Women are amazing creatures, ain’t they?

The first day of this new year found me needing to work a little bit. While Anastasia and some of our friends were playing games in the afternoon, I was clicking away on my console in the room next door. Despite my best effort, I wasn’t ready to go ice skating with everybody at seven.

After much cajoling, I convinced the wifey to go ice skating without Alexei and me. The stipulations were that we show up to watch them skate for a little bit, I could not totally ignore Alexei while working, I could only work for 10 more minutes when we came home, I would not wake up really early the following morning, and, here’s the kicker, that I watch a movie with her after Alexei was in bed. Not too bad, huh?

The ice skating was fun. Now the rink was a bit ghetto, but not too shabby for the $4 price tag including rental. With Alexei nicely nestled down, we started to decide what to watch. She wanted to watch an episode of Mad Men. I was OK with that, but she originally said she wanted a movie. We discovered one we hadn’t seen yet — Definitely, Maybe.

For ten minutes or so I think she was into the movie. Then as the main character started reliving his romantic past life, she tuned out. I think it was more because of all the innuendos and inferences that needed to be made for it to be funny. Background knowledge is an amazing thing in other words.

As we sat there, finally she closed her eyes (after her head had been on a pillow for maybe ten minutes). I asked if she wanted to go to bed, and off we trundled…50 minutes into the movie.

I played the role of good husband and didn’t say a word, but inside I was cracking up. A few hours earlier that evening, I was the tired one who didn’t want to watch a movie. At gunpoint, practically, I had agreed to watch one with my wife. And here we were, stopping early because she fell asleep!