The Valentine's Day I Never Thought I'd Want

This Valentine's Day, there will be no candlelit dinner, no tiny wrapped boxes extended in the palm of a hand, probably no bouquet of roses. Hell, there won't even be the traditional heart-shaped box of chocolates I usually get (and love) from the Rite-Aid on the corner.  I mean, David may bring them, but there's be no slim possibility of me ingesting them since I've been in the throes of a nasty stomach virus for the past three days.

Which is totally fine by me. I like the candlelit dinners and presents and nights in a hotel - in fact, I love them. But what I got for Valentine's Day this year was so much better than a soak in a fancy jacuzzi and a pair of earrings. I got trash cans to collect vomit rushed over to me whenever necessary. I got Tylenol slipped into my hand and glasses of water to swallow it, full of ice just the way I like it. I got someone to take care of the kids, all three of those wild, raving lunatics - to feed them dinner and put them to bed, and stay up with them when they wouldn't go to sleep, and wake up with them when they had nightmares and take the baby into the bathroom to steam-treat her cold when she couldn't fall back asleep at 2am. I got someone to take the kids to school in the morning and tell my Mommy friends I was sick and I could use a phone call. And then last night, I had it all over again, and better yet, a warm body to curl up with when I was achy. Despite the fact that I'm about as alluring as Typhoid Mary, the man did not pull away.

That is fucking love.

Put that on a Hallmark card.

"Because while I was puking my guts out over the toilet, naked, and I called for a trash can, you brought me one, and when you asked, "What do you need a trash can for?" and I said "PLEASE! JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!" you did, without any further investigation. Because of this and more, you are my Valentine."

It may not be what you dream of when you're young, but when you're young you're also mostly an idiot and don't know anything but what you see in movies. Its what I dream of now.

Happy Valentine's Day. May yours be vomit-free but still full of tender devotion.

The Youth

In celebration of my birthday, David and I had a night away, courtesy of my parents. In the midst of our romantic stay-cation, we caught a film, a little romantic indie called Like Crazy.When we left the movie, I told David, "Get ready to listen to an hour-long rant about the state of youth." I pretty much tired of my own rant after five minutes but the gist of it was basically that young people today have no stinking stamina or patience. The movie, which was well-acted and looked good and all that, is about a pair of recent college grads who fall in love - he's a California-born furniture designer and she's a journalist from London. They spend an idyllic summer together and then she readies to go back to England to get another visa so she can come back. But then she decides, oh screw it, I'll just stay here, overstay my visa and I'm sure it'll be OK. Of course, they're fucked from that point on -- relegated to live on separate continents. Except, not really. Because though the girl's got to stay in England, there's absolutely no reason whatsoever the guy can't move to London with her. No reason they can't stay on separate continents and just work it the hell out for a while. Or, I guess, there is a reason, and that being . . . they have no stamina and patience.

I went on for a while about how I blame texting and twitter and the like for making young people so incapable of a love worth fighting for. Man, I'm an old geezer.

Guess who just went on a weekend trip to ICELAND??

ME, people! Me and my husband. The morale of this story is: never give up on your dreams. Or, alternately: don't let a little emergency appendectomy stop your fun.

We were supposed to go in early June but instead, had a staycation in the hospital. I can now definitively say that I prefer Iceland.

I got the whole Iceland idea in my head a few months ago, when I realized, suddenly, that David and I haven't been on a real, plane-ride-involved, romantic getaway since Seconda was a baby and I pumped my breasts all over Mexico. I realized that since I'm not lactating now, it might be considerably more enjoyable to have an international escapade. Then I realized that my sister is having her third baby in a few months. This gave me the kick in the pants I needed.

"We need to book a vacation immediately, "I told David, "Before my sister has her baby and uses up the family's babysitting reserve. My parents won't be able to watch our kids when they have to help her. This is ON."

Our requirements were:

Overseas.
Cheap airfare.
A place where we'd see something seriously fucking amazing.

All of which added up to Iceland.

The kids were jazzed because I read them bit of our travel book, about how Icelandic people tend to believe in supernatural creatures like trolls, gnomes, fairies, and how they eat puffin and rotten shark meat and horse steak.

"What's a puffin?" Sec asked.

"Like a penguin," I repiled.

"AHHHH! MOMMY"S GOING TO EAT A PENGUIN!" she shrieked. And then: "Bring back one for me to eat, too, OK Mommy?"

Sec was also very taken by the photo of a man and a woman standing in the steaming geothermal spas near Reykjavik called the Blue Lagoon.

"Is that going to be you and Daddy?"

