One for the Record Books

In light of the momentous holiday that was Valentine’s Day (yea right) I’m postponing our regularly scheduled “Work It Out Weekends” post for tomorrow (or sometime later this week.) Trust me, the results won’t surprise you.

And now for a slightly belated but nonetheless greatly anticipated review of the Boo and I’s first Valentine’s day together. Now you may think that because of this post I’m about to wax poetic on all the ways our day was romantic and perfect and something straight out of the fairy tales. But nay. I thought the same thing in light of how the day started but I was sorely mistaken.

Yes, he bought me a bunch of gorgeous flowers and huge balloons to surprise me that morning. Yes, he wrote me the sweetest letter ever telling me how he felt. Yes, he made me heart-shaped banana pancakes and cuddled with me. (Oh and I think I may have given him a box of inscribed candy hearts as a token of my love. Kidding. My gift was slightly better. And I use the term “better” loosely.)

But I digress. While the morning showed the makings of what seemed to be a perfectly romantic day it soon fell apart in the true fashion of anything I’ve built up to be something grand in my mind. I clearly have yet to learn the meaning of the phrase “Don’t get your hopes up.”

That evening the Boo and I donned our semi-formal-look-at-us-we’re-somewhat-grown-up-adults attire and headed out to Bernini’s where we had made reservations earlier in the week. We had researched the place a little more than the last disaster of a restaurant we tried out and we were fairly confident that it would be just what we envisioned for our very romantic and soon-to-be infamous first V-Day together.

We drove down to Ybor City where the restaurant was located (not exactly the safest place to be at night but we figured maybe the streets would be cleared of the crime and crust since it was a somewhat fancy night out. WRONG.)

We hit a couple detours and got a little turned around after we noticed that the sign accompanying the main detour said “The street you need to get to for your date is CLOSED. Drive 13 miles out of your way HERE and park downtown. Oh and then once you get there WALK. And try not to be late. Even though you left 45 minutes early to be on time.” (Or something like that.)

We somehow finagled our way past the Pigs and the road blocks and found an open parking garage only to find that not only was the parking $10 (what the eff?) but they also took CASH ONLY. Ok, hold up. Umm…how long has it been that our country has been completely and totally dependent on debit and credit cards to do any and everything on a day to day basis??? Oh yeah. That would be FOREVER!!! Sorry I left all my hustle cash from the gratuitous BJs I doled out earlier back at the house. My bad. Let me go another 18.9 miles out of my way to find an ATM crawling with degenerates, try not to get mugged in the process of extracting my last $20 out of my account and then I’ll come back and fork it over to you you thieving, heartless son of a bitch.

(Can you tell I was not happy with this news?)

Well we finally managed to get the cash, pay the money hungry whore at the gate and find a parking place (oh, what’s that??) ON THE ROOF!!

Fantastic. Now I get to walk (run) in my brand new extremely uncomfortable stilettos to the restaurant that we’re now late for. Whilst I’m trying to harness the power of my mind to will us through the throngs of imbreds and dredges of humanity surrounding us to get to our restaurant I realize, “Hey wait a minute! Who let all these crazies out in public …at the same time?? And on MY night nonetheless.”

Answer: Apparently there was some monstrosity of a “parade” about to take place in the streets directly in front of our restaurant and this had apparently compelled the masses of crust epitomized to collectively gather all along the sidewalks, Natty light cans clutched in their sweaty, greasy palms, crack rock in other hand, and of course, the ever classy Mardi Gras beads that simply scream class (and frat party) draped around every neck and shoved in every orifice.

I almost cried.

We finally managed to brave our way down the 14 blocks of inbreds to the restaurant. At last.

“We have reservations for 2 at 6:30”, I exclaim breathless and disoriented. The hostess seems shocked (not a good sign) and then calls over the manager (again, red flag) to seat us to which he turns to us and says “Ya mind climbing a few stairs?”

“Uhh ok.”

Side note: apparently “climbing a few stairs” is code for "I’m about to take you on an 8 minute trek through our attic and into our dry storage closet where no one else is seated because the space has been rented out for a PRIVATE SINGLES AWARENESS PARTY but we’ve thrown a few tables in the corner to make you and 3 other unlucky couples feel awkward and out of place so I hope you don’t mind but here’s your table and why are you sweating so profusely?”

He then ran off before we could protest.

Whatever, at this point I was just over it. The entire room had quieted when we walked in as the throngs of party INVITES (ie. NOT US) turned to see which one of their guests had just arrived. SURPRISE. We weren’t on the guest list but don’t mind us. We’re just gonna sit over here dead smack in the middle of your party and have us a romantic Valentine’s day dinner. Carry on.

I don’t know if there’s much else one can say about this disaster of a date. We sipped pounded copious amounts of wine to ease the awkwardness of the monstrosity that was our Valentine’s day but alas, nothing can completely drown out the screams, yells, whistles and cat calls of 30+ horny and highly inebriated singles in the same room as you.

At least the drum line sounded decent.

We finished the night at our good ol standby, Roy’s where we drank more and while the Boo kept it classy with his cheese plate for dessert I wrote the night off as a total disaster and gorged myself on the chocolate soufflé cake.

The following day I woke up to a raging headache and some fuzzy memories of a night that left something to be desired. But I think we’ve learned our lesson. Next year we’ll just frequent our local flea market and likely get the same effect.

Ahh gotta love those self-inflicted, societal constructed and completely unrealistic expectations that embody the holidays. Nothing like it.