Welcoming him home

I was inspired by Lori's account of celebrating her husband's return from deployment. I went back in my personal blog to March of 2007 and read what I wrote about my husband's return from Iraq. Here it is:

I think we would both really like to be romantic, but somehow we're just not. We try so hard. My husband spent the week planning this big, secret date for last night. I was so impressed, even took a day away from email so as not to ruin his plans.

Unfortunately, it all fell through. The dude who was supposed to get the returning war hero free tickets to a show on the Strip couldn't, and the war hero just couldn't bring himself to fork out $200 to buy them. Which was totally fine with his wife, who would much rather spend that money on cool clothes or the new leather chair we found yesterday. So, the next plan was to go to a production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at the performing arts center up the street. Only we decided, at the last minute, that we really didn't want to dress up. Next we scoped out cool restaurants that we would never take kids to--Thai, Japanese where they cook on the table, outrageously overpriced Italian...and decided instead to walk to our favorite neighborhood cafe and then take the dog to sit out on the Starbucks patio and sip coffee while looking at the stars (and the glaring, gaudy light from that pyramid hotel/casino down on the Strip) and just. be. After all this time apart, we talked about nothing in particular. It was perfect.

I know at heart that I'm a denim kind of girl, and as life progresses I am becoming less willing to fake it. I guess I need to alter my childhood definition of romance and quit trying to be someone I'm not. Romance is a night without kid(s), with or without the dog, hanging out anywhere on earth with my man.