"Yes," I said, "Daddy and I are going to go to the Blue Lagoon and kiss, just like that."

"But aren't you going to be scared to go inside the Black Lagoon?" she asked, "What if there's a crocodile in there?"

"I think we'll skip the Black Lagoon and just go to the Blue one" I said, "I don't think the swamp creature likes that one."

The funniest part about the trip is that my grandmother can't figure out where the hell we went since neither of us knows the Italian word for Iceland.

"Where you going?" she asked, "Irlandia?"

"No, that's Ireland," I said, "We are going to Iceland."

"Island? What kinda island?"

"No, not an island. ICE-land. La terra di ghiaccio."

"Oh my God -- you going to ALASKA?"


So there you have it, folks. We came, we saw, we did not eat rotten shark meat. More details to come when I've recuperated from my terribly thrilling, oh-so-jetsetter-y intercontinental travel.

Happy Valentine’s Day: musings on Date Night Disasters

You’d think that as a harried parent with no time for myself, I’d just be so grateful to have a chance to catch up with my husband that I wouldn’t care in the slightest where or how that happened. Interestingly, the fact that we rarely have the chance to get out has had the opposite effect, making me even more choosy about the particulars. This wouldn’t be a problem except that David feels exactly the same way and our preferences are diametrically opposed to each other.

David ‘s ideal night out takes place in a pub, or more precisely, a gastro-pub, where microbrews abound and well-reputed cuts of steak are served up rare. He likes there to be loud music involved. After a loud meal of beer and beef, he’d like to proceed to an art film, ideally in another language or in English, but with British accents so thick it might as well be another language. If it is not subtitled, or British, he’d like it to be science fiction or scary or four hours long.

My ideal night out takes place in a candle-lit restaurant with fantastic chandeliers overhead and coat check. Crusty bread served hot is non-negotiable and olives, pickles or olive oil with vinegar should accompany it. There should be wine, ideally sparkling. There should be music, but only enough to buffer the sound of what the couple sitting next to me are fighting about. It should be popular and bustling but not so much that I have to wait over thirty minutes. Goat cheese must be a core ingredient on at least one appetizer and chocolate ganache should be featured on at least one dessert.

Movie selections should be two hours or less, ideally featuring actors up for an Oscar, They can be tragic but always with an uplifting ending. If anyone has sex, they should be good-looking. No sci fi, horror, suspense, or subtitles, apart form Almodovar or movies featuring that hot young actor Gael Garcia. No movies where children get kidnapped, sick or worse. No movies where anything takes place in the future.

As you see, it is nearly impossible for David and I to settle on a night out which satisfies both our needs. Sometimes we just stay in, if you get my meaning, and that works well, but then we get hungry and then we’re back to square one.

A few weeks ago, we had a disastrous date which involved dinner at Jimmy’s No. 43, on 8th Street, which was mobbed with NYU students shouting about inane things and jostling me as I waited FORTY FIVE FREAKING minutes for a table. Then we saw the new Mike Leigh movie, Another Year, which rendered me miserable and melancholy all night. First of all, how many freaking cups of tea can a person drink? And how many cups of tea am I, a paying moviegover, expecting to WATCH someone drink? I wonder, too, if Mike Leigh’s intent as a film maker is to have his audience off themselves upon leaving the theater? Why else would he create a movie in which nothing funny, promising or even generally positive happens? If I am going to watch people sink into abject misery and loneliness for two hours, they’d better be gorgeous Hollywood types, otherwise the whole thing is just too unbearable.

This is what I told David on the way home from date night.

“Next time, you choose EVERYTHING,” he grumbled.

So I did, and for our early Valentine’s Day celebration, we went to Buttermilk Channel, where you get four different kind of pickles and a chocolate pecan pie sundae in addition to a kick-ass rib eye and chocolate stouts for my beer-and-beef beau-hunk of a husband. Then we saw the King’s Speech where I could understand every single word and I only counted TWO kettles of tea being made. Brilliant underdog overcomes adversity! Now that’s a movie I can get behind, especially when it’s so well-acted I don’t have to feel guilty about being so irredeemably mainstream. Even David had to concede he felt pretty damn cheerful when the credits rolled.

And since my parents took the kids overnight, we got to sleep in until a delicious 9am the next morning and then we got to stay in bed til, oh, about half past ten.

I’m sure it won’t happen every year, but it was one Valentine’s Day celebration sans argument which is enough of a present for me. That, and the heart-shaped box of chocolates I sincerely hope David is bringing home for me.

