Adventures in Homemaking

I am currently reading Romancing Your Husband by Debra White Smith, an ordinary housewife who decided that she was going to turn her great marriage into an incredibly awesome marriage by doing special out-of-the-ordinary things for her husband. Definitely my kind of woman- not happy leaving things as okay, status quo, good, or great. She has been married over 20 years, and she and her husband still have the sparks and chemistry that most people say fades with time.

And just as a little note, when you see a young married couple so in love with each other, don't squash their feelings with "Oh, don't worry, you'll get over that," or "Just wait until..." Instead, encourage them to keep the fires burning. There is enough out there to get them down, they don' need negative comments. I can't tell you how many times I heard similar things when we were first married. But guess what? We haven't gotten over that, we have been married 5 years (not long compared to some marriages, but it is our number right now), we have a daughter, and we love each other more than ever.

Which brings me to Wednesday. I thought, "How nice would it be for us to have dinner here at home but having something out of the ordinary?" I knew Brian was tired from a long, hard day, but I wanted to have a date with him. There were coupons in the paper this week for Quizno's- a lot of buy one get one free deals. I called Brian and asked him when Emma (what we named the British sounding voice on his GPS) estimated that he would be home. He said "6:03 but I estimate 6:20, because of traffic lights." Perfect, I thought, I have about an hour until 6:20. I will wake Addie from her nap, take a bottle of milk to hold her over till we get back, and be back with a delicious sub for each of us when Brian walks in the door. The adventures in life happen because nothing ever goes according to plan.

About ten minutes from our house is a shopping plaza that has a Quizno's. As I drove up, though, I saw a "for lease" sign in the window and the lights out. They had gone out business without letting me know! Well, my mind began racing. What do I do for dinner? I was trying to stay within the $5 price range for dinner and had no other coupons on me. Quizno's was my only option.

I decided to call Dad whose cell phone has a GPS built into it. I asked him to find the closest Quizno's to where I was at that point. He called me back and said that a few miles down the road right next to Sam's Club was another Quizno's. It's location had an easy way for me to get home, too. This was going to work out perfectly after all! And then my dad called me back. They had also gone out of business! Okay, now I'm really starting to panic. I had this wonderful surprise all planned out, and it was falling apart as I drove.

Dad called me back. Not to worry, about five miles from where I was, there was another Quizno's...and it was still in business. Ahhhh, the sky suddenly seemed bluer, the birds began to sing, rainbows appeared... not really, but it sure felt like it. I checked the time. It was 6:03. At least I still had about 15 minutes before Brian would get home. I called him to let him know I might not be home when he got there. "I just pulled into the driveway," he said. Gulp! What do you know, he had green lights pretty much the whole way!

I finally made it to Quizno's, ordered our subs, and Addie and I were off again. She is such a little trooper. We came home, and Brian was very happy to have gotten a sub for dinner. He had kind of suspected that we were having Quizno's since I had shown him the coupons earlier this week. I must say, the subs were well worth the trip. They were delicious! It cost us a total of $5.78, because of the coupon, plus the cost of gas from having to drive all over creation to find the Quizno's. But hey, it turned an out-of-the-ordinary dinner into a memory.

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