The New and Improved Cynical Idealist

Chicken!!!

In the beginning, someone cursed me with a woman; in the end someone blessed me with a fiancé.

Yep, I don't say that lightly for two reasons. One, she might see it, and two because it is true. I have an awesome fiancé, and though she shares not one of my hobbies (and I have a lot) we have an odd connection that most others don't. Aside from the fact that we share a daughter, we also share a birthday. In astrology terms, this type of pairing is either remarkably compatible or horrendously doomed to fail.

We are scorpios. In my case if you want the specifics, I am a Scorpio Pisces Libra Libra. If you actually understand that, that means you read too much Honestly, I don't know what the moon, Mars and Venus signs really represent in a person, but I think its cool that I know what I am.

At any rate, I was given the task today of repairing a cord to the hideous Christmas tree that now graces the corner of our living room. I say hideous for that is exactly what it is. THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS A WHITE PINE TREE, maybe a genus or a species of some sort, but in the literal terms, I've never seen nor heard of a pine tree that happens to be white. As such, I hate the appearance of this thing. She tells me that its supposed to look like its covered in snow... it doesn't. If you want it to look like its covered in snow, cover it in snow. That said, it just doesn't fit with this house. When we moved in, our ceilings were about 2 feet lower than they are now. The previous owners had a thing for ugly ceiling tiles. I've since removed them, repaired the damage that they caused to the ceiling, and thereby raised it a good bit. As such, a 6 foot tree looks ridiculous beneath a 9 1/2 foot ceiling.

I let it slide though, for the sake of preserving the Christmas spirit which I have supremely lacked since I became an adult, and for the sake of my kid. She loves lights, garland, sparkly things, and things that are easily broken. Just like my cats. Now getting off of this rant about an ugly Christmas tree, I'll move on to task number two.

Cook Dinner.

I have a mastery in this department. I don't want to toot my own horn, but I'm an awesome cook. I set out to cook dinner earlier this evening, settling on stuffed lemon pepper chicken, au gratin potatoes, and a spinach and cranberry salad with a Balsamic dressing. If that sounds gross to you, I dare you to try it! At any rate, she was a bit late coming home for work reasons, but when she entered, I was nearly finished preparing our outstanding dinner. The first words out of her mouth when she walked in the door were such an insult to my amazing cooking that I nearly collapsed.

"What stinks?"

Really? Would you come home to a hot cooked meal and initiate conversation with that question? I wouldn't. Well, I probably would because she isn't a very good cook, but to me, that's earned you a stabbing with my fork. I didn't stab her, nor did I want to, but I wasn't pleased with the question.

"Something smells... rotten."

Ok, now she was insulting my culinary mastery. To presume that I can't tell the difference between good and bad food is just insane. At any rate, I questioned my skills and took a sniff of the chicken. It smelled delightful by the way.

Well, she was stuck on the idea that the chicken was no good whilst I'd already taken a few bites. It was everything you'd want in chicken. Moist, Flavorful, and stuffed with Parmesan and spinach. She did at least eat the potatoes, but in mid-chewing I noted her deplorable staring, and I stopped eating the chicken. Well its been about 3 hours, and I'm still fine with no detectable signs of gastrointestinal distress. At any rate, the chicken is in the Garbage, so with my amazing salad and au gratin potatoes, I also enjoyed a gourmet, microwaved corn dog. Yeah, I like to keep it classy, folks.

Such is the story of committing yourself to a relationship with the one you love, compromise and compassion. The chicken really was delicious though... just saying.