Breakfast On Pluto

I have new, tangible proof of how much my husband loves me.

Granted, every day that he buys me food, puts up with my grumpy, preggo self, calls me beautiful amidst a bulging belly and means it, and a whole host of others things prove his love to me. However, he went above and beyond the husbandly call of duty yesterday.

I had spent the night before trying to be as pleasant as possible under the circumstances, and maybe amidst all the pleasant commentary I threw in a few gripes about how long it's been since I've played Mario Party. Now in order to understand my husband's act of pure selflessness, you have to understand two things about Mario Party. One is that whoever came up with the game thought it would be great fun to let the characters, in a sense, beat the crap out of you. By this I mean that no matter what you do, the computer characters will find ways to beat you in any unreasonable way possible. This includes but is not limited to: landing on spaces with secret stars and coins (which you never land on), receiving choice items that enable free or awesome things (which are never available to you, literally), getting the best rolls, the most amount of money, and lets not forget the games. Oh, the games, where you think a 9 year old should be able to play this and have fun. No, they make the computer characters (on Easy, mind you) perform unimaginable feats. Oh, they go to great lengths to beat you in this game. God forbid the human player wins. I guess they figured after so many times of winning the fun and challenge would be gone. Regardless, Mario in this game is pretty much the devil.

The second thing is this:  I don't mind this too much. Yes, its annoying. Yes, I have spent hours screaming at Yoshi because in my mind there was no possible way he could have finished the last level of the game in .3 seconds when I was over 50 feet ahead of him. But somehow it hasn't hindered my ability to enjoy the goofy game to the utmost.  Rob on the other hand...oh Rob. After about 5 times of playing this game within our first year of marriage in Chicago, the hatred was so fully formed that I didn't even have to say the words without his face turning bright red.

You can imagine my surprise then, when I received a text from Rob at work saying, "Will you have a mario party date with me tonight?"

I don't know what was sweeter to me, the idea that my husband asked me out on a date formally again or the idea that he was willing to play Mario Party with me. I am in true true love. :-)

**ps** we spent a lovely half hour playing mario party and eating Rob's famous popcorn. During which the game tried to make amends with Robert by providing him with over 320 coins while I managed to walk away with...about 6. Ah well, you can't play your Mario Party with a husband and win it too, I guess.