Dinner and a movie

David and I have a decent track record of making it out for dinner together and an equally respectable one for sneaking out to a movie sans kids. But dinner AND a movie, well, now you’re talking three, four hours of adult evening entertainment and there are few people who can withstand the force of our children for that long, even when we pay them. So the only time we are able to score dinner and a movie is when we get my parents to take the kids overnight – which is precisely what we did on Friday.

Dinner at Resto, this delicious Belgian place that had the impressive ability to please David (Belgian beer! burgers!) and me (fancy sauces for my pommes frites! Wafels with chocolate sauce!). Plus it was restaurant week which is perhaps my favorite New York holiday ever, so three course ran us $35.

Movie was Inception, in IMAX. The great thing about when I see movies nowadays is that whereas before I used to hear all the buzz and read movie reviews and know what to expect, these days I don’t know jack. Which means when we’re choosing a movie David gives me a two-sentence sum-up, mentioning names of stars or directors, and the basic premise (we do get into trouble sometimes since David often has a different read of movies than I do; take, for example, his description of American Psycho as “not scary, no, comedic in a suspenseful way!”) Now, I show up to movies ready to be surprised. This is great because I don’t ever get disappointed when a movie doesn’t live up to its hype.

Consequently, I go to Inception, and I’m like, “Whoa, cool. It’s a dream within a dream!” and then I got to have my mind blown when it was actually a dream within a ream within a dream within a dream. I didn’t love it the way I did Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind but I give it major kudos for making some pretty thought-provoking existential ideas very mainstream and accessible, I did leave thinking however that the movie might cause an overly thoughtful or sensitive person to go straight to the looney bin. The subtitle could be, “Inception: recipe for insanity.” I will, for instance, never mention the idea to Primo, who frequently wonders aloud, while eating dinner or watching TV if he is, in fact, dreaming. Of course, there is the distinct possibility that he’s right and I’m the one who’s dreaming right now. Maybe in my waking life, I’m an accountant living in the Tulsa and this dream of blogging and drinking coffee in Brooklyn, is just mind-blowingly exciting.

No more romantic getaways, please

You couldn’t pay me to go on a romantic getaway with my husband. No way. Not happening. And I’ll tell you precisely why:

Every single time we try one of these weekend getaways, one of us falls terribly ill.

Not just a cold or a bad headache or some pre-menstrual cramps but a stomach flu or mysterious raging fevers. And this weekend it happened AGAIN. This makes the fourth of fifth time in the past year or two.

David and I drove up to the Hudson Valley to attend the wedding of my dear friend Amelia, whose letters from Port au Prince I posted after the earthquake. Amelia kindly invited the children to the wedding and I kindly declined to take them. The last wedding they went to, my cousin’s, was such an ordeal we’ll never forget it. Apparently, neither will my cousin. Last year she told me the clearest memory she has of her wedding ceremony was Primo yelling, “I DON’T WANT TO GO TO THE CAR!!!!!” as David dragged him kicking and screaming down the aisle, after he had a tantrum during the wedding vows. So we don’t take our kids to weddings, if at all possible. Plus, since our own anniversary is coming up we thought we’d make a romantic weekend of it, have some steamy loving in the Courtyard Marriot. Cue Marvin Gaye.

On the drive up, I had definite presentiments of illness. Scratchy throat, growing feeling of weakness. By the time we reached Poughkeepsie, I called Amelia to let her know we couldn’t make it over to her parents’ house forthe pre-wedding pizza party. I was feverish, shaking, seriously ailing.

And so it was that our first romantic night was spent with me shivering in the hotel bed watching The Real Housewives of New York City (OMG my new favorite show, I was loving it, though maybe it was the fever) while David drove up and down the highway looking for Tylenol, cough drops and a pair of pajamas, since I’d neglected to pack them and a sick person needs her pajamas.

Then we ate hamburgers from the diner next door in our bed while I moaned in misery.

In the middle of the night, the chills came. I despise the chills. There is little worse than the feeling that your blood is freezing in your veins. I hobbled around the hotel room in search of more blankets. There were none. I called the front desk and was sent to voice mail. SO helpful. Then I put on my sweater, David’s fleece jacket AND my own jacket, and laid all the towels from the bathroom on top of me, under the blanket.

Are you getting a picture of the hot loving? The R and R? The marital renewal??

Raw suckage, I tell you.

Next morning, I propped myself up, Weekend at Bernies style, and survived the wedding. It was a beautiful wedding and I cried like I was making French onion soup. By 5pm I was back in the hotel bed, shivering and moaning. Repeat Friday night feverish festivities.

