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we actually tried to go yesterday — a saturday at ~5:00pm — but the place was packed out the door. turns out the trick is to go on sunday morning at 11am. apparently, ben’s is pre-hangover food, not post-hangover food … i guess it makes sense when you think it through.
Sparklet’s First Bar in Adams Morgan: Melissa, Nadine and Joanna @ Bourbon, Adams Morgan, Washington, DC.
| this is the sixth in a series of letters to baby sparklet about how mommy and daddy met and woo-ed each other. |
today is mommy and daddy’s second wedding anniversary, but (as you you’ve probably noticed by the time you are old enough to read) we’re not very good at celebrating these things.
on our very first anniversary, we were supposed to go camping in Delaware, but bailed at the last minute and instead had dinner at a roadside mexican restaurant somewhere out route 50.
this year, we were going to go to our favorite restaurant (Acadiana) but it turns out the whole place was rented out for some kind of event. so instead, tonight i put on my “date shirt,” took mommy out for BBQ at the site of one of our earliest dates, and we’ll save Acadiana for next week.
(which is kinda funny, because that’s exactly what happened to mommy and daddy last year, too.)
which reminds me …
a long, long time ago, your mommy and daddy were just two nervous people who were trying to figure out how to talk to each other. which, i’m sure, must seem *really* strange to you by now.
before we were dating, your mommy asked me to come over to a dinner party she was having at the house she shared with Auntie Melissa.
it turns out that one of her previously invited friends couldn’t make it (thank you, Gannon!) and since mommy was looking for an excuse to ask daddy out, it seemed like a good idea at the time to invite me in his place.
unfortunately, i looked like a mess. i hadn’t cut my hair in about two years (so i guess i didn’t look all that different then i do now) and hadn’t bought any “impress a girl” clothes in in that time either.
naturally, i did what any boy in my situation would do — i turned to a female friend to bail me out.
Emmy and i setup a time to get my hair cut (by about 9 inches) and she even tagged along for moral support. in fact, your mommy ended up coming, too … i think mainly because mommy wanted to make sure that daddy and Emmy didn’t develop a “thing” before she could have her dinner party.
the following weekend, right before the party, Emmy and I took an emergency trip to Friendship Heights (the Gap) and she helped me find something that looked nice, but not *too* nice.
the shirt we bought? it’s daddy’s “date shirt” (which you can see in the photo above).
dinner was great. Uncle Cole and Aunt Skye were there, and the four of us talked for hours, and then I stayed behind to help mommy with the dishes.
By the time we were done eating, talking, cleaning and talking, it was 6 am the next morning. Not wanting to end the the “evening” quite yet, we walked down to the Alexandria waterfront, and then had breakfast at Table Talk (which is still one of our favorite’s).
At that point, I knew your mommy was something special … and had a feeling that your mommy and i had a nice future ahead of us. i didn’t know quite how long it would take, but I knew she would be worth the wait.
love,
daddy (& mommy)
UPDATE: no Acadiana for us quite yet…! the restaurant called to confirm our reservation as we were sitting in the labor and delivery room, waiting for you to be born.
so, instead, we “formally” celebrated our anniversary with you in our laps, eating mommy’s favorite pizza (goat cheese and bacon) from our long-time favorite pizza place (Listrani’s).
and while it certainly wasn’t what we were expecting, it was a perfect way to celebrate none-the-less.
the food was great, but the best part was the chinese zodiac place mats, which gives little personality sketches based on the year of birth. obviously, this got us thinking about Baby Sparklet’s personality, which
(apparently) will be guided by the chinese sign of the Ox.
Bright, patient and inspiring to others. You can be happily by yourself, yet make an outstanding parent.
feeling like we were on a roll, when i got home i found a couple of sites that walk through the signs a little more. that’s when things got interesting:
Ox people are hard-working and persistent, they can stick at a task longer and go at it harder than anybody. They believe in themselves and tend to classify almost everything into two basic categories, bad and good. They hold up their high standards as a model and severely judge those who don’t aspire to maintain these same ideals.
Although appears to be tranquil, in fact, Oxens are ponderous but impulsive when angry. They are capable of fearsome rages, therefore, it is better not to cross an Oxen. Ox people are observant, they have remarkable memories and are good at reporting on absolutely everything they observe.
that’s one heck of a way to start the description, but the rest gets a little better (“kind, caring souls, logical, positive, filled with common sense”) … right up until the end where it says that the Ox’s “childhood and youth will generally be without incident.”
note the use of the word “generally.”
for the record, it turns out that I am a Rabbit (“quick, clever and ambitious”) and, while my money was on the lady sparkler being an Ox — just like our baby girl! — she ends up being a Snake (“not to be ignored”).
and while their “compatibility” estimates are really designed for life partners, it turns out that an Ox, a Rabbit, and a Snake can live pretty happily under one roof … so long as the Rabbit (me) and Snake (the lady sparkler) aren’t romantically involved.
can’t wait to see how that all pans out.
