The problem is that the man is commitment phobic about reservations.   He was sure there wouldn’t be a problem.  I was sure there would.

He must have thought better of it that afternoon because he began calling for a reservation while he was out on his walk.  It wasn’t as easy as he thought.

Eventually he e-mailed me a Valentine’s Day Menu from a new restaurant we haven’t tried. He said they had two reservations left–one at 5 PM and one at 10 PM.  Since he didn’t want to have to set the alarm clock to guarantee we’d be awake for the 10 PM one, he’d opted for the one at 5.

Before we left the house, he hastily e-mailed our three guys to share the wisdom he had gleaned from his experience:

Date: February 14, 2012 4:28:54 PM EST

Subject: Learn from the master

When taking the wife out for a fancy Valentine Dinner, don’t wait until the day itself to make reservations.If you do your choices are:
1. 5:00
2. After 9:00
3. 10:00

We’re leaving now.

The restaurant was wonderful– perfect, in fact–and we’ll definitely return.  We ordered from the Valentine’s Day Menu, so haven’t even tried the regular menu yet.  They have at least 15 more flavors of gelato I’d like to try.  DB had espresso, I tried the salted caramel.

We were already in bed, moaning that we’d eaten too much, by 10 PM.

My brother eats out often, since he is on the road a lot and he checks out the local restaurants in the towns he visits.  He’s pretty much of a health nut, so I’m not sure I believe some of the things he claims to have eaten.

For instance, even though he once sent a photo as proof, I’m none too sure he’s ever actually eaten a collard sandwich.   However, he is the one who hooked Dearly Beloved and me on Hatteras Clam Chowder.  I tried it after BroJoe told me he eats it “all the time.”   Even our grandsons like it.  (I don’t know if that’s how he fixes it–I found this recipe online and liked it.  I ignored the ones that called for fresh clams because I didn’t want to chop them.)

But back to Valentine’s….  Just after Valentine’s Day,  BroJoe e-mailed a photo of a menu.

I am so-o-o-o hoping that this is not the place he took his Valentine.

In situations like this, the question arises… What would Betty Say?  Lo and behold, the answer came in today’s e-mail:

(Perhaps. she wrote mushily, it’s because Dearly Beloved stole hers.♥)

Although I enjoy irises,  I’m not a fan of their cactus-like leaves after they bloom. The plants with heart-shaped leaves in our yard may have insignificant flowers, but oh, those leaves!

HEART-SHAPED LEAVES

ROCK HEARTS are treasures to find.  I have one I lugged back from Arizona, but it must be camera-shy because I couldn’t find it today.  However, my friend Dirt Woman supplied me with a photo of a rock heart she found.  It looks like chocolate, I think.  (The caladium leaf above was also one of hers.)

SAND HEART, compliments of DB.

I

In a dark corner of our back yard, I was delighted to discover this surprising heart:

MOSS HEART

Moss Hart won 1937 Pulitzer (Drama) for The Man Who Came to Dinner

OOPS!  Wrong picture.  Let me try again.

MOSS HEART:

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.
Oscar Wilde

The weather in Europe has made the news here because of the awful cold.   My British friend says they’re getting a surprising dose of winter weather in England.

Do you remember the Burns Night Supper post?   The haggis and Scotch evening traditionally held on the occasion of the Scottish poet Robert Burns’ January 25 birthday?  I had been so interested in it and asked so many questions that my friend shared some photos of the evening.

The setting in her “15th century straw house” looks just as lovely as I’d imagined.

I thought this menu was especially clever:

I’d take a Spoiler, but leave out the Scotch.  Then again, were I eating haggis, I might need the Scotch.

Since I’d also been curious as to what her guests would wear on such an occasion, she obliged by sending these photos, also.

She did say, however, that some just don’t have the figure for kilts.  I agree!

Last week when Dearly Beloved was out somewhere, I sent him three (he says four) e-mails.  Let me point out that (a) I don’t text and (b) if I wanted to tell him something, I’d call him.  

The e-mails were something I thought he’d be interested in at some point and might not see otherwise.  I didn’t expect him to look at them right at that moment.

For reasons I don’t understand, DB drives with his iPhone in his pants pocket. He keeps it set on vibrate.  That means that whenever someone attempts to communicate with him, it emits a quick noise like someone sat on a whoopee cushion and simultaneously sets off a buzz in his britches.

I suppose that’s hard to ignore.

Soooo. . . when he returned home after my three–or four–vibrations, he said, “Don’t send me any more of those chain e-mail Forwards crap” or something to that effect.

Just for the record, that is not what I sent him.  I detest chain e-mails.  Perhaps, I suggested, he had not examined them closely before asking me not to send them.  We discussed this in some detail and that may be what prompted him to impart his wisdom to his son and sons-in-law with this e-mail:

Subject: Learn from the master

Maintain a moderate tone when telling the wife not to send you any more political links or chain emails.

