Patrick lets me out at the curb so that I can avoid the rain and put our name on the waiting list while he stalked the nice couple who just came out of the restaurant for their parking spot. As I went inside, I could not find the line to stand in for reservations. I'm not joking, there were people stacked like sardines in the lobby. After doing a little more searching, I saw a tightly-packed group of people who looked like they would punch the next person who tried to elbow themselves in front of them. Realizing this was the waiting line, I took my spot at the end and waited my turn. As the line inched forward, I finally made my way to the front where a frazzled young hostess looked like she wanted to tell me and everyone else in the lobby to walk into traffic.

"How long is the wait?" I asked, giving my best "you can bump us to the top of the line if you want to" smile.

"2 1/2 hours" she said, staring back lifelessly.

And that is how Patrick and I came to eat at Texas Road House for Valentine's Day. Instead of having our steak with a side of orzo and wild mushrooms, we had them with baked potatoes and rolls with cinnamon butter. Instead of nicely-dressed waiters and a wine list, we had waiters in t-shirts who did a line dance to "Sweet Home Alabama" and offered us house margaritas. But hey, I'm not complaining at all. The food was good and the company was even better AND I wasn't confined to a bed - who could ask for more?

As we were waiting in the (much shorter) line to be seated, I had to laugh a little to myself though. With all the peanut shells on the ground, our nice clothes and dress shoes did look a little out of place. Oh well, so much for dressing up.