Our Family's Birthday

Yesterday my husband and I celebrated our 12th wedding anniversary. For years we've called this day "our family's birthday" and try to make a big deal out of it for the kids, too. So in the morning we all went to see Shrek the Third . The movie wasn't the greatest, but Mr. Bunch cooperated by falling asleep pretty quickly and we had a good time. From there we dropped off the kids and headed out for an afternoon of shopping, including a blissful hour at The Container Store. Ah, such fun. For dinner, we had reservations at Mastro's Steak House, a much recommended Beverly Hills restaurant which we had both looked forward to trying. That's where things started going downhill.

Somewhere between the nice-enough appetizer and the not-very-flavorful Caesar salad, I started losing my appetite. By the time my gigantic steak got there, 2 bites were all I could manage. The sides were too rich, the steak too tough and the wine made my head feel quite strange. Pretty soon, I couldn't even stand the butter and meat smells that permeated the restaurant and nausea started to set in. Needless to say, this did not enhance my poor husband's enjoyment of his meal.

For those of you who don't know, I've been having some strange and unpleasant emotional ups and downs for the last month or so. This has been taking a toll on my husband as well. As the conversation turned to this subject, our dinner took another turn in the wrong direction. In the end, we did talk a lot more than we have recently, and I know we'll get through this together. Things just haven't been easy lately. But I've always said, just because something isn't easy doesn't mean it's not worth it (except for dinner at Mastro's; that's definitely not worth it).

By the way, on the way out of the restaurant, we passed a homeless woman who was asking for food or money. We had our leftover sides of much-too-rich creamed spinach and nowhere-nearly-as-good-as-it-sounded lobster mashed potatoes and it took about a second to decide to give them to her. I love thinking about her eating her lobster and hopefully going to sleep with a full stomach for once.