Our First Date Night

This is the Abbey we always go to.  Gorgeous, right?  And no, it's not a painting, it's a photo.  If you click on it, you can see how the trees look.  

So I have kept something very quiet here.  Mainly because G's mom reads this, and I try to not ruin her image of him.  But here it is.

Garret and I have a fight a few times a month over the same thing.  We've been having this fight literally our entire marriage.  You see, G has never, and I mean never, planned a date for us pretty much the entire time we've been together.  Okay, I take that back, he planned a dinner while I was in London during our engagement where he was going to re-propose, and it was wonderful, so I am not sure why he gets so flustered about it.  So we constantly have this fight, with me pointing out that it shows his lack of care because I've told him for 2 years how much it upsets me, he always promises to do better, and then he doesn't and the cycle continues.  Garret tells me he loves me at least 50 times a day (no joke) but I've told him it's starting to get hard to hear when he says it but keeps hurting me by not doing something as simple as planning a date.  

Now, G has never dated anyone other than me.  Not really.  He went out once with a girl while a holdover, but that was simple because they could only go to the mall basically.  So he gets slightly flustered trying to come up with a date.  I keep telling him to keep it simple, he keeps wanting to do some huge gesture.  But this weekend he finally did it.  He finally listened during a conversation, noted that I had mentioned that a certain pizza sounded good, and planned for us to go there this weekend, all on his own.  Because I know some of you are thinking that we seem to get out and about an awful lot, but it's always on me.  I am always the one who comes up with where we are gonna go, cause I love my husband, but he's kind of lazy.  Oh, and he tends to only want to do what I want to do, which drives me mad, because it should be give and take.  And yes, I know I'm crazy for sticking with him after 2 years of no planned dates, but I do love him so I held out the hope.  I wasn't disappointed.  

So he took me out to Strada for pizza.  I even brought my camera but forgot about it until after I was done with everything. But I had my favorite pizza which has Italian sausage (and it's the Italian link slices not ground up "Italian" sausage, they get most of their ingredients shipped in from Italy), baby artichokes, onions, capers, sun dried tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, and I drizzle chili oil on it.  To. Die. For.  We started with a salad with crispy pancetta, avocadoes, spinach leaves with a mustard dressing and parmesan for me and G has his fried polenta with creamy mushroom sauce.  For dessert I had an espresso, G got his "girly drink" cappuccino and we shared a tuillerie filled with vanilla bean marscapone cheese and fresh strawberries and blueberries with a mint leaf.  It was a new dessert item, and now knocks the pannacotta into second place.  

It was a pretty decent first date, I'm considering going out with him again.  Maybe, just maybe I'll give him a second shot.  And I figure he's like a great wine, he'll only get better with time and proper care.  I am looking forward to the next date he plans!

(Garret gave me a piggy back ride so I could reach the pink rose at the top of the pic.  I wanted to smell it, but it as part of the arbor and way too high.)

Oh, and on the last note, the other night at the wine bar Garret explains the whole thought process of why he said he loves me more than all the bricks in the yellow brick road.  I thought it was hilarious, but didn't share it because I try not to embarrass him.  He said he didn't care, he likes being mentioned, so here it is.  He thought to himself that he loves me more than all the sequins or whatever they are on Dorothy's red shoes (I should note that this was my favorite childhood movie, hence him thinking of it).  Then he thought that isn't very much, so what is there that there's a lot of?  Munchkins!  He loves me more than all the munchkins in Oz!  But then he decided that sounded weird, hence him saying the yellow brick road one instead.  Isn't he funny as hell?  Seriously, I have never been more amused then I am living with this man.  

And ironically this is what we saw on our way home from our date.  A sign maybe?  Somewhere over the rainbow my dreams really might come true.