A Date That's Worthy of Noting

I say worthy of noting because of the creativity that went into it. It's not a surprise to all married couples that are parents, with one or both in school, that finding time for meaningful dates is slim to none. Call me crazy, but I'm a girl that likes quality time and with it, quality conversation. I like to be courted and to be made to feel special and unfortunately this was something that was lacking for a while and I was not a happy girl. Well, James and I discussed that we needed to have regular dates and to communicate about when and how often because we were just letting each other assume things and hoping the other person understood without actually saying anything! How foolish of us!

Last Wednesday, I watched BBC's version of Hamlet with James because he needed to watch it for a class. I didn't know it then, but this inspired James to write some "Shakespearan Sonnets" of his own. The first one he gave me upon returning home from school with a daisy in hand.

Hereto forthwith, tonight!
Thou wilt be my date, delight!
Promptly, immediately listed be,
Places of food and eatery:
The Olive Garden, or dare I say Wendy's?
The Mongolian Grill or e'en Applebees;
or any other that....you....please;
With care and thought thouest must choose;
the one that we shall persue.

Cans't thou not wait, to meet tonight's fate?
For unto us be, a Shakespearean Date!
Important it be
That we speak like he,
Be our step elegant flutter.
Pray people don't think we're nutters!
But if they must
We don't do this for lust,
Rather, it is love that keeps us together.

I was shocked that James would think to write his own sonnet. I was all giggly and loved that he put more than the usual thought into our date. I chose Olive Garden by the way and we struggled to to talk like one of Shakespeare's characters the car ride over. James was better at it then me, but in my defense, he had more time to formulate sentences then I did because he planned for it.

After we ate dinner, James gave me a second paper with this written on it.

Thus we have eaten a grand dinner feast.
Stuffed is my belly, to say the least.
Onward we shall go without care
For we are on a quest for true Shakespeare


Let us no to the circular form;
Where people are rolling as if it were norm.
Can you guess where it be?
You have until three.
One...Two...the roller rinkee.
Yipee!!

Isn't he hilarious! Unfortunately, we didn't go to the roller rink because we realized that it was time to get Janen in bed and she was being kind of ridiculous for the past few days we didn't want to put that burden on our babysitter, but we decided to do a rain check. So then James handed me one more slip of paper.

Now that we had had our fill,
of the circular trill;
One last thing I must do,
To help with your woo;
A meaningful Shakespearean Sonnet of Marriage
from me to thou...I mean you.

And he proceeded to read Shakespeare's 116th sonnet and then asked me if in honor of Shakespeare if we wanted to get "Shakes" or "Beer of the Root" I chose root beer because I was all dairyed out at that point.

It's funny how even though all we did was go to dinner, I enjoyed myself better than other times when we just went to dinner because of the effort James put into making it special. It reminded me of when we dated. He used to try harder to impress me and that sort of stopped for a long while. I didn't like that. I still want to be woo'd, pursued...whatever you want to call it. Well done James! I am excited for our next date. :)