Digital Father Podcast

Happy Valentimes Day

(That’s how my daughter used to say it.)

Did you do something nice with your spouse today?

The Wife and I had dinner plans, but we were unable to go. You see, we’ve been waiting for snow here in the southern portion of New York. Well, we finally got it. Snow day and all. (even a bonus- tomorrow has alreadybeen called a 2 hour delay!)

Okay. To call this stuff snow would be generous. It’s been icing all day. I went out to shovel it before, and nearly had a stroke. It’s frozen on the bottom. It’s frozen on the top. It’s powdery and has very little air space. These snow banks are not like your standard-issue snow banks. These are big honkin’ piles of ice dust frozen into a giant sheetcake of suffering. To shovel it, you have to break it up into little pieces, or you end up straining your back. The worst strain is when you have a large piece on the shovel, and then it falls off, suddenly releiving you of all that weight. Then you wrench your arms to control the shovel, and POW- instant backache.

But I digress- I would have gone out in this stuff. But we had plans with another couple. Now this is interesting, because for years since we had kids, we have been unable to get out for too long. This was always a source of strife in planning, because time and financial constraints kept us from planning an elaborate, expensive dinner. Valentines Dinner was limited to a few hours- then we had to get home for the kids. Now that my son is older, we can get out for longer and longer periods.

Now our friends have a child. They need to get a babysitter, so we can’t go out for very long. While we chuckled quietly about the turn of events, we kept it to ourselves. However, when the weather became questionable last week, we suggested that our plans should be canceled. The other couple chose to hold out hope. We had resigned ourselves to the likelihood of a cancelled date, but they were hopeful.

This morning we called the restaurant.

I hate being right, but the shrimp scampi my wife made was delicious, and I didn’t mind the lazy day before AND after the shoveling.

Happy Valentines Day to all. Hope you got what you were hoping to get.