Tonight was date night. Not just any date night, but a date night Inside the Perimeter (ITP). Atlanta folks like to divide its citizens into those that live within the city (ITP), and those that live in the burbs (Outside the Perimeter - OTP). I'm an ITP gal, and Tom is an OTP guy. Soon after we got engaged, I moved OTP to be with Tom in the burbs, and I sure do miss my Atlanta time.
I've been looking forward to this date for a while, because Tom's offer to take me on an ITP date was nearly unprecedented. The plan was to go to Taqueria del Sol and the High Museum of Art (where we scored a discount membership a few months ago), and I was thrilled. But when we drove up to Taqueria, the place was closed. We decided sushi would be our backup plan, and just as I started to mentally choose which rolls to order, we saw that Sushi Avenue was also closed. We ended up at Twains, a great little bar in downtown Decatur, where Tom ordered a Reuben and I got a Mediterranean Platter.
Taste buds doing the happy dance, we were off to the High. After scoring a perfect parking spot and walking up to the front doors, we learned that the museum had closed up shop at 5pm (we missed it by 20 minutes). I tried to keep a cheery demeanor, but this fail date was really starting to get me down. No Taqueria? No High?
Just as the storm clouds started rolling in and Oscar the Grouch began knocking on my door, I thought back to when Tom and I started dating. Nearly every date that we planned failed. On our second date, Tom tried to take me to four different places for dinner. After driving around for much of the evening together, he dropped me off without us ever getting any dinner. And you know what? That was one of the best dates of my life. We had a blast just driving around and talking and reflecting on our terrible luck (it really doesn't hurt to date a funny guy).
And that wasn't the only 'fail' date. There was the time that I cooked chicken cordon bleu and tried to take Tom to a French film at a museum (French date), but I got horribly lost in Atlanta (embarrassing) and we never made it. Or the time we went to the Braves home opener with a group of friends and the hail (and subsequent flooding) almost killed us. For more on that, view the video below.
Sometimes what we view as failure is really just success in disguise, and I would bet that none of us would be who we are today if we hadn't had some really solid fall-flat-on-face moments along the way. So as much as I want to say that tonight was a failure, I can't. Because when you are able to spend time with the ones you love, when you can put food in your bellies and walk around Ikea for two hours dreaming of your future house (because we knew they would be open), you have only blessings to count, not failures.
Do you try to see the good in a bad situation? Are you a glass half full type of person? Have any advice for the rest of us that tend to get bogged down with whats going wrong instead of with whats going right? Or are you the realist who calmly suggests that we just not go on an Atlanta ITP date on a Tuesday?
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