Last year (and I will explain in a moment why I mention this) my wife told her mother we would attend this show by her little entertainment club on the weekened of our anniversary. It was a four hour drive away. I suspect my mother-in-law made her feel guilty that we hadn't attended one of their shows, but the timing of this was bad. I agreed, led to believe that the show was the day before or early in the day. I had assumed we would leave on our anniversary to get home in time for a nice dinner and some time to ourselves. Well, was I in for a surprise. I was told the night before that in fact the show was at 6:00 in the evening on our anniversary. Not only would I be spending the night of my anniversary wrangling with my kids watching tedious amateur music, but I would then have to drive four hours back to our house after it was done so I could go to work the next day. My mother-in-law had also arranged for everybody to spend the day before the show at this enormous flea market. (For the record, I am pretty easy-going, but I would not want to do any of these things, especially with little kids who will be bored). No time for a romantic dinner, and certainly no time for anything else (you know what I mean). To boot, I would have to listen to my exhausted children for four hours on the drive home, get in late, and have to get up early the next day for work. The entire day had been scheduled such that there was no time whatsoever for us to be by ourselves.
What in the world? Did my wife forget our anniversary? Did she somehow think this was an appropriate way to spend it? I would have thought my mother-in-law might've warned her this was dumb, but then again, maybe she was the one who insisted we go that weekend in the first place. If my wife had wanted to go see one of her shows, there were plenty of other times to go see one.
I stewed about it that night, and resolved to talk about it the next day. When I woke up at my in-law's house, I got dressed and waited for my wife to wake up. Once she was up and about, I plainly asked her, between the flea market and this show, when we were going to have any time together. She tried to say she "had to go" and tried to walk out, and I got really angry. She had scheduled the day so that this, at 7:30 in the morning, was the only time we would have together, so we were going to talk about this now.
She played dumb; why exactly would I want to spend time together?
"We were supposed to have a nice dinner by ourselves, like we always do on this day. We can't even have lunch together as your mother insists we go to this flea market."
"Well, we'll have it some other time; we clearly can't do it today. Can't you see that?"
"Yes," I replied, "that is exactly my point; you have scheduled this entire day so there is no way we could have dinner, much spend any time alone."
At this point, the argument got ugly; my wife clearly had not thought of this (or had, and didn't care), but was trying to pretend that she had and there was some valid reason for it.
A few weeks ago was my birthday. For reasons I will not go into, my mother- and father-in-law were in town, and stayed for several days with us. I made reservations at a restaurant that I liked, and I knew was agreeable to everybody else, for that evening. The day before my birthday, my wife tried to talk me into going somewhere else. Of course, there was no way to get a reservation elsewhere that quickly, and most places would be closed, but she made a try. I had the sneaky suspicion her mother put her up to it, and wanted to a different restaurant. A couple of years earlier, she had made a stink on my birthday about the fact that I did not choose to go to her favorite restaurant. Well, darnit, I didn't care (either time), it was my birthday, and I knew she would find something she liked where we went. I was again being pressured into doing something my mother-in-law wanted. Anyway, in the course of that conversation, she revealed that, though she had asked me before what kind of cake I wanted, there was in fact no cake or dessert for my birthday. Someone would make a pie for the next day, but it contained things I couldn't eat (for health reasons). Great! Now I was really irritated. I saw the problems from our anniversary coming up again, and decided to head it off. Before we went to bed, I asked her at what point were we going to make love. Even she had acknowledged a long time ago that my birthday was a special case. Well, she said, we couldn't do it tonight or tomorrow; her folks were at the same house. Wouldn't that be weird? Well, yes, I replied, but they were staying for five days; there was no time around my birthday that wouldn't be the case. (A wiser woman might have arranged for her folks to take the kids somewhere in the afternoon on the weekend, but my wife isn't that woman). I reiterated that she had managed to schedule my birthday so that there was no other way. She accused me of being like a child (kind of weird given what I wanted to do), and said I was "selfish." I said some things are important, and this was one of them.
She angrily replied that she would do it, so let's hurry up and get it over with. I replied that at this point I was mad, and I really just didn't want to do that under those circumstances. I told her I was no longer interested.
To my surprise, something seemed to click in her brain. She suddenly said she would be happy to do so, no complaints. I told her I was still mad, and there was no point now. I turned out the light.
I couldn't sleep. I was too busy thinking about what had transpired. This was my birthday, for crying out loud; how could she've done this again? And no cake? She even asked me about it beforehand.
I tossed and turned, and my wife must've noticed this. Some time in the wee hours of the morning, she came over to my side of the bed, and put her arms around me. (You have to understand, gentle reader, this was something she had not down on her own in months, maybe years.) I was startled. Her voice was shaking. She asked me what was wrong; realizing that I was exhausted and whatever I said would be held against me, I told her I didn't want to talk about it.
Out of the blue, she then told me we would have some time the day after they left to make love, and, what's more, we could go to a romantic dinner at one of my restaurants ourselves the next weekend. Then, before I could say anything else, she said she would pick up a birthday cake for me later in the day. I was shocked. Had she finally realized this was important? I mumbled my assent, and told her I would hold her to those promises. I finally fell asleep.
Is this a new leaf? We will see...
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