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i’m pretty much going to throw myself under the bus with this, but after all the recent talk about openness and transparency, i figure it’s time to man up and be honest about valentine’s day for the elder farra couple.
we’re not huge valentine’s day freaks, but we always give each other gifts and go out for a special dinner. after having done this over 40 times through the years, you’d think we would have this down.
in my best lee corso voice…“not so fast, my friend.”
it started to unravel thursday night. we went out looking at some new tennis shoes for me. my old, broken down trainers had become useless…and $20 target specials are only good for sunday mornings. anyway, i ended up spending way more on new shoes than i have in years…with wanda’s encouragement.
on the way out, wanda utters the romantic words every husband wants to hear, “i guess these will be your valentine’s present from me.”
we decided to go out reciprocating on friday night and let wanda pick out a new outfit for her valentine’s present. not successful. look…we have had many years of surprise valentine’s presents. we both agreed it wasn’t necessary this year. don’t throw stones. there’s still romance in our relationship. we just made a pragmatically unromantic decision about gifts this year. we still had dinner on monday night to look forward to…
so this evening, we had the opportunity to take care of the great holden. even though i already knew the answer, i gave wanda a call and asked her if she could think of a better valentine’s gift than to hold her grandson for a few hours. she tried to make it out to be a difficult decision…“mmmm, a romantic dinner with mikey…or playing with holden? let’s see…which one should i choose?” yeah. it was a really difficult decision.
so valentine’s day night was spent taking holden to sam’s club for his favorite 4-berry sundae
and people-watching…and then dinner at fuzzy’s tacos…complete with two dude’s playing some live country music in the corner…and meeting up for an awesome time with the woman who gave birth to the great holden (while daddy was working to buy milk, as holden likes to say…).
after a feast of fish tacos, we said goodbye to our posterity…and headed to home depot and bought a brand new, 3/4 horsepower garbage disposal. as logan would say, the moment was “freakin’ romantic”.
the marriage tuesday lesson? when you invest years and years of love and romance and commitment building and promise keeping and serving and giving and believing and protecting the investment we made years ago…a garbage disposal can be way better than box of chocolates.
i love valentine’s day. how about you?
wanda’s asleep beside me right now in our recliner loveseat, so i’m not asking her permission to post this picture. it’s my all-time favorite picture of her. 1971…17 years old…at the end of our first year of dating. yeah, she was…and still is…my valentine.
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