Deal or No Deal

There are two little things you need to know about me. The first is that I love having dinner at one particular German restaurant in Schwetzingen, a town about 10 minutes away from Nussloch. I get schnitzel with sauce, bratkartoffeln, and a glass of white wine. It's my absolute favorite place to eat here. I am fantasizing about it right now. Nathan and I haven't eaten there since before his first surgery. It's been at least two months. The second thing you need to know is that I have a chronic problem. There is constantly a large pile of clothes (all mine...) in need of ironing. I usually only tackle it about once or twice a year and it takes me a few movies to get through it all. On extremely rare occasions I will pull something out of the pile and iron it so I can wear it the next day. My friends in college used to make fun of me for owning so many clothes that I had to iron. Now that I'm married to Nathan, he is constantly asking me when I can take care of the ironing pile. The current pile has traveled all the way from my closet in our apartment in Shreveport to the floor in our closet room here in our current apartment. The pile has been occasionally picked through and added to, but has retained a perpetual presence. After months and months of saying I would get to it and then forgetting or having unavoidable situations come up, I finally told Nathan I was going to do it. I told him to make me a deal. If I ironed every single piece in the pile, he would take me to the German restaurant. He said, "Deal!" The weekend before last, I pulled out the iron, the pile of clothes, set up the ironing board in the living room, and pulled up an episode of The Bachelor. (Don't judge me. I know it's smut, as Nathan would say, but I can't help myself.) I plugged the iron in and waited for it to heat up. After twenty minutes, it was only slightly warm. The dadgum thing totally fizzled out on me. I was so mad. Nathan suggested we could still have dinner at the German restaurant since I had intended to iron the clothes and I was so tempted to agree. More than two months is a long time to live without some good ole fried pork and potatoes! But instead I told Nathan no matter how much I begged and pleaded with him to take me, he would agree to say no unless all of the clothes were ironed. No matter what. He said alright and last week I bought a new iron. I tackled a third of the pile last Saturday and then finally finished the rest on Friday. So Saturday evening, after spending the morning at Landstuhl for Nathan's infusion, we finally had dinner at the German restaurant and it was delicious! Totally worth ironing all 24 pieces of clothing. And from now on, I'm going to try implementing a better system...

our new iron

much trustier than the last one : )

almost everything I ironed

Nathan with his hot chocolate and water

you can also see my wine and water

schnitzel mit sauce

bