On June 30, 2010 Mr. Wonderful and I were married 36 years. I think that bears repeating....36 YEARS! 432 MONTHS! 1728 WEEKS! 12,096 DAYS! 290,304 HOURS! 17,418,240 MINUTES! (feel bad for me yet?) In our usual celebratory fashion (ha..!) we planned a night out...for him, a free Morton’s Steakhouse dinner...for me, a free Broadway play. (I promise I will explain all this free stuff later) I changed my hours from afternoon to morning so that I would be home in time to get dressed to leave for dinner. He had to take the day off....to rest up for the big night out. Going anywhere with my husband is always an experience. We have to leave way too early, get there way too soon, take roads no one else would and not a traffic jam in the world annoys him. My kids go every year to the Thanksgiving Day parade with him, where they are made to leave at the crack of dawn, drive down Flatbush Avenue with the kamikaze dollar vans and then park almost in another borough and always facing south. (don’t ask) But leaving him there to save a choice spot, sitting like the egg hatching Horton while they get their kids breakfast somehow evens the score. So on this night we will leave for dinner and an 8 o'clock show at........4:00pm.
The nightmare that is Flatbush Avenue doesn't disappoint. Dollar vans, crack heads, traffic. Ah, the start of a wonderful evening. We drive past Morton’s looking for a spot. Nothing. (I mention there is a parking lot next door in the hotel...no response) We circle the block. Still nothing. Twice. Nada (I mention there is a parking lot next door in the hotel....no response) A quarter of a tank of gas later as I circle and he navigates a look of amazement comes over him as he proclaims, "Look, there's a parking lot in the hotel next door." I applaud his discovery, park and say nothing. That, in a nutshell, is how we are still married after 36 years, 432 months.... (feelin' for me yet?)
We 'self park' I presume because the cheap bastard doesn't want to spring for the $1 valet tip. He will say it is because they will scratch the car. He has to choose the spot, not too near a turn or a wall or a crappy car. I drive a god damn Dodge! By the time we park and locate the elevator we are hardly speaking. Well I am hardly speaking, I don’t think he even knows I am pissed off. The elevator opens and we are on the convention floors of the hotel where there is a ballroom dancing competition. There are tables selling everything from jewelry to ball gowns, tiaras to tights. Every guy looked like a young Liberace dressed in oh-so-tight pants that left nothing to the imagination and showed their bulging...biceps? And the women had on more makeup than the gown mannequins. We headed for the nearest EXIT sign we could find. Through each EXIT door came another hallway, with another set of sale items, more Liberaces and several prancing high-heeled women. They sailed passed us practicing their passé dobles and Pechangas. I felt like Alice in Wonderland after falling in the rabbit hole with Twiddle Dee pulling up the rear. We finally reached a door that let us out into the 2nd floor lobby of the hotel. We headed for the escalator which of course was not working so we walked down the steepest and longest flight of stairs I have been on since I packed on these last 20 pounds. Who over tells you that going down isn't as hard as going up has never been on this gravity defying escalator from hell.
We walked into the restaurant and was instantly greeted by a hostess, a host, a waiter, three bus boys and a man in a suit, presumably the maitre d. We were shown our table, handed a menu and asked if we had ever been there before. They lit our little pig lantern and adjusted it to a romantic hue. (Of course I couldn’t see a damn thing since my gradient eyeglass lenses take forever to lighten in the darkness.) I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why the little lamp on the table was a pig, when there wasn’t a damn pork product on the menu. A cow I would understand, the pig...not so much. I found out later it has graced their tables since the first restaurant opened in 1978 and for $80 I could have my own pig light. Gonna pass, maybe next time. Every one of the wait staff that walked by said hello and asked us how we were doing? Every one. Every friggin' one.
A waiter that we hadn't seen yet or been greeted by came to our table pushing a cart full of steaks. Each was a different size and cut and I dare say, price. As the waiter held up each wrapped steak and described its cut and aging temperature, all I could think of was that I had a McDonalds Snack Wrap for lunch. We ordered drinks. We ordered salads. We ordered steak, a potatoe and creamed spinach for two. (insert any joke you‘d like here) The house Merlot was wonderful and served in an oversized wine glass which made me feel like Alice again. (one glass makes you larger…. one glass makes you small) The waitress anxiously, although not patiently, waited for me to open my present which my husband had put on the table next to the flaming pig lamp. He ordered the Porterhouse which looked like something Fred and Wilma would be grillin’ up, hanging off the plate on two sides. Mine was the ‘smaller’ Ribeye cut which was still about six servings on the Weight Watcher menu that I have long discarded. Deliciously cooked to perfection. The potatoes were steak fries and any sort of healthy preference in spinach was thwarted by the creamed part of that recipe. Full, and in pain, we ordered coffee and dessert. Upside-down apple pie Haagen Daz a-la-mode. Tell me you could have resisted that???
I opened my gift. A beautiful necklace that has the infinity symbol on it which leads me to believe he is either telling me we will be together forever or there is an Infiniti QX45 parked outside for me. SURPRISE!…nope, we’ll be together forever.
The coffee came. The irresistible and yet unfinished desert came. The bill came. A friend gave us a $100 gift card to Morton’s some time ago and we just got the opportunity to use it. And we only had to add $145. Two people, two drinks, two steaks, two hundred forty five dollars…tip included. The good news is they validated the parking ticket and therefore it only cost $12 to park in the hotel lot.
The Broadway show we went to was courtesy of one of my daughter’s friends who bought them years ago for someone who couldn’t go. With a few phone calls the tickets got traded in for anniversary seats. Thank you Lisa…both of you! Jersey Boys was so terrific and the seats were so good that I didn’t even mind the chatty little oriental girl next to me or the fact that she sang along way off tune…Shelli, Shelli baby…..!
Happy 36 years to us, and to another 36! (did I really just say that?)
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