Ok, imagine this: It’s Valentine’s Day. You’ve been standing in front of the bathroom mirror in your bath robe for the last hour and that one piece of hair just won’t do what you want it to. You’ve emptied half the bottle of hairspray on it and yet it stands at attention like an Army soldier. Your amazing sweetheart pokes his head around the door frame and asks, “How much longer, sweetie?” You give him that look, yes, you know the one. The same look he gets when the kids have been wild hooligans all day and he walks in the door and cheerfully asks, “How was your day?”
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After you finally give up on the hair and decide to pretend it’s supposed to be like that, you find yourself in front of the closet with two or three outfits discarded on the bed. “Our reservation is in twenty minutes, honey.” You pick the outfit you think will show of the least amount of your bulgy tummy, or your flabby thighs or whatever (those are my big problem spots). You head out the door with hurried instructions to the baby sitter.
You get to the restaurant and are told that even with your reservation it’s a 45 minute wait. You finally get your table, the waitress takes forever to take your order. Your food takes even longer to come out. It’s a little tepid. And your drink is empty and the waitress is nowhere to be seen. Again.
Ok, now that would be a less than ideal night, yeah? And don’t get me wrong, Valentine’s dinner isn’t assuredly going to turn out that way. But, with the crazy hectic turmoil that exists in restaurants on Valentine’s Day, you probably will wait longer than normal. Your hair may or may not be as stubborn as mine. And it always seems, without fail, when you need that perfect outfit, it’s nowhere to be found.
So, this is the first in a little mini series of date ideas that aren’t the cliche dinner and a movie with flowers and candy. My Mr Right and I got married six days before Valentine’s Day. At first, I thought we were crazy. But wait, we get our special day 6 days before everyone else. When the flowers are still looking great (before they are just trying to get rid of them all), the chocolates are incredibly easy to find, hotel rooms are usually still at a decent price, restaurants aren’t overly crowded. All that stuff most people have to wait six more days for, I don’t. But, it’s a real strain to try and make a big deal out of Valentine’s Day, too. So, this is what we do. We celebrate big on our anniversary, and then do something fun for the Day of Love.
Our first Valentine’s Day together, we’d been married six days, less than a week. My Mr Right had taken some time off work so we could get our house rearranged. Let’s just say those days were less than wedded bliss. We were so unaccustomed to each other that we fought about everything, I mean EVERYTHING. I knew we needed something fun, easy, and relaxing. Not a big, fancy dinner. So, I came up with a Book Store Date. I have seen some of these around the internet, but we did ours different. All of the “book store dates” I saw on the internet told you to split up… What? Aren’t you supposed to be together on a date? So, I tweaked it. By the way, you can get your own kit in my Etsy Shoppe.
This is what we did:
I made up a list of things you can find in a book store. Then we went down to the local Borders. We lived in a small town… We took our list and worked down each item. It was fun, informative and we didn’t fight the whole time. Besides, I think we saw about three other people the whole hour and a half that we were there (that’s because they were all at the Red Lobster across the street). And, that included the cashier!
Some of the things on our list included:
- Read a children’s book together.
- Look through a recipe book together and point out ones you’d like to try.
- Look at a Baby Name Book together and see where the discussion goes.
It was a ton of fun and it was exactly what we needed to stop all our bickering. We worked so well together after that! Sometimes, you need to remember to “stop and smell the roses”. One of my favorite quotes is “Men don’t quit playing because they grow old, they grow old because they quit playing.” ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes.
