I‘m taking part in a 30-day writing experiment. The theme for me is “personal, not pretty.” See Kale & Cigarettes for details and the Facebook Group to read stories by other 500-words-ers.
Before I moved to Utah I had never been to an Olive Garden. In fact, before I moved to Utah, I only knew of Olive Garden as the butt of jokes about people who lived in the suburbs and ate at bad chain Italian restaurants because they didn’t know any better.
I am one of those people now.
I mean, I do know better, but still, I ate at Olive Garden last night. In my defense, it was a big group dinner with a really important group of people in my life: the Salt Lake City Moms of Multiples Club. They host a mom’s night out once a month, and in the last year that I’ve had twins, I’ve made it exactly twice. It is challenging to get to such lady dinners, but definitely worth it. These are my people; they know how it is.
Getting there was kind of a feat. I was with the girls all day while Jon was at work, and like most Saturdays when I’m alone with them, they decided to forego any sort of simultaneous nap action and tag-team it so that I wouldn’t get one single second to myself all day. At some point, like I do every Saturday, I thought hmmm, they seem to be playing nicely all by themselves. Maybe now would be a good time to relax on the couch with a cup of tea and catch up on my Instagram feed for five minutes. Just five minutes.
Lolz. Nope.
There is nothing less relaxing than trying to keep two 13-month olds away from a hot cup of tea in a fragile cup that I cherish. Add an iPhone to the mix—not to mention the couch, which to them is a giant symbol of oppressive unfairness because they aren’t big enough yet to figure out how to join me up there—and you have yourself a recipe for “Maybe it would be more relaxing to just sit here and poke my own eyeballs out with a chopstick.”
I mean, not to mention the bodily fluids dripping off of them all day long. I have to follow them around with a dishcloth incessantly to prevent the trail of snot (head colds), drool (just a way of life for them), and sporadic banana-vomit from getting everywhere. Let’s just say I hope they never take a black-light to our carpet.
By about 4pm they hit their nadir of fussiness-for-no-reason. That’s about when I hit my nadir of exhaustion. Cue a baby trying to literally crawl up my body while I beg “Can I just have some space for one sec? Please?” Nope again. Nope also to the homemade chicken soup I brewed yesterday for their head colds. Apparently we don’t like to be spoon fed anymore. Instead we had cheese for dinner, again.
You would think I would have been more than ready to escape to a girls’ night, but I was suffering preemptive separation anxiety by the time bedtime rolled around. I had to force myself to leave the house, and even so, I missed the first half of the event while I was insisting to Jon that part of our bedtime routine is take turns snuggling with each of the girls in the chair in their room. And that if I participate in ANY of their bedtime, I have to see it through to the very end.
I could easily have bailed on the Olive Garden dinner, but I’m very glad I went. Because let me just tell you this: under the right circumstances, no one is too good for Olive Garden.
(The lasagna was delicious.)
We went to the Olive Garden the other night, and only because someone gave us a gift certificate. There was an hour wait! There was no way we were waiting an hour for the Olive Garden! I looked around at all the suckers waiting, then my husband and I looked at each other at the same time to say “let’s go somewhere else”
Right? When you Google “best restaurants in Sandy” Olive Garden comes up as number one. It’s not a good sign.