A Bitter Finish

As I sat in the cool pool watching the heat pelt our house I was happy.  My oldest, Drew was jumping in and swimming after his swim lesson, Sean sat on the step, splashing and enjoying himself, and lastly Eva bobbled up and down in the "boat" with me next to her.  We had all just finished cold Otter Pops and as far as perfect afternoons go this was as close as it could get...

My wife walked in the pool area and it was as if a switch was hit, Sean started an epic breakdown. As far as phases go, our current three year old terror has tried mine and Cristina's patience beyond anything I remember from Drew.  Sean can cry, scream, whine and I think scratch a chalk board all at the same time.  Unfortunately this rarely means he sleeps like a rock that night either.  As we exited the pool our house was filled with the serenade of Sean making his displeasure known...for a solid hour.  Even as I made a wonderful dinner alone (that I had hoped to do with the boys) in the kitchen, and my wife fed the kids and put them to bed, I couldn't relax.  As perfect as the afternoon was, and it was just about as smooth as one parent and 3 kids under 5 could wish for, I was wound as tight as ever and the only after taste left for the day wasn't even the wonderful Pasta, but rather an hour of screaming for my boy.

It seemed unfair to me, almost as if everything that had happened in the day was irrelevant because this happened.  As I don't know much about wine I can only imagine it would be like taking a sip, the fragrence is breath taking, the flavor perfectly balances on your pallet, but then the aftertaste peaks with an acidic punch, up till that last moment it was on the money.  This made me think even more about this, a mediocre to even bad movie can almost save it's self with a top notch ending, books the same way.  Dinner can be bombed but if you hit it out of the park with a decadent dessert you only remember the sweet, creamy ending, and the dinner can be forgiven.  I kept coming up with more and more examples of how the ending is so valued over the begginning and middle it just seemed unfair.

No matter how hard I work as a parent there are days when my kids are driving me up a wall, on my last nerve, but minutes before they sleep one of them will hug me, cuddle with me and be as perfect a child as I could hope for, and the previous day seems to melt away, unfortunately I have yet to figure out how to make the opposite not ruin my day.  

Perhaps I can figure out how to build my days into chapters, and while the every chapter can't be perfect, I can focus on a solid ending for each one, even if the whole chapter is miserable I can still knock it out of the park with a last moment of affection; And the inverse would be true as well, the moment things turn sideways I begin a new chapter and focus on turning this conflict into an opportunity to overcome and have a brilliant ending.  That could perhaps fix my quandary, if only I could figure out how to master that split second switch and starting a new chapter on the fly.

Celebrating A Wedding Anniversary

About a month ago my wife and I shared our Sixth Anniversary.  I couldn't help but think about the previous years, what we did, and invariably where we went.  While six years doesn't at first seem like much (compared to my wife's parents 51 years), to my wife and I it has been huge, and forever life changing.  From bringing three children into the world, moving 2 times, and making a huge career change, our anniversaries have been a wonderful time for us to celebrate another year closer to one another.

This would be the first year we didn't do anything "special" for our big day.  There were not any presents, and we didn't go out.  Budgetary constraints, time constraints, and energy constraints has severely limited our ability to do many things.  Even with all that, it has not effected our desire to celebrate marriage.

As I have recently become enraptured with cooking and menu preparation I took to creating our dinner night in. Many weeks prior to our anniversary very large Caribbean lobster tails went on sail for $8, at the same time untrimmed beef tenderloin went on sale.  I had prepared the tenderloin weeks previous, but while trimming had some lovely petite tenderloin tips I saved.  With a base for the meal set, a "surf and turf" I went on to planning the whole meal.  I made a favorite of ours a potato leak soup for a starter.  For our salad course we had arugula salad with toasted pecans, goat cheese, topped with fresh green apples and a home made Dijon mustard vinaigrette (a completely original recipe).  We had a toasted baguette with the salad and soup.  Our main course was a home made creamed spinach, with barbecued lobster tail and barbecued tenderloin tips.  The desert was Fossleman's ice cream (pistachio, espresso fudge, and dark chocolate).  All in all I think I spent around $40 dollars for dinner (easily what we would have paid for babysitting alone), I can only imagine the cost at a fine dining establishment (we guessed about $250).  What was so nice was even the next day we had left overs for our lunch, I made myself a lobster burrito, and Cristina had a Steak Burrito, and man those were awesome (and free.)

While I prepped during the day to cook, I didn't start the grill until the kids were asleep.  Once they were down, my wife went to town setting a grand table.  A black table cloth given by my mother-in-law as well as some beautiful chrome chargers.  She set the table with the china given to her by her grandmother.  The silverware was my Swetka family silver.  Our crystal was a wedding gift from the Falcons and Horowitzs, our pots and pans that prepared our food was wedding gifts from more of our friends, and even the ice cream scoop came from a close girlfriend of my wife's.  The candles were holders from our honeymoon in Fiji that we saw and bought on the main island.  With the tremendous amount of love received from family and friends to celebrate our meal, you couldn't help but feel loved, and realize what a great foundation we have been given in starting our lives together.

I'd be lying to say we had tons of conversation, it was mostly just eating, and relaxing.  Though we did talk some about who gave us what, and how cool it was to realize what a great way to start our life together, the majority of the night was us just being content together and enjoying wonderful food.  The dinner, the quiet house, the table setting and everything given to us was out of love.  While time in a quiet restaurant is most often a wonderful luxury, I wouldn't have traded anything for our Sixth Anniversary dinner, and I can't imagine a restaurant could have provided us such a wonderful feeling of being surrounded by the ones we love.