Diary of a Fat Man

The anniversary celebration on Friday night was very nice.  I took two hours of leave so that I could get home early and get ready.  It was a fortuitous spur of the moment decision, because there were quite a few last minute details to work out with the babysitting arrangements and getting the kids ready, that I wasn’t dressed and ready to go until 5:30 (and we HAD to leave at 6).

There were a couple of things that marred an otherwise great evening. 

According to Google Maps and Mapquest, my trip should have only taken forty-five minutes.

According to the clock in my car, the trip took one hour and twenty minutes.

“That’s a difference of thirty-five minutes, Chris,” you may say.  I say to you, No shit.  I can add as well as you can since I’m the one that just typed that fucking sentence.  I also say to you one word.  One word that makes puppies whimper and small children cry: Michael! 

Just kidding…that one word is TRAFFIC.

I hate being late for anything and I’m notorious for being absurdly early for everything because of that fact.  Why is it that every douchebag, minivan, and Hindu in Dallas gets in front of me when I’m running behind schedule?  I hit traffic on Central Expressway going south from the suburbs.  I hit mondo traffic going west on LBJ.  I was still a little ahead of schedule and had a false sense of victory.  Right around DFW airport it got REALLY bad.

In addition to the traffic snarls, I went the wrong way when I was exiting and went the wrong way.  I was actually talking to someone from the hotel at the time because my directions seemed wrong.  I clearly told her I was traveling north on the highway and she told me to keep going.  I said again, “Ok, so I keep going NORTH on 2499?” and she clearly told me “Yes”. 

She clearly was a drunken, syphilitic whore, because I should have been going SOUTH on the same road, which I was finally told by another nice young women who clearly was not infected with syphilis.

We pull up to the hotel about 20 minutes late and maneuver our way through the HORDES of people at the Gaylord Texan Resort.  I’ve been in a lot of hotels over the years (both for business and for personal stays), but this place is NICE and it is fricking HUGE.  It took us ten minutes of non-stop walking to get through the hotel lobby, the atrium area, and the attached Convention Center to get to the area where Ice! was on display.

They keep the show area at 9 degrees at all times and it was so cold that my testicles felt like they had risen into my throat…”Do you have the mumps, sir?”  “Nope, that’s just my nuts.”

The sculptures were very cool, but it was $20 a ticket for the show.  But, this is something that you don’t really see everyday and Laurie’s one of those Christmas freaks who love December and all things Christmas-y so she really loved going.

The trek from the Gaylord to The Melting Pot was a lot less eventful, as most of the douchebags had gone in for the evening.  We pull in to the parking lot and I grimace when I see that it’s valet parking.  I hate valet parking because I’m always paranoid that I’m giving my keys to a faux valet who will be driving my ride to a chop shop while I’m inside debating over the steak or the chicken.  Luckily, this guy was the real deal, because our car was there when we came out two hours later.

Yes, two hours later.  Two thirds of the trip the USS Minnow was supposed to take.

It’s not as frightful as it sounds.  The two hours was not waiting around being pissed about slow service.  The whole meal was leisurely and enjoyable.  It was nice just hanging out with my wife and not feeling rushed or having to break up the fights over the ketchup between the kids.

The food was fan-fucking-tastic.  It was also fan-fucking-expensive.  The whole meal (including a Cosmo for Laurie and two Shiner Bocks for me) was $125…and that’s AFTER my 20% discount for using my Entertainment Guide discount (after 10 years of marriage, most wives don’t care if you’re dining with coupons).

The meal started with the cheese course.  We had a Wisconsin Cheddar/Sherry course.  It came with apples, carrots, cauliflower, and bread cubes.  We followed that up with a Chef’s Salad for me and a weird wild greens salad for Laurie.

The entrée was a combo of chicken, pork tenderloin, top sirloin, and filet mignon.  Instead of doing the tempura fried thing, we went with a coq au vin base that had mushrooms and new potatoes and broccoli (can you believe that I learned what coq au vin was as a kid watching Three’s Company?  The TV is NOT an idiot box!!).

I’m in gastronomic heaven at this point and we haven’t even done dessert yet.  The dessert was a mélange of white and dark chocolate that was in the form of the Yin/Yang symbol.  The beauty of design lasted for like two seconds until I dunked a chunk of cheesecake into the pot.  

I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a hard-on from eating food, but I was pretty close to pitching a tent while eating that chocolate.

Saturday

Saturday was a lot less romantic and even busier.  Laurie took Evan to a Fundraiser Surplus warehouse sale so that he could buy his Christmas gifts for everyone (they sell the stuff that you see in those fundraising catalogs, but at a fraction of the cost…good example is wrapping paper.  They have really nice paper and you have to pay $7.50 and up for a roll when buying it from a kid at school.  You can get the same thing for $1.50 at the sale.  They only do it two times a year, but we load up on stuff when they do).  While they were gone, Chloe and I worked on cleaning the filthy hovel that my home became over the past week. 

