On A Workday Wednesday Evening ....

Sheila came home from work this evening and cooked dinner.  I don't encourage her to cook after work.  She is tired, dinner is late, etc.  It's just much easier and probably cheaper to just bring home a Subway or something.

Tonight, she came home and prepared a chicken piccata from pan fried, lightly breaded breast filets sauced with an innovative Meyer lemon, blackberry merlot reduction.  It was unbelievable.  Better than than any Italian restaurant chicken piccata I have ever had.  She served it with oven roasted asparagus with sea salt and roasted butternut squash cubes.  The meal was absolutely amazing.  Better than anything you could get in a typical Tulsa Italian restaurant.  And, it only took about half an hour.  I was kind of stunned.  Sheila is a good cook but she outdid herself on this one.

Another Quiet Little Weekend

We started the weekend with a splurge by eating at our favorite Indian restaurant, Himalaya's on South Memorial.  As usual, the food was great.  We only allow ourselves to eat there occasionally because we always gain weight when we go there.  Of late, we have learned to start the meal with a bowl of Chat, a type of Indian Salad usually consumed as street food.  Imagine a combination of beans, savory vegetables and puffed wheat.  I know it sounds strange but it is vegetarian and filling and while low in calories still absolutely delicious.  But even doing that, we still gain weight.

Sheila spent most of Saturday out.  First, she babysat little Ben for a while and then took him and Ella (our daughter Michelle's step daughter) to a family lunch. I didn't go. I worked a couple of hours that morning and watched about half of the film version of Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night.  Fitzgerald does not translate well to the screen.  The permanent psychological problems of some incest survivors and the sacrifices made by those who try to live with them are probably beyond the scope of the film genre and should be left to the written word

By 3:00 Sheila was home and we headed on our chores.  I had just about quit going to Name Brand Clothing but I am glad I did Saturday.  I had been searching for a pair of Wranglers in my size for months.  They had pair, perfectly hemmed to leg length.  They were brand new and only $3.00!  Big and tall men's clothes cost a fortune. That was an amazing deal.

Sunday morning, we headed for the farm. No agenda, no particular chores.  Just a day in the country.  I spent an hour or so zeroing the sights on my new high powered air rifle and then trying to teach Sheila how to shoot both a low power and a high powered air gun. Surprisingly, she did a lot better with with the large, heavy high power air rifle than the youth sized low power Crossman.  I am not happy with the accuracy of either.  We had a strong crosswind but that should not have affected a gun with a muzzle velocity approaching 1000 feet per second.  That is 80% of the energy of a .22 long rifle pushing a smaller projectile.  Maybe it is the smaller projectile being blown around by the wind.  I have been trying to avoid taking an air gun to an indoor range.  I can't imagine the looks I would get firing it next to a guy shooting an AR-15.  But, I may have to do it to get that gun's problems ironed out.  This gun is capable of great accuracy.  I am just not getting the best out of it.

As dark approached, we packed up, shut the farmhouse down and headed home.  We had an excellent Chinese supper at the little place off the US59 exit in Sallisaw and a quiet drive home listening to old time radio on the car's satellite receiver.  As usual, a good time was had by all.

Dog Tags, Chinese Food and Valentine's Day

One night forty three years ago, two scared kids a long way from home shared a meal of Chinese food on the bed of a cheap motel just a few blocks off the Bay Bridge in Oakland, California.  The next day, the girl, who was very pregnant, would fly home to Oklahoma. She had stayed in California as long as she could to be near her sailor husband but now had to go home before the airlines would no longer allow her to fly.  The sailor was just about to finish tech school at Treasure Island and didn't know where in the world he would wind up next.  There was a war going on at the time and after school, a lot of sailors were ordered to just keep traveling west until they found the shooting.  It was a poignant night that neither of those kids ever forgot.

Tonight, to celebrate Valentine's day and remember another time in our lives, Sheila and I ate Chinese on the bed in a motel room.  It was a much better motel than we stayed in that night in 1969 and the menu was better was well.  We had good carryout Chinese, a thermos full of Sheila's favorite Fuzzy Navels, and a box of chocolates.  I even had dog tags for us to take the first bite with.  The first time, I was so nervous that I forgot the plastic utensils at the carryout place and we wound up eating the meal with my dog tags and our fingers.

Forty three years ago, I could never have imagined that this night I would be a mid sixty-ish lawyer and a partner in a new start up company.  And, I surely couldn't have imagined that Sheila would be a magna cum laude business school grad working as personal assistant to the guy that owns several of the buildings you see on the downtown Tulsa skyline.  In my plan, I was going to be an engineer and Sheila was going to have babies.  Life doesn't always give you what you plan but it has been a good ride.  There have been ups and downs but we're still together and somewhere deep down in our hearts we are still those same two kids.

Pre-Valentines Day Thoughts ...

It is just three days until Valentine's day.  As the years pass, you tend to forget about things like Valentine's day gifts and celebrations and that is kind of a shame.  Like everything else in your life, love takes more work and more attention as you get older.  I was reminded this morning how lucky I am to have married my childhood sweetheart.  We literally grew up together in so many ways.  Happy Valentine's day dear.