May I start this piece by admitting, nay, even promoting the fact that I am indeed what the boys call "high-maintenance." I always encourage my therapy clients to insist on higher maintenance as well. I like to point out that Ferraris and Lamborghinis are also high maintenance due to their rarity, value, and high performance, just like me. So, yeah, no problem owning the "high-maintenance" label.
Why the caveat? Because I'm already envisioning the hating as I process my interesting Valentine's Day date last night. I am lucky, you see. I have a handsome, hardworking spouse. He really wants to make the holiday special for me. He always takes time to plan out a nice dinner for us, always antes up the roses, etc. There was one poor decision once involving a stuffed gorilla, but I digress.
Alas, as Tammy Wynette puts it: he's just a man. Missteps happen. And this Valentine's Day, he made reservations at what evidently is a really popular spot, a steak house, he told me. Arriving after an hour in the car (another Valentine's tradition of ours is getting lost going to the new fancy restaurant), I knew this was a popular establishment indeed as evidenced by the lack of parking and air to share with everyone in the room. It was close company, and there's nothing like your dinner view being the haunches of waitstaff and corpulent fellow diners.
There was no escaping the togetherness. If I swung my arms, I would have smacked the people at the adjoining tables eighteen inches to either side of me. It was a meal with a hundred of my really close, chubby friends. My hair literally blew back in the breeze every time one of the many, many waitstaff would whisk his glutemus maximus around my chair.
And there's the other thing: this was one of those steakhouses that has a million men with giant skewers of animal carcasses zipping around slicing it off for patrons to pick off with tongs. Now, please don't misjudge me. I was raised by a hunter. But perhaps because my father hung deer upside down in our backyard and cut them open and gutted them, seeing the giant sides of meat spinning in the front window wasn't incredibly appetizing. Add some bloody drops on the tablecloths...it did distract me from the worry one of these feint servers would drop a butcher knife through my hand, however.
This place also had a giant salad bar which consisted of the rest of the meal (outside the meatapalooza). I know I can't be the only one completely ooged out by communal food troughs, right? Color me OCD, but there's not a sneeze guard large enough to convince me to compete with a pack of fellow diners to come pawing through food hundreds of people have already picked through.
But don't worry! There was a white chocolate martini and a ruby drop pendant that made my most carnivorous Valentine's Day ever end up perfectly. Not to mention the most handsome and charming date in the place (he makes pretty babies, too). I am grateful to be so blessed. And so to my thesis: Here's to you, dear reader and valentine. I am sending you much love and wishes for a Valentine's Day as laden with blessings as mine is. And if you wish, piles and piles and piles of meat.