Sunday morning, though, we received an EXTRA treat. David and I were roused by a mindblowing, earsplitting fire alarm going off. The alarm was going off in our room as well as in the halls and everyone else’s room in the hotel. I can not possibly describe how loud the fucking thing was except it reminded me of those devices hardware stores sell which emit sounds at a frequency that mice hate to keep the vermin from your house (don’t work, by the way, our mice just frolicked around them). So we stumbled around throwing our belonging in our bag, half-mad from the roar of the alarm, tripping over bottles of Tylenol.

I feel REJEUVENATED; let me tell you, after that weekend away.

Maybe on our next romantic getaway, we can both get root canals.

R & R & R

David and I haven’t had a night away from the kids since last winter and after the rigors of buying an apartment and moving and starting both kids in new schools, we’ve been pining for some R and R, and hey, an extra R for romance wouldn’t hurt. So we convinced my parents to take their darling grandchildren for the weekend.

On Friday, we loaded them into my parents’ car with accompanying loveys and favorite bedtime books and then we wasted no time and proceeded directly to Jack the Horse Tavern for dinner by candle light and some stimulating argument. Yes, David and I find that whenever we have some alone time, the very first thing we must get out of the way is a big ole’ fight. There’s no way to bypass the argument and take a shortcut directly to intimacy and affection – we just have to fight a bit and then we’ll be as happy as honeymooner for the rest of the weekend.

One getaway, we treated ourselves to a two hour argument of private versus public school, just for the sake of fighting since we agree public school is best for our kids and also, our only choice. Another time we argued all night about why he was facebook friends with his highschool girlfriend and how she fact that she wrote emails from her husband’s account meant, to my eyes, that she was oppressed and lacking a self separate from her identity as wife and mother.

This weekend, we didn’t focus on one particular subject. I just had a glass of prosecco which got me in a fighting mood – that’s the effect alcohol has on me these days – and then I acted the part of a miserable magpie for the rest of the night, including during the performance of The New Electric Ballroom at St. Ann’s Warehouse, which my sweet husband had gotten tickets for

“Oh God, I hope this isn’t another piece of depressing theater,’ I moaned.

“Well, its Irish drama,” replied David, “So chances are, yes.”

My single sentence sum-up: One of the most brilliant scripts I’ve heard in a long time, impeccably performed and so freaking dismal and bleak you want to bang your head on a brick wall as soon as its over just to feel some relief.

David and I come back to our blissfully quiet apartment and though it seemed I would pass out instantly from the glass of prosecco I was not about to let the evening pass us by without some romance. So I put on my most raggedy-ass baggy fleece PJS, threw myself face down on the couch and lay motionless for five minutes to work up the energy and then I said, with my face still buried in a couch cushion: Wanna have sex?”

David laughed: “Are you joking?”

You shouldn’t ask a mean drunk such a question: “I don’t know WHY you are LAUGHING,” I replied, “You should be jumping for JOY!”

“You’re lying facedown on the couch like a person in a coma,” he countered.

“Oh so I’m supposed to SEDUCE you now?” I shrieked the picture of allure.

I persuaded him to my position, which was a good thing because shortly afterwards the man fell ill. Gastrointestinal kind of ill. By the next morning, he was fully in the throws of a nasty stomach bug. So no trip to the Berkshires as planned.

But hey, who needs the Berkshire’s stunning fall foliage when you can clean your apartment and pay bill all day while your husband moans on the sofa and watched Real World marathons?

“I can’t believe you’re sick now and we can’t have another romantic evening,” I complained.
“You call that a romantic evening?” David said.

“Well, I was only so mean because I thought I had a second night to make it up to you!” I reasoned.

“Let that be a lesson to you,” he offered, none too kindly.

When we called to check in with my parents, they told us my grandmother and Primo were both upchucking, too. Nothing like thinking of your child vomiting in someone else's bathroom to make you feel guilty and awful.

But by Saturday night, David was on the mend so I dragged him to see a movie with me – New York, I Love You. Here’s my single sentence sum-up of that one:

Someone should have forced most of the directors to stretch themselves a bit and find new devices, beyond the quintessential lighting of the cigarette, for characters who are strangers to meet: say, waiting for the bus or the funicular or the light to change, riding the subway or an elevator, serving on jury duty, getting a hot dog from the vendor. Leave the compulsive cigarette lighting to the Parisians.

But it did put us in the mood for baguettes and coffee in a bowl, so Sunday morning, with David fully recovered, we brunched at a nearby Pain Quotidian and after a decent night’s sleep (would have been better had Omaha steaks not called at 9am) and no alcohol anywhere in sight, we chatted merrily and cozies up.

Mission R & R & R accomplished. By hook or by crook, baby.