"And if wishes were horses, we'd all be eatin' steak." - Jayne, Firefly

Alia S., after The Boy convinced her that he’d buried her car keys sixteen feed deep in our backyard.

Last night was our anniversary. I gave the lead-in on Sunday, before I managed to not buy flowers, and hijack the anniversary present that I had supposedly bought for The Mrs. for my own nefarious uses. Yes, I’m a bad guy. Not quite a Stalin. Maybe more of a Nixon.

Anyhow, I did show up, after leaving work early. The Mrs. and I went out to a (wait for it) solo dinner. Just us. No kids. Duct tape had them securely snugged in the closet. Okay, just kidding – Alia S. Wilder was terrorized by watched The Boy and Pugsley.

The Mrs. and I went to a local steakhouse. We had to navigate a huge, concrete parking garage and ended up on the fourth floor. We went to the elevator, since The Mrs. had recently lost her left big toe in a bear trap and didn’t want to limp down the stairs. A family of extraordinarily short people (20 of them, and I’m not exaggerating) was ahead of us. I’m sure the elevator looked like a clown car at the first floor. We waited for the next one.

We got on. Following us onto the elevator were another married (likely they had duct-taped their kids, too) couple. The next floor down, the kids got on.

By kids, I mean spiky-haired, just out of their teen-years, green t-shirt (“Kiss me, I’m not Irish, but I’m Wearing a Green Friggin’ Shirt, Wench”) wearing kids. One of them even jumped up and down on the elevator to create a harmonic motion in the elevator cables, causing the elevator to bob about like Client Number 9 at a press conference.

The Mrs. openly scoffed. The Mrs. yelled at the green-clad youth, “I scoff at you. Go grow up.”

Okay, The Mrs. didn’t really say that. But she was thinking it. She told me so.

About the parking garage - it may be my anniversary, but there’s no way I’m going to pay for valet parking. We hoofed it (The Mrs. limping from her alligator-bite) to the steakhouse.

People opened the doors for us at the steakhouse. That was nice. As we walked into the foyer of the restaurant, I noticed that they had vaults with people’s names on them in the foyer. One of them had Tom Delay’s name on it – I can only assume that he keeps black market kidneys or piles and piles of money in it. Maybe he keeps baby harp seals there? New England Patriots™ 19-0 t-shirts?

Anyhow, it was nice being someplace where people would really, really kiss our butts, rather than eating at Whataburger® again and waiting fifteen minutes for a bacon cheeseburger.

We sat down. Ohhhh, real tablecloths, not plastic. The waiter came and took our order. I ordered a steak. The waiter said, “We serve our steaks ala-carte, would you like something else with that?”

Finally, finally a steakhouse that gets it. I came to eat steak, not twice-baked asparagus-potato-puree. That other stuff that comes on the plate? Sheep eat it. None for me, thank you.

“No. Just the steak.”

We ate.

We tried in vain to find something for dessert, but after a steak the size of Mongolia, what else, really, can top that? (Honestly, I was looking for something that injected chocolate and other sweet, sweet carbohydrates into your veins, but that, sadly, was not on the menu.)

Nothing can top a big steak. Except, maybe, mushrooms.

We went back to the parking garage. As this was now prime-time St. Patrick’s Day pub-crawl time, the string of early-twenty (twentoddlers?) gaggles of males and giggles of females came driving into the parking garage. Driving Lexi®, BMW’s©, and Range Rovers™.

WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND GIVES A TWENTODDLER A B-frigging-M-frigging-W????? I, for one, demand a parent recount, and would much prefer that Pop Wilder had purchased a Corvette© for me over the 1972 green (six cylinder) GMC® pickup he allowed me to drive.

Anyhow, The Mrs. and I eventually made it home, and found a distraught Alia indicating that she had no idea that Pugsley was the only two-year-old with arms that are six feet long, and how seven-year-old The Boy had convinced her that I let him watch the Saw® series of movies.

Ahhh, home sweet home. 11 years. Beat that, Nixon.