Le Collier

What a weekend.

This week marked two years since my husband and I met on what was supposed to be our first and only date (according to us both. Hashem had other plans, obviously). So this weekend we were looking forward to having a mini celebration. My husband mentioned a carriage ride through Central Park, but that seemed too extravagant given both our current circumstances and the occasion. We hit upon a compromise: some dinner one evening, a day trip either Sunday or Monday, and and a visit in town the remaining day to a museum, show, or the Botanical Gardens.

Unfortunately for us, motzei Shabbos we were up to almost 4 AM; we rented Babel (not bad, despite my complete loathing for all things Brad Pitt) but did not begin watching before almost 1 AM. After all, an "anniversary" celebration requires sufficient snacks, so we made the obligatory ShopRite run. Anyhow, we were consequently moving slo-mo on Sunday. Once we managed to actually exit the house midway through the afternoon, we combed through a local Judaica shop. Very cute place, with nice choices for the different categories in its inventory. And, G-d bless him, my husband bought my an adorable Choshen Mishpat necklace. It adds just the right touch of colour to the obligatory Brooklyn all-black outfit. I have worn it every day since. :=)

Our weekend then took a further turn for the worse. We went for said dinner, but the place we wanted to go to only accepts cash. Being a modern couple, we swipe versus carry rolls of cash, so we wound up eating around the corner. BIG mistake.The proprietor tried to seat us by the bathroom, the food was tasteless, the waitresses literally stood around glaring at customers, and the final straw, the busboy decided to sweep under the table while we were sitting there. The end result? My new stockings, which are an unusual colour that I sought high and low to find, were torn.

I am sure you are familiar with the term "the gift that keeps on giving"? Such was the meal. The next day I had a full-blown case of food poisoning. The last day of our long weekend ended up being spent inside as we watched some TV until I finally felt ready to eat the obligatory potato...

Plans generally fall short of expectations. I say, so what if we ended up having a much quieter weekend than we thought. So our mini-celebration really was scaled back exponentially. In the end, the main best part of the celebration was that we got to spend a whole weekend together. B'H'...