It seemed nothing was going right lately.
Our fifth anniversary was approaching but our schedules were crazy, the kids demanded constant attention and when the day finally came no restaurant in town could seat us. The topper came when Sharon, who had been battling a bad case of the sniffles all week, lost her battle with the bug and wanted nothing more than to crawl under the comforters and hopefully sleep it off.
Sharon felt really bad about 'ruining' our special night, as she liked to call it, but simply didn't have the strength to do anything. I tried my best to comfort her, telling her it wasn't her fault, that we'd just had a run of really abysmal luck, but I have to admit that I was deeply disappointed and I knew she was too. We'd managed to get my bachelor brother to entertain the kids - a miracle to find him home on the weekend - and my visions of a romantic dinner and maybe a movie or show, and possibly even some anniversary sex flew out the window. I felt like a real shit, but I was really looking forward to some crazy, uninhibited sex, the kind we used to have at a moment's notice before we became parents, took on a mortgage and let a myriad of worries and responsibilities, big and small, wear us down. The thought of spending a beautiful late winter Saturday night, our anniversary, crystal clear air featuring glittering stars on yesterday's six inches of pristine snow, basically alone watching television started my mood sliding south.
We ordered a pizza and opened a bottle of wine although she didn't feel like drinking and hardly touched her food. Disappointment hung in the air like humidity and I tried to force down a slice so that I wouldn't get totally plastered when I finished off the bottle later when she'd gone to bed.
After dinner Sharon as a combination goodwill gesture and apology brought out some of our adult movies we had squirreled away from the general population of family fare. It was better than what was on cable, I suppose, but this was one of the relatively few times that I didn't want to watch porn. She gave me a quick kiss on the forehead and I felt how warm her lips were from her low-grade fever. She then went into the bedroom to get changed. I assumed she'd put on her fleece pjs and that would be it for the anniversary. I poured another big glass of shiraz and glumly went through the videos looking for something to jerk off to.