one of my favorite things to do, ever

is stay home on a friday night with ROF.  it’s my blog and i can go on and on about my awesome husband if i want.

you see, i didn’t get married until i was 40 years old.  and i don’t regret it one bit at all.

in fact, it was well worth the waiting.  in my 20’s and 30’s, i saw a lot of my friends get married and i’m not going to lie, it was hard.  but i reminded myself to never settle.  i would rather have the mindset to not settle than to “follow the safe and typical road”.  there is nothing like finding the love of your life and your best friend.  sigh.  now, i have the best of both worlds – a fantastic career and an even more fantastic husband.

so back to friday nights…

i read somewhere smart to have an indoor couples activity and an outdoor couples activity.  something that you and your SPOUSE (isn’t that the worst word? ) can do together.  our indoor activity is GIN.  no, not the kind you drink, the kind you play.  we’ve been playing since almost the day we met.  we have a notebook where we keep the score (YES, YOU ARE WINNING, ROF) and we also write down little tidbits of info so we remember what we were doing that day.  we play all the time.  we played with our nephews michael and bill when they were in town.  my mom and dad were gin players big time.  they played right up until my mom gave birth to me – she was winning, she always adds.

when ROF and i were dating, he invited my mom over for a classic ROF steak dinner.  we decided to play gin.  mom was helping ROF by standing behind him because he was very new at the game.  at that point we weren’t even keeping score.  so i asked my mom “how do you keep score?”  and she said “i don’t know”.  which i knew at the time to be a bold face lie.  my mom plays cards (bridge) semi-professionally and was the reining gin queen.  but she’s also not prone to lying.  when i asked her about it, she said “honey, he didn’t even know how to hold the cards in his hands correctly, i wasn’t going to go into how to score.” we laugh about that now because ROF is kicking my butt in our on-going gin game we’ve been playing for over a year.

so … friday nights  – my favorite ones – are filled with ROF, gin rummy, a special dinner and good music.  this past friday, ROF made a special grilled shrimp with a dry rub and then BBQ sauce – which was out of this world!  add to that some grilled sweet potatoes with a honey lime glaze. scrumps!   we enjoyed skinny margaritas, good talks and of course some tunes.