56. Make a nice dinner for people I love

Completed: February 14, 2010

If there is anything I have come to realize during this entire experience is that nothing ever goes according to plan. When I made this goal, I intended it to be a beautiful dinner with a couple of close friends. All of us dressed to impress for an evening of laughter and class. The kind of class that Grace Kelly could not compete with.

I decided that because I was going to spend my Valentine's Day alone, that this was the perfect opportunity to have someone over. Mostly with selfish motives, I did not want to be that girl who sat alone on Valentine's Day eating large amounts of chocolate, caramel, strawberries and a combination of the three. All of these scrumptious treats being swallowed almost instantly and unattractively, hysterical sobs emerging, with her VHS copy of the Titanic playing in front of her. I'll never let go, Jack.

Anyways, I decided that it would be my best friend and I for dinner. I made us two heaping plates of beautiful spaghetti, set the table with my moms fine china, pulled out the dried roses and used the champagne glasses for our orange juice. It was beautiful.

Wasn't it gorgeous? Well, this is where things started to go south. My friend sent a me a text message. It went a little something like this...

Friend: oh hai, i can't come tonite cuz my evil step mom kidnapped me.

Julie: what?

Friend: lol, jk. my godmother is taking me shopping for ugly clothes that i don't like and who doesn't care that i have a life outside of my godmother/goddaughter relationship.

Julie: oh... i guess i'll see you at school on monday...

Friend: yee. peace & blessings.

Well... It was not exactly like that. But you get the gist. She was not going to be able to attend our extremely classy evening. What was I to do? This night could not go to waste. Well, I called up another friend and she was available for the evening. (This is the benefit of having friends who are single - I AM TELLING YOU.)We decided together that we would invite our lovely Sunday School teacher to dine with us for the evening because after all, she is single too. But when we called her, she had plans with her kids. Who does that?! Make plans on Valentine's Day. Doesn't everyone just sit at home devouring delicious chocolates on Valentine's Day? And watch the Titanic? Well, apparently not.

We ended up going back to my house and having a casual candlelit dinner. My sister got home sooner than expected, and joined us. It was a beautiful evening altogether.

The dinner was the total opposite of what I had imagined. But it was nice, I got caught up with a friend I had not spent time with in ages and I realized that I make stinkin' amazing spaghetti. I learned that you can have a lot more fun having dinner with someone than you can crying over your inability to be Kate Winslet or Leonardo DiCaprio. Overall, nothing went as planned and it was exactly what I needed.