Mrs. Chatterbox's Guest Appearance

Mrs. Chatterbox here. Mr. Chatterbox is driving me crazy! You might think it’s because he’s pedantic, and lecture-y, etc. But, the truth is I enjoy that element of his personality. I think that’s what drew me to him at the tender age of 16!

Now, 43 years later, I think he feels guilty about how things turned out in our lives. You see, I was the one who wanted to be a writer. I even had a pen name prepared…Chris Barrett, one that I thought would escape discrimination against women. But, the Chatterbox feels that I sublimated my dreams so his could rise to the top. Maybe so. But my truth is that HE is my dream, as is our marriage, our life together, and our son. I never had the real courage it takes to put yourself out there, bear the slings and arrows (see, cliché) of criticism and continue to move my dream forward. I have sublimated nothing but have enjoyed his ride all along. But, enough about that gracious and giving crap I am selling you. What’s he driving me crazy about?

He wants me to be a guest blogger every now and then. He feels that there are some subjects out there that I feel a certain passion toward and that I should write about them. So, here goes:

Recently, we attended a dinner at a local restaurant with our “birthday club.” The birthday club consists of our best friends, their daughter and on occasion her boyfriend. We allow that each birthday person can pick the restaurant and we will all go merrily along and enjoy the food. This is correct, mostly. This time, it was bit of a bummer and it was chosen by our dear friends’ daughter.

Now, we support her choice completely…who are we to say that the birthday person should choose a cheaper place? No one really wants to go to Red Lobster, or Olive Garden and feel like a gourmand. And that brings you to one of my passions.

I consider myself to be a “foodie.” I like cooking shows, cookbooks, and blogs that deal with food. I like kitchen gadgets and Le Creuset and stuff like that. Mr. Chatterbox has seen to the purchase of quite a few of these objets d’art for me. This past Christmas saw me unwrapping several cookbooks from Mr. Chatterbox and CJ (our son). I happily peruse those cookbooks all the time.

This time the restaurant was a southern Italian restaurant, named after the chef’s grandmother with whom he had many happy food memories. He even wrote on the menu that he remembered many Sundays with his grandmother cooking and the family joined together for a meal. Lovely. I buy into that stuff all the time.

We really would have done better to go to the Olive Garden. The food was over hyped, pretentious and not what we all thought we were ordering. Our waitress was superb, chirping blithely about the great food and me teasing her about a gym membership coming with employment there. Once served, however, it was not really good. Oh it was foodie enough…garbanzo beans with a balsamic vinegar strewn over the beans, lots of garlic, lots of pretention. Mr. Chatterbox ordered the lamb ragout, only to receive a pasta dish with “lamb” flavoring, not the steaming chunks of lamb that he fantasizes about. I ordered two appetizers for dinner and was embarrassed to receive the cheese plate as my dinner that would have served five but mostly consisted of toasted bread and some tiny cheese hunks and that constant balsamic drippage.

I guess I am the pretentious one…I thought my foodie passion would carry us through a delightful evening. Wrong. It was very expensive, very drawn out and we had to park in a real sketchy part of town, right by a sad strip joint.

Olive Garden, anyone?