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for the record, the lady sparkler was able to swing the club around her growing belly … well enough that she shot her best round ever. she said something about pregnancy limiting her option for freaking out and doing crazy things with the putter.
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| this is the third in a series of letters to baby sparklet about how mommy and daddy met and woo-ed each other. |
it’s pretty difficult to pick out one event that would qualify as a first date.
the first thing we did together outside of work was go to Ben’s Chili Bowl. however, it was for lunch, and bridesmaid Mel was nice enough to chaperon that little event. i am pretty sure those two things disqualify Ben’s from the “first date” competition.
(that was also my first hot dog is several years, and i can still remember how my stomach ached after that was all over…)
several weeks later, the lady sparkler and i went for a hike in Shenandoah national park … and barely survived. we made the mistake of hiking down (to some waterfalls on hazel mountain) instead of up.
hiking downhill seemed like a good idea for the first six miles, and proved to be easy enough that we kept going farther than we had planned. we were having a great time talking, laughing, and poking t.l.s. with a stick (well, that last part was mostly me…)
unfortunately, the six miles back uphill to the car sucked most of the will to live out of our poor, frail, out-of-shape, trying-to-impress-each-other-with-our-outdoorsyness bodies.
we stayed on the trail two hours longer than we had planned, which meant what had been planned as a day event now required dinner, which was a first for us.
and so, our first dinner date (however accidental) was at a ruby tuesday’s in warrenton on the way back to DC. to this very day, the sonora chicken pasta i had that night is just about my favorite comfort food on the planet.
now, i was mostly a vegetarian when i met the lady sparkler … i did eat some meat (almost all of it was chicken), i never cooked any dead animals at home, and never ate meat more than once or twice a month (i guess you could say that i was a social carnivore.)
so it was much to my surprise that after our hike, i found us talking about barbecue — which is not something I talk about much, so i’m guessing the lady sparkler must have brought up.
to keep up with the conversation, i found myself telling her that she should come up to Glover Park to try the ribs at Rockland’s, regardless of the fact that i had no earthly idea what they tasted like and would probably faint watching someone eat them.
she thought it sounded great.
so, while i had successfully arranged our first “alone” date back in DC, i had also managed to create a rather awkward situation. whatever meat i was eating at the time, i can assure you that it wasn’t anything that looked like it was once alive, much less slaughtered, cooked over an open flame, and hacked into little strips.
that next weekend, we met at Rocklands, and ordered at the counter. me: a cute little array of sides (coleslaw, mac and cheese, potato salad). my future wife: a huge slab of meat.
and so, i watched my wife-to-be pack away half a rack of ribs.
when finished, she proceeded to suck the marrow from the bones, and then lick her fingers clean. i kissed goodbye whatever vegetarian tendencies i had, right then and there.
and the rest, as they say, is history.
![[Sir Walter Scott Monument, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK.]](https://theparkerfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/3492603124_7185e856f2.jpg)
![[Canongate Kirk, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK.]](https://theparkerfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/3491788203_6b0870ee4a.jpg)
![[Views of Old Town, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK.]](https://theparkerfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/3491821719_84fafe6417.jpg)
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it’s our anniversary, and the lady sparkler and I packed up Saturday for some light camping along the Delaware shore (cape helopen, near rehobeth).
the first problem is that she’s been fighting a cold, and it seemed to take up residence as the weekend went on. second problem was that the beach town was packed with old white people and their funny accents (the origin of which we never did figure out).
but besides side-stepping octagenarians, we had a good lunch (authentic, takeout fish and chips) at the beach before heading bailing for the quiet serenity of the nearby state park.
turns out that the economy really is in the toilet, because while every motel had bountiful vacancies, the campsite was quite literally packed with miserable looking middle-class white people. we checked in, and found our allotted 8 foot square patch of sand surrounded on all sides by kids, dogs and cars.
our site seemed to have the special designation of being the dog run for the neighbooring sites, which would have been about 2 feet from our tent once pitched. i am pretty certain that I have never seen such a small “campsite” before, and (we decided) hope to never again.
so, given the illness, the kids, the dogs, and the funny accents, we decided to take a long walk around the cape, eat some cheesy-so-bad-it’s-good Mexican food (Chevy’s) along the highway home and call it a day.
in full disclosure, the day was by no means a wash … we had gorgeous weather, a beautiful hike, and a wonderful day trip. we’re going to celebrate our anniversary on Friday instead, with a meal at our favorite-est fancy restaurant in the world — Acadiana — like good affluent, married white-people should.
hopefully we’ll have less sickness, and we’ll definitely have less funny accents.
