I'd spent thirty or so (or so) consecutive hours in my classroom rearranging my bookshelves and changing the inspirational posters on my walls. I hadn't yet found the perfect location for my stapler, affectionately nicknamed "Big Red" and I had successfully corralled all of my multi-colored pony beads in one conveniently accessible location. The phone rang, disrupting this bout of miraculous productivity. I answered it, annoyed.
Me (in an irritated, snappish tone): Hello?
My rude, thoughtless husband: Hey! How're ya doing? Feel up to a little lunch and then we'll buy you a new outfit?
Me thinking: The b@$#@^d!
Me (slowly): Yeah...that would be super, I guess...uh-huh.
Brad (totally NOT reading between the lines...didn't he know that I was under an ENORMOUS amount of pressure and had A LOT to do that was vital to the future learning of twenty-one 4th graders): Great! We'll leave in an hour!
I sulked for the entire drive while Brad insisted that I was, at the least, a fairly competent teacher. "I didn't say that," Brad tried to correct me later...yeah, you read that right...he tried to correct me during the post-editing phase of this blog article. "No, seriously," he insisted, "I said you were a wonderful teacher. Hard-working, creative, and driven." "That's what I wrote," I explained patiently to him. "You won an award," he shouted. "They were mocking me," I screamed back. "They may as well take that award out into the school parking lot, back a semi-tractor trailer...no! A manure spreader! They should back a manure spreader over it because it ISN'T real! I AM A FRAUD! I don't understand educational acronyms! My new schedule doesn't accommodate my pre-determined potty breaks! I don't have any cute posters." We arrived at the restaurant. I looked hopefully at the diners visible from the parking lot and foolishly thought that I had a viable shot at a window seat. Our seating hostess, Vicki, obviously had a vendetta out for incompetent educators because she taunted me by having us walk past the hundreds of empty tables situated by spacious windows with breath-taking views (of the parking lot) and then smugly placed us at a cozy table with a remarkable view of the bathrooms and the kitchen. A strategically-placed mirror gave me a nifty "behind-the-scenes" glimpse of the kitchen-happenings.
I sulked for the entire time that I sat in my lumpy, uncomfortable booth watching a world of indigestion walk by my table. I agonized, as always, over my order. I was completely distracted by the pineapple-upside-down-cake featured on the dessert menu. Brad encouraged me to order the lobster but I decided to punish him by getting bacon-wrapped shrimp with a peach glaze. There! That'll teach him! There was an awkward ordering moment when Josh, our waiter, asked if we were in a hurry. I stared at him. What did he mean by that? After Josh's hasty departure, Brad told me that it was a common week-day lunch question to accommodate business diners. "We're dressed like hobos," I said snippily, "Where did Josh think we were rushing off to next...some Fortune 500 meeting to plot a ponzie scheme?" "The only reason you can relate to the word "Ponzie" is because of "Happy Days," Brad told me before I stopped talking to him.
My order arrived and I was rendered speechless. "Why are you crying," Brad asked as he dug into his meal. I forgot what he ordered and it isn't pertinent to this story except that he enjoyed his entree and I didn't. Selfish b@$#@^d! "They didn't snap my green beans," I sobbed. Brad picked up a long bean and inspected it. "So," he said thoughtlessly. "Aunt Bee always sat on her front porch and snapped the ends off her beans," I complained, shaking a dry, pale bean at him with disgust. Trying to distract me, my husband asked about the bacon-wrapped shrimp. "They're alright," I said in a melancholy tone, "but I certainly wouldn't define this as a glaze." Josh suddenly materialized and asked how my entree was and I eyed him suspiciously. My quick reassuring lie made Josh disappear and I immediately frisked the table for a bug, momentarily losing track of the restroom traffic. I fought my way through the rest of my mostly inedible meal ("You sure snarfed down those shrimp down pretty fast for what you deemed inedible," observed my husband. The b@$#@^d!), and adamantly refused to consider ordering dessert until Josh returned again to remind me of the pineapple-upside-down-cake. Dang! Obviously I missed the bug. I reluctantly ordered the cake to split with Brad (What's it called when I eat 2/3's?...let's change split to shared) and squealed with delight because it looked like a baby bundt. Looking to get out on a high note, Brad rushed, dropping a bit of properly-glazed pineapple on his blue hobo shirt where it left an accentuating belly button stain. More on this stain tomorrow when I complete this ridiculously long account of how thoughtless my husband is to take me out to eat and buy me stuff when I am feeling overwhelmed and despondent.
Get into therapy FAST!!!!!
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