My plans were to clean and then take the kids to Big Lots so that I could buy Christmas tins for my cookies, but when Laurie got home, she said they had a “ton” of tins at the sale.  So while I ran to the store to buy Crisco for Laurie’s Christmas party (sounds fun, huh? But it was actually for Christmas Cookie Mix Jars her and her coworkers were making), she dressed Chloe and we left as soon as I returned to go to the sale to buy a “ton” of Christmas tins.   I was ready to have to borrow a dolly so that I could transport a “ton” of Christmas tins to my car after I bought them for $0.50 a piece.  I was stoked!  Guess how many they had?  TWO!  Two fucking Christmas tins and about 50 “Golf Digest” tins.  I should never believe what my wife says…I mean this is the woman who tells me I look good in the mornings when I go to work, so I should know that she’s a compulsive liar.

On the way home, I stop by my sister-in-law’s house to borrow some kitchen gadgets to use to make the cookies.  A Stand mixer and a food processor and a tool box FULL of cake decorating tools like piping tips and food color pastes and edible glitter.  It pays to have in-laws that used to make custom cakes.

Anyway, I get home with my purchases and supplies and it’s back to cleaning while Laurie is at her Christmas lunch with her coworkers.  She’s supposed to be home by 2pm, so that I could take Evan to a birthday party.

I get a call at 1:45.

They haven’t even EATEN yet, so I’m going to have to take both Evan and Chloe.  After we drop Evan off at his party, I have an hour and a half to kill.

I need to buy my cookie supplies.

I’m five minutes away from Central Market.

You can see where this is heading…

I’ve waxed poetic on the virtues of Central Market in a couple of other posts, but I just have to reiterate how amazing this store is.  What Home Depot is to most men (me included), Central Market is to me.  What other store can you actually grind your own flour?  Make your own peanut butter?  Buy Vegemite, organic raspberry juice from Russia, butter from Paris, AND listen to a live band playing jazz from the balcony?

I went to buy cream, sugar, butter, pasteurized egg whites, and flour.  I ended up spending over $65.  Chloe wanted hand-rolled artisanal herbed goat’s cheese after we ate a sample ($7.25).  I HAD to buy sesame crackers good enough to complement the tangy flavor of the cheese ($5.00).  We didn’t have anything for dinner that night, so I bought a frozen lasagna ($8.00) and a pound of bleu cheese and bacon potato salad ($5.99).  But wait, I ALSO need some sun-dried tomato stuffed olives to put ON the crackers with goat cheese ($6.00) to complete our appetizer.  Chloe also HAD to have the latest Gourmet magazine, because it had cool looking Christmas cookies on the cover ($3.99).  I need to stop shopping with my daughter because she’s a huge enabler (who the cheese lady said had a sophisticated palate for one so young).

Later that night, I became tyrant daddy as I tried to keep the kids from messing up my cookies.  After 30 minutes of my yelling at them to stop messing with the dough and to not decorate the cookies like that, Laurie told me I was being an asshole and that the kids weren’t having any fun with me doing all the work.  The kids wanted to eat the fudge that I had cooked and I kept telling them they could eat it tomorrow after I divvied it up into my gift bags.

She was so right and I felt like a dick.  I let them decorate the next batches however the wanted and then they had their fun and I STILL had a ton of cookies that I could work on anyway I felt appropriate.  Win/Win for all of us.

I cooked and decorated until about 11:30.

Sunday

Back to cooking and decorating the last two dozen cookies.  At this point, I was feeling a lot like I do about this post: I’m so ready for it to be over!

Evan had ANOTHER birthday party, so Chloe and I played Uno Attack about 8 million times and I had to get pissy with her because she kept trying to cheat.  She knew what she was doing…just because she’s five, that doesn’t mean I’m going to cut her any slack.

Sunday night, we went to the Santa Village in Richardson.  Laurie said that she thought it wouldn’t be busy since they had been open since Thursday and it was after 7pm and people would be at church or getting their kids ready for school.

Did I mention that my wife is a compulsive fucking liar?

The place was PACKED with yuppie douchebags with their $1000 cameras and  Mexicans in their cowboy hats and Muslims in their burkhas and Indians (dots, not feathers) in their shiny robes.  I swear to God, Texas is like a Benetton ad.

My dog is pissing on anything stationary and my kids are pulling us to and fro and the cacophony of hundreds of screaming kids is just grating on my nerves like fingernails on a chalkboard.

BUT, the kids had fun and that’s what’s important.  Isn’t it?