Glorious Anticipation

A. and I went out to dinner last night.

Allow me to repeat that for added emphasis: A. and I went out--out!--to dinner last night.

To say this is a rare occurrence would be vastly understating the situation. But the MiL mentioned in the morning that she would be home last night baking things for a church tea today. Which meant she was available to listen for any unexpected wailing after Cubby went to sleep. He goes to sleep at 6:30 p.m., which meant if I ignored my usual no-eating-dinner-after-7 p.m. preference, we could make it to the Small City for dinner by 7:15.

And so, in defiance of my usual schedule, the rain pouring down outside, and the early darkness, we set out last night for dinner out.

It was a pretty heady experience, let me tell you. We shared a bottle of wine. An eight-dollar bottle of Lambrusco, to be specific, which is, yes, extremely cheap and extremely sweet, which makes it extremely to MY liking. A. managed to eat all of his enormous serving of veal parmesan, along with two mozzarella sticks, two stuffed mushrooms, and two Clams Casino that came on our appetizer platter. I limited myself to the two pieces of garlic bread. And then an extra piece of plain bread with butter.

Between the three slices of bread and the wine, by the time my four excessively large ravioli and a single really excessively large meatball arrived, I was pretty full. And that is why I am in a state of glorious anticipation today. Because I have restaurant leftovers for lunch.

The only thing better than going out to eat is going out to eat AND coming home with food for lunch the next day. Ravioli and meatball, here I come. Again.