After a day of writing QA scripts and doing last minute editing for the user guides, I came home from work and wanted nothing more than to do nice, relaxing things. We had reservations for dinner, but there was plenty of time before we had to leave, so I filled up the tub, dropped in a bath bomb, and took deep breaths of the orange-and-spice scented air while I read a book of some of the most dull horror stories ever written. The nice thing about relaxing in a bath, however, is that it doesn’t matter how boring the reading material is. I could have cracked open the “Bicycle Maintenance for Dummies” book, but that would have required actually caring.

The dinner could have been for a lot of things. April 30th is the second anniversary of the day when Richard and I officially got together. It could have been to celebrate that Richard got a job, or that he sent off his first story to the publishers. It could have been simply to celebrate that it’s now spring. But sometimes these things don’t really need a reason. We just needed a night out, at a place where the ambient noise is muted; where the waiters and waitresses are quiet and unobtrusive and extremely efficient; where the food must be eaten slowly so that the subtle flavors can be savored with every bite. We shared a salad of baby romaine and parmesan croutons. I had chilean sea bass and he had antelope with blueberry chutney. He had the dark chocolate and orange cake and I had the almond cake, topped with almond mousse and vanilla bean gelato. We held hands at our little corner table as we sipped our coffee after the meal, and somehow managed to finish every bite of our decadent desserts, even though we were both laughing and over-full.

We needed this. Every once in a while, we need this.