On Tuesday, Lauren posted about the twenty-fifth anniversary of our engagement, and everyone understood it and congratulated her (and us) appropriately, instead of confusing it for our wedding anniversary, and I am quite irritated about this because I am the clear communicator around here and you all did not understand my post a couple years ago. But whatever. You all just keep thinking and doing whatever you want. I’ll keep yelling into the void.
We always celebrate our engagement anniversary. Typically, we go out to dinner, and usually, we do so in a nod to where we went to dinner the night of our engagement—a Mexican restaurant on University Avenue in Provo, Utah, that no longer exists. So Lauren posted this pic to the Goons and said, “Dolled up for dad. I hope we can go on a date.”
When we finished work, I said, “Where would you like to go?”
“I was kind of thinking Solstice.”
I was dressed in a plaid flannel shirt, jeans, and hiking boots. I had had to dress up in ski pants and the like to snowblow the driveway and was tired of changing and layering clothes.
“I love Solstice,” I said. “But it’s like a million dollars, we’re paying for a wedding this year, and flying out for a graduation. Plus, I feel like I would have to put on a nice shirt and shoes at a minimum.”
“I was just going to go in this,” Lauren said.
“You’re in flip flops, and it’s thirty degrees out with snow everywhere.”
“I mean, I would change my shoes.”
“If you really want to go there . . .”
“It’s fine. But where were you thinking?” she said.
“We did eat Mexican on that fateful night twenty-five years ago.”
“Right,” said Lauren. “And I would normally be cool with that, but I let Graham choose dinner last night and he chose Chipotle, and I went with that even though I didn’t feel like Mexican since we had nachos for the Super Bowl.”
“Great,” I said. “We’re totally defeated.”
“I would really like steak,” she said. “Texas Roadhouse is good by me.”
“There’s a spot to inspire red-hot romance.”
“Also, I feel bad about leaving Graham home,” she said. “He’s been bored all day since it’s a snow day.”
“Sure, fine, let’s bring Graham.”
Yes, readers, we marked twenty-five years from our engagement by going to Texas Roadhouse and bringing our youngest. What? Why no, kids don’t ruin everything, including all the romance in your life! They are totally worth it!
On the car ride over, we put on some old romantic favorites from our era: “All I Want Is You” and “With or Without You” by U2, “Fields of Gold” by Sting, “Name” by Goo Goo Dolls, “Superman” by REM (okay, that last one is a little stalkerish . . . actually, maybe a tad more than a little). Graham obliged by plugging in his ear pods and tuning us out. We splurged on an awesome blossom or whatever the heck they call fried, seasoned onions there, and we both got steaks. Graham got chicken fried steak.
On the way back, the playlist included “One” by U2, “End of the Road” by Boyz II Men (man, I totally forgot that that song has a roughly two-minute monologue that has to be about the most mawkish thing ever recorded), and “Flagpole Sitta” by Harvey Danger (don’t judge).
We finished the evening watching two and a half episodes of season one of True Detective—I told Lauren you had to watch season one to understand references in season four, so here we are. All in all, a night of white-hot passion and middle-aged, workaday romance. Saving the money turned out to be good since the garage door motor went out this morning and since we have to have the chimney guy over tomorrow to see why our furnace exhaust is coming back down the fireplace flue. Nothing is hotter to the ladies than some straight up practicality, fellas. If we ever move south in our later years, we can always hit the Old Country Buffet before 5 pm for the senior discount.
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