Monday, February 16, 2009

Food and Furniture: My Kind of V Day Fun!

My Valentine's Day weekend was awesome!

Unlike V Day weekends of yore, with glamorous dinners out and travel to exotic places, we stayed put. And bought furniture. And cleaned house. And I cooked Vee dinner.

This is actually a bigger deal than it sounds. I had not cooked a single dinner (excepting one pot of chili when we had guests, and maybe the one night we did a mac-n-cheese dinner) since we moved here. Hey, y'all, I was pregnant! And then, um, I was taking care of a baby! (and I am still am...?) Anyway, so I got out the old "Wine Lovers Cookbook" and found a recipe for Adobo-Grilled Filet with Red Bean Ragout, and went a-shopping at HyVee and Whole Foods to load up on $60 worth of groceries.

SIXTY DOLLARS! IT WOULD HAVE BEEN CHEAPER FOR US TO GO OUT!

But we had a Kiddokabiddo who still has not been babysat by anyone outside our family, and since she's in a very strong 8 month "I NEED MAAAAAM! I NEED DOT-DOT!" phase, it wasn't worth trying to coerce one of our friends to take her for the evening on V Day.

So we put Kiddokabiddo down for the night around 8:30pm, and I put the dinner on our table with a flourish, and we enjoyed a successfully-cooked meal without the plaintive cries of our child. In our house, sure, but these days, ANY MEAL WITHOUT THE KIDDO AROUND IS A LUXURIOUS ONE.

I feel particularly proud of the fact that this meal was able to erase the memories of Valentine's Day Dinner 2004, which was the last time I tried to cook dinner for Vee on V Day. I spent all afternoon in the kitchen of the house, with my two GREAT COOK roommates helping me make this amazing salmon-orzo-and-tomato dinner, which I had plated and was carrying upstairs (I had set up a card table with a tablecloth and candlelight in my room) when, OF COURSE, I tripped and spilled one of the two plates on the stairs.

You REALLY had to know these stairs. Well, or you REALLY had to know the general cleanliness of that last house I lived in during college. It probably had dirt/blood/semen/tetanus from the last 50 years worth of college kids who lived there before us. The house was WRECKED, in an amazing "This is why we all only pay $210 a month for rent" way.

And I spilled my beautiful Valentine's Day dinner on THAT.

(I must be exaggerating on the tetanus part, because I scraped the middle digit on my pointer finger and got a nice scar that bears mute witness today, and I know I wasn't up to date on my shots, so maybe it was "cleaner" than I made it sound.)

But that dinner is gone! Finito! V Day Dinner 09 took its place!

I can't believe Vee and I have celebrated seven Valentine's Days together. Amazing.

Kiddokabiddo got me Valentine's Day donuts, and she got her dad a card. And then her dad and I bought ourselves the finest piece of furniture we'll probably ever own, because we bought a house last year.

What did you do for Valentine's Day?

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Mission furniture is classic!

Unknown said...

Stickley furniture is classic!

E. Langley said...

Valentines kinda sneaked up on me here, but luckily, in Korea there's about 4 months of valentines-esque activity, and on Feb. 14th its the responsibility of the girlfriend to get the boyfriend something. On March 14th, called "White Day" i have to do something for Shannon and then April 14th is "Black Day" when single people can cry over a bowl of black jajangmyeon noodles, and then theres May 14th which is "Rose Day" when I have to buy roses, and then there's June 14th, which is "Kiss Day" for obvious reasons. The couple bullshit here is amazing. There's this rich fantasy of how men treat women before marriage, build up all this expectation, and then you get married and your wife turns into "Billy's Mom"...literally. That's what the husband begins to refer to his wife as "Billy-Oma". Women are desexualized immediately and turn into what is jokingly called the 3rd sex...Men, Women, and Ajumma (married woman). Valentines is just a pretext to lure a woman into a loveless, de-sexualized marriage. Hooray for couples!

E. Langley said...

Oh, and I forgot to mention that the husband is incredibly likely to cheat on his new Ajumma. A recent survey said that 68% of married men in Korea have had an affair at least once. Given the pressure to attend company after-work sessions at Room Salons (thinly disguised love motel bars) and the wide availability of easy and cheap prostitution in high traffic business areas, its no surprise. When I quoted that statistic to a class, the men told me the number was more likely somewhere around 99%. I asked women about it, how they feel knowing that if they get married their husband will probably cheat, and they say they'll divorce or give one more chance, which seems to be the case - Divorce rates are up.