I’d thawed meat for supper and pondered side dish possibilities. Salad. If I felt ambitious (and dangerous), fried potatoes.
I didn’t feel ambitious. I didn’t want to cook. Period.
The past 48 years, I’ve faced cooking 17,500+ evening meals. Lord knows, I’ve wanted to skip dinner preparation. But like women past and present, I champion good nutrition. Eating out blows the budget. I also want to set a good example.
If women were honest, though, they ultimately cook because they don’t want their kids to give kindergarten teachers the scoop about questionable meals … or see pictures they drew of a Cheerios-and-Cheetos® supper on display at Parents’ Night.
However, Hubby and I, empty nesters, no longer tremble before kindergarten teachers. We don’t have to be good examples. We put our feet on the furniture. We sometimes skip vegetables.
After this tough week, survival deserves an escape.
Hubby doesn’t know we’re leaving. He figures it out, though, when I hand him a suitcase.
“We’re going to Paris.”
“I know it’s been rough,” he says, “but how about a movie, instead?”
Any outing, anywhere — short of North Korea — works for me.
“Supper.” I offer him cake smothered in ice cream. “I ate the other half.”
“I’ll eat quick—”
“Eat it on the road.” I offer to drive.
Hubby’s mother would never have permitted this. Throw a bowl of cholesterol at a husband and drive him to an expensive movie? She’d rather have driven a getaway car to a bank robbery.
But Hubby gets me. Taking Highway 22 through Gas City doesn’t equal jetting to Paris, but it’s enough.
Fellow adventurers huddle in the nearly empty theater. Everyday moviegoers? Maybe they’re spies, exchanging secret information while animated nachos and Goobers® high-kick on the screen.
We didn’t go to Paris, so I have to create excitement, right?
As the movie begins, I put my feet on the rail and laugh out loud at funny parts. We devour exorbitant butter-marinated popcorn and drink buckets of Coke®.
We cheer crazies who do life different.
Though movie characters never take five restroom breaks during their rowdy scenes. Nor do they lie awake with heartburn afterward, feeling fat and stuffed as their pillows.
But do they have more fun than we did on this cake-and-popcorn-for-supper night?
Never.
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: What’s your escape plan after a tough week?
