Valentines and Watched Pots

As many of you are fully aware, yesterday was Valentine's day. A wonderful day of love, candy hearts with romantic words, chocolate, and overpriced flowers. Not withstanding the legends of St. Valentine that are a bit murky, we do recognize that this day is based on love. Perhaps it would better be described as being in love with the idea of love. We men break our necks so that the women in our lives will realize that we love them. We act in ways that may or may not be indicative of the way we act the other 364 days of the year. I try to make sure that my wife knows daily in some way that I love her desperately and therefore do not have to do the proverbial song and dance to demonstrate my undying love for her. However, I still partake in the sappiness of the day and try to come up with some way to show my wife that I have put some time and thought into this commercialized day. Last year I set up this romantic dinner and such at the business of one of our church members. I do have to say that she was quite surprised and impressed. I was very pleased with myself. I did create a problem though...I set the bar pretty high for this year and I am not sure that I could live up to it. So I began to think a month or so ago about what I could do to make sure that my wife once again could go another year believing in my love (sarcasm intended). I am sure that many of you have heard of the "lobstergram" that is advertised on the radio--of course you would probably have to listen to talk radio to hear it--and have thought like me that getting crustaceans in the mail would be an amazing fete of postal prowess. But I checked the price out and it fell just beyond my financial capacity. So I began to plot with a couple of men in my church to go in together and get our own lobsters and such so that we could do a joint lobster dinner for the women we love and therefore share in the cost and benefits equally. So Evan Abla stopped in Wichita on his way back from KC and picked up 6 live lobsters and 2 pounds of shrimp. Scott worked on the veggies and such and I got the house ready and prepared to cook the hardshelled delights with Evan at the church. I picked up Brenda from work, we got the boys from daycare and then went to vote on the schoolboard election that involved our senior pastor. Then I dropped Bren and boys off at our pastor's house and I joined Evan at the church to begin the boiling process. Evan put the water and boil spices on at 5:15 to begin boiling and at 6:30, when we should have joined everyone else at my house to eat, we were still waiting for the water to boil. I suppose a watched pot really does not boil. By this time we are getting quite irritated and feeling a bit impotent in the kitchen (since we cannot even get water to boil) but we are undaunted and keep pushing on. After some finagling of the pots of water(which entailed removing some water and increasing the number of pots from 2 to 3 so as to spread the water out a bit) we reached boiling and dropped those bad boys in to begin their 8 minute journey of perfection. We boiled the lobsters and the shrimp and were back at the house only 45 minutes after what was to be the official start time of our Valentines celebration. We got to the house where Scott had been entertaining the ladies and doing quite a good job I might add since they were at least laughing and not completely angry. All was forgiven though when we revealed to the ladies what was the main course of the evening. Nothing says "I'm Sorry for being late to our valentines dinner" like steaming lobsters and shrimp with drawn butter. Dinner was great and everyone enjoyed the scrumptious meal from the sea. Inspite of the pots that would not boil, we had a great evening spending time together eating lobster. I love my wife more and more everyday. She is the most amazing woman I know and I am so blessed to still have her in my life. God bless