Perfectly Imperfect
Who else feels like some days they could kill their partner in quarantine? Ok, so that’s very dramatic, but has anyone else felt like they might lose their shit at any moment? I know I have – regardless of what Instagram or Facebook says. I am not saying I am ungrateful by any means, but as a couple our own space and time is important to us and we acknowledge that about each other. I saw this meme the other day “my wife and I like to play this game called ‘why are you doing it that way’ and there are no winners” and while funny, it’s true. Sometimes your loved ones do get on your last nerve, but what are you doing to keep open lines of communication and establish boundaries?
I could tell that AJ woke up a little frustrated and stir crazy on Saturday morning. We both slept like rocks on Friday night, so we were ready to tackle the day but there wasn’t much to tackle aside from a deep clean on our new apartment (which is pretty clean anyways). He looked at me and said “Let’s do a date night tonight” to which I agreed. He said “No, like a real date night. I’m going to get dressed up as if we were going out to dinner.” This type of initiative is sexy. Not in a jump into bed type of way, but in a way that has me remembering why I fell in love with him in the first place two years ago.
Now if any of you followed this on Instagram or Facebook, I imagine this looked like an ideal evening. He wanted to create this perfect night of amazing food taking care of me and he hit the nail right on the head. There’s much of the evening that I didn’t capture on social media though. We had a few snags in our date night that were pretty comical; however, we are a couple that rolls with the punches so we still had a lot of fun.
Around 4, he went to the store to get the special ingredients for dinner and I did exactly what I would do before a date night: worked out and took my sweet ass time getting ready with a drink of choice. While he was in the kitchen sous chef-ing it up, I started getting ready. I enjoy getting ready. I have a whole ritual being a former makeup artist and a hair styling connoisseur. If I’m really into it, the process is around two hours, so I started with a shower.
Now ladies, I know you know what I mean when I say I took a full shower before date night. But for any gentlemen that might be reading this, there are three types of showers a woman takes: a quick shower, a good shower, and a full shower. The quick shower is everything sans hair, a good shower includes the shampoo and conditioning, but a full shower is a process. The full shower includes all the above plus hair treatments, exfoliation, and a soundtrack of choice. The full shower is a minimum of 20-30 minutes. Period.
I’m not going to walk you through the whole process, but you get what I mean based on the shower. Meanwhile, AJ is finishing up chopping all the things, so he put something on a simmer so he could hop in the shower to get ready. I was so distracted focusing on my routine, I had zero idea what he was working on in the kitchen. Well, that simmer maybe should have waited until after his shower because whatever was in the pot for the first steps of the soup bubbled over and ended up scorched, so he was back to square one with our first course. Snag number 1 wasn’t too bad. Easy fix.
I came out of my room all dolled up in my red lipstick, LBD and Jimmy Choos (the shoes I seldom wear in the seven years I’ve had them – they were a gift). I bought into this whole “night out in” thing, so I asked “Is anywhere at the bar alright?” gesturing to our kitchen island. He poured glasses of wine for each of us and I had fun watching him prepare the rest of the soup.
We have recognized that when we are preparing food that we don’t like to be told how to do something unless we know the other hasn’t used a certain gadget before. I told myself I would resist all urge to contribute to the cooking narrative and just enjoy the evening (minus my food processor since the interlock is a pain in the ass). Now, in order to cook a good filet you can use a cast iron skillet. I have had a set of three for several years and I only take them out on a handful of occasions. Most of those occasions, it’s the small pan to make a skillet cookie – literally the easiest recipe and ready in under 30 minutes if you’re not committed to baking several dozen cookies.
What I did not know is that AJ has never used a cast iron skillet outside of camping trips. Before he started cooking, he retreated my medium size pan (it hadn’t been used in awhile and needed a little love) so it didn’t occur to me to ask this question. While cooking with cast iron over open flames is one thing, using an electric stovetop is something else. We’ve only been in our new place for one month and electric stoves take some time to learn what setting is good for what. I messed up pancakes a few weeks ago because it was too cool and then it was too hot.
What also doesn’t help is that every time our oven is heated over 400 and we open the oven door, the smoke alarm gets triggered. We have no stove top hood, which makes absolutely zero sense to me. You see where I’m going with this, right? The soup was on the warmer, the sides were cut and ready to be cooked, and the steaks were ready to go on the pan for searing. That pan was HOT. Much hotter than it should have been, so obviously there was smoke… which means the smoke alarm started going off. Cooling a cast iron skillet is no easy task, so at this point you just have to be committed.
AJ cleared a section of the island to jump up and hit the button the smoke alarm while I kicked off my shoes to sprint for the box fan. I plugged that sucker in and pointed the fan to the windows while it was propped up right next to the smoking skillet. Our windows weren’t open all the way and they are a bit difficult to lift open, so I was straddling the couch and the windowsill with my feet and pulling up goblet squat style to get them to open the rest of the way. Not something I anticipated doing in a little black dress, but that’s why they make them stretchy I suppose?
After searing, you have to put the steaks in the oven, so we devised a plan together to mitigate as much smoke detector noise as possible. Some rational people might say to just remove the batteries, but I refuse to do that since I work for a safety company. I stood on the island with my finger ready on the silencer button of the alarm, while AJ took the skillet out of the oven and rushed out to the balcony to plate the steaks. It was like Olympic time trials or something.
The smoke took some time to clear and by then dinner was just about ready. We were finally able to relax into the evening and enjoy our meal when I realized something was a little off. Normally, both of our animals would be begging at the table in some capacity. We found the cat hiding in the bedroom closet and the dog still cowering out on the balcony to escape the loud noises from earlier. I just hope we haven’t scarred them too bad.
This deeper dive into our actual date night is to paint the reality of our evening. It wasn’t perfect, but neither are we. We had a few good laughs and we worked as a team to make sure we didn’t set the place on fire (or end up with the fire department at our door). I don’t think we could forget our first quarantine date night even if we wanted to. It’ll be a funny memory and it’ll definitely bring us some laughs in the future. For the record, the steaks were amazing and I am really picky about my meat, so I’m going to blame it on the skillet.
I don’t think we intentionally omit the hard parts of our days or lives for that matter. I just think that we’re more apt to share the things that bring us joy instead. This is a reminder that imperfection still holds value even if it isn’t the most opportune time. Our perfection wildly inhibits our authenticity, so I encourage all of us to take a moment to look at that pretty spread, that amazing makeup look, or that flawless DIY project and imagine what it took to get there. The journey is the most fun in my opinion.
Happy adventures everyone!