 

For example don’t say “DON’T SEND ME ANY MORE OF THIS ####!!!

 

Sent from my iPhone

This morning I did not forward this delightful video to him, but after he saw me laughing, he watched it on my computer and soon his face broke into a big grin, too.  Along with 2,000,000 other people, Elder Dude found it worth watching.  So very wise of him!

“http://“>

The damnsquirrels are casting too many shadows in our yard.

Does it count that I can see my shadow?

We don’t need Phil around here.

We have Jack.

loves cats (these two in particular) and fitness classes, so it’s no surprise that she found this delightful video.

Even a catless couch potato will enjoy this one.

You can bet it wasn’t an exercise freak who invented power steering. - Garfield

My grandsons fancy me a “sew-er” and line up any mending when they know I’m coming.  This time, a large stuffed animal, its leg dangling, needed surgery.  Its owner, Little Elmo, was delighted at the outcome.   Being a hero to a five-year-old is a wonderful, smoochy delight.

My sewing skills are pretty much confined to mending because of lack of talent.  It’s the buttonholes that foil me.  When I used to make dresses for myself, I’d sew in snaps and put buttons over them so that I wouldn’t have to deal with buttonholes.  I don’t trust that method any more.  Either snaps aren’t what they used to be or more of me is expandable.  One good sneeze out in public could get me arrested.

Dearly Beloved has a pair of jeans he finds especially comfortable and he has put my mending skills to the test.  One knee split long ago and I mended it.  Sometime later, he asked me to do it again.  This time, he asked would I use a patch.

The jeans belong in the garbage.  In the past, with his other “favorite jeans,” I’ve sewn patches inside the knee and then stitched the outside together so that it wouldn’t show.  Not this time.

Wiser these days, I have come to realize that what constitutes a “favorite pair” is any that  Mr. Non-shopper does not have to go out and buy for himself.  The ones he has are some the kids have given him over the years.  The current favs have strings hanging from the bottom and threadbare sections in potentially embarrassing spots, though I doubt he’d be arrested.

I rifled through my scraps and came up with a riotous fabric from some project, as well as some dark denim patches that had a ten-cent price tag on them and are surely older than me.  With these props, I “fixed” the jeans, believing that my efforts would speed along the decent burial they deserve.  

The rear has more of the denim patches dotting the seat.

Side note:  Whenever he used to receive an oddball article of clothing as a gift (usually from his mother who couldn’t keep her sons’ sizes or preferences straight) he would tell the children that “this will be something good to wear by the fire.”  

I thought that at best, these would be relegated to fireside status.

Last weekend when we were getting ready to go to Georgia, he put on the jeans, but I thought it was while he was packing the car and that he planned to change for the drive.

Oh, no.  He wanted to “show these babies off to the boys” when he met them at the bus stop that afternoon.  That meant he also wore them inside when we stopped for lunch someplace in South Carolina.

Yesterday he had his car inspected.  I didn’t see him when he left, but he returned– wearing them.

He wears them on walks,  admitting that he does get some odd looks and funny smiles.  He says they’re thinking, “Now there’s a guy who’s comfortable in his own skin.”  

I doubt that.

He completes his look with a Rastafarian belt which doesn’t match the patches, but does go well with the Bob Marley music on his iPod.  Mainly, it holds up his pants since his waist has shrunk from all that walking.

He has the jeans on again today.  This time he has matched the patch by wearing a red, white, and blue plaid shirt.

To mix my metaphors, I have decided that if you can’t beat ‘em, fight fire with fire.  I have just the equipment. . . my red sweatpants, which he detests.  I found them at the back of a closet shelf.  I’m not sure how long I’ll have to wear them before he retires those ratty-looking jeans.

I’ve heard so much bull on the televised campaign trail that I do have a lingering concern about these red sweatpants.

Just to be on the safe side, I won’t go near any cow pastures.

The print on her e-mail was small and I read it as B-U-M-S night supper.  Her menu– Cullen Skink soup, haggis, bashed neaps and taties– didn’t disabuse me of that notion until I googled the various dishes to see what they were.  Turns out it’s a BURNS Night Supper to commemorate the birthdate of beloved Scottish poet Robert Burns.  His admirers have been holding these suppers for over 200 years, but don’t feel too bad if you have never attended one.  Meal-wise, you haven’t missed much; they serve the same thing every year.

As for the haggis, several of the websites I visited advised one to “eat it, don’t think about what’s in it.”  Easier said than done, I imagine, since haggis consists of sheep’s offal, tripe, suet, oatmeal, and spices cooked in a sheep’s stomach.  Traditionally it’s boiled, but I found baked and even deep-fried recipes… as if the cooking method is what is troubling about the dish.

I don’t think A-1, Heinz 57, or catsup are up to the challenge either.

Having a Burns Night Supper without haggis would probably be worse than having a wiener roast without hot dogs.  After all, has anyone penned an eight-verse ode to a weenie.  (Perhaps it is worth mentioning that Burns also wrote six verses in Address to a Toothache, so an appropriate excuse for not eating the haggis might be that you are in need of a root canal.)

Yesterday’s e-mail from my friend sounded a bit anxious.  Some of her guests are “finding all kinds of excuses” not to eat haggis, including one who claims an allergy to onions.  My friend doesn’t understand it.  She said,  ”We used to boil up most of that stuff for our dogs and they seemed to like it.”

The neaps and taties–turnips or rutabagas and potatoes–sound divine by comparison.  I asked whether she’d considered one of the recipes out there for vegetarian haggis, but she fears flipping Robbie in his grave with the vegetarian substitution.  You can see why.  The man was definitely a carnivore.   Here’s his Selkirk Grace which is always recited at the suppers:

Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it;
But we hae meat and we can eat,
And sae the Lord be thankit.

Even if there is not be a bagpiper in the group, Burns’ music should be a part of the evening and it always ends with Auld Lang Syne, which Burns loved, even if he didn’t write it.  Male guests wear kilts; it’s definitely a tartan night.  I’m not sure about the women.  How about something in a red, red rosy color?

DB was grateful for your compliments and your comments about starting a blog of his own, but I can’t imagine him ever wanting to do so.   His writing these days is mostly in the form of e-mails to family.

His notes to our son and sons-in-law and their responses can sometimes be hilarious to me when he shares them, even though I don’t speak their language.  Phrases and wisdom from The Big Lebowski are common, but repetitive, since there is little quotable material from that movie which isn’t laced with f-bombs.  Such pithy statements  as this aggression will not stand, man… special lady… dabbling in pacifism… adult beverages… the dude abides… and most certainly, the concerns about peeing on the rug. Peeing on the rug was an act of aggression in the movie.

I feel responsible for their obsession, since I was the one who spotted the review of the movie about 14 years ago and thought it was something DB might enjoy.  I remember walking out of the Minneapolis theater with an apology for selecting such an awful movie on my lips when DB, gushed something like, “That was one of the best movies I’ve ever seen!  I can’t wait to tell the guys (son and SILs) about it.“

The movie, written and produced by the Coen Brothers, is supposedly based on Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep.  Lebowski became a cult favorite long after it was released and spawned books and blogs about it. There’s Duderonomy,  a Dudespaper, and even Dude conventions.   Thankfully, DB has not gone that route, but Lebowski still has a place of honor in our house.

Some of DB’s notes are about retirement, as in, “I’m having an adult beverage and watching basketball.  How’s work today?”  He also imparts wisdom on marriage and life in general.

Here’s one he shared with me last week:

Subject: Learn from the Master

Tomorrow is the wife’s birthday.  She’ll be 51.

I’ve made a few bad choices on her presents over the years.  The crockpot year, Newark Airport gift shop picture (which she hung over the toilet), and there’ve been others.

This year I’ve hired someone to clean the outside windows, rather than me.  They’ll be here Monday.

She’ll be thrilled.  I’ll give you a report.

          Elder dude

I was thrilled, (a) that the windows were going to be cleaned and (b) that DB wasn’t going to get on that ladder himself.  It was raining last Monday, so the window washer didn’t come.  Looks like this Monday wasn’t good for him either.  Still, if it keeps DB off that ladder, I’m willing to wait.

In the meantime, it’s our inside windows that are looking worse every day.  They’re filled with nose prints.  We have been keeping granddog Ivy for a couple of weeks and she has taken it upon herself to be on full squirrel alert.  She stands, nose to the windows, and when she sees a damnsquirrel she races to the door to go outside and chase them away.

Think I don’t love that?!

DB has enjoyed every minute of her visit.  Having an active dog around, especially one with a personality like Ivy’s, has delighted him.  They go on long walks together.  They play ball.  Ivy sleeps by his side of the bed.  He dreads having to take her back to her peeps.  

Recently, I was seated on the sofa working on my laptop, my feet on the coffee table.   Dearly Beloved was sitting on the loveseat at a right angle to me.  He wanted a glass of water, so he stood and nudged my legs with his knee, saying, “Will you move your legs for a minute so that I can get by?”

I looked up, surprised.  It was much easier for him to go in the other direction. There was a wider path and my legs weren’t blocking it.  But wait… I looked down and saw that Ivy was lying on the floor and knew instantly what he was doing.

“You’re asking me to move so that you won’t have to disturb the dog, aren’t you?”

Mr. Romantic looked around and realized sheepishly that,  ”Uh… yes.  I guess I was.” 

Honestly!  It’s a good thing the man does not wear a toupee.

I’d be tempted to pee on his rug.