Valentine's Day 2016

It's been a strange twenty four hours. Not bad, just strange.

It started last night as Sheila and I were rushing out of the house to babysit Little Ben.  We just had time to grab a sandwich at Oscar and Veronica's, the little Mex place up the street.  We were the only people in the restaurant except for Oscar and Veronica and one of their daughters.

We were sitting there about halfway through our food when a wiseguy came in.  An honest to goodness, east coast style, street tough, "I'm gonna shake you down" type wiseguy.  The guy used all of the tricks to impose fear without actually menacing.  The accent was KC or maybe St. Louis.  He was obnoxious and at the same time threatening without voicing a threat.  It was obvious that Veronica was rattled.  The next time I am in, I am going to ask her if he came back and tried to extort money from them.

We spent the evening babysitting Little Ben while our daughter Michelle and her husband Robert went out to celebrate Valentine's Day.  Ben was actually quite well behaved.  He wanted to watch some cartoon crap movie that was full of new age mystical mumbo jumbo.  I vetoed that in favor of Victorian myth in the form of Kipling.  I was amazed that a three year old kid would sit quietly through half of Jungle Book.  It was the British version with real actors and animals.  He has quite an attention span for a toddler.  And when Sheila began to write his name on something, he said "That's my name."  We splurged and had a Dairy Queen ice cream cone on the way home. 
 
We had agreed that instead of buying each other a present and a card we would simply make up an e-card to send to each other and buy something together.  We always jump through hoops over that kind of stuff but never really saying anything to each other.  When Sheila opened my card this  morning it made her cry .... but it was a good cry.  

I cooked breakfast for us and then we were off to church.  After church, we had lunch at Oklahoma Joe's near Bass Pro.  Sheila's rib ends were fabulous.  My Carolina style turkey sandwich was nothing to write home about.  And the fries were both over-salted and overcooked.

After that, we decided to buy each other a Valentine's present in the form of a new set of everyday dishes to replace the mish-mash we have been using for decades.  We have at least two sets of china packed away that are too good for everday but were eating from the every day survivors of over forty

years of marriage.  We kept what was left of the set that Sheila's sister gave us at her wedding shower and took the rest to Goodwill.

We both cooked dinner.  I was chef and Sheila was helper.  We had Chicken Piccatta served over angel hair pasta and a Ceaser Salad.  Sheila baked an strawberry rhubard pie.  It was a nice little meal in our newly done kitchen served on our new every day dishware.  We will settle in shortly to watch Downton Abbey and call it an evening.  Not much of an adventure for some I suppose but we had a good time today and that's all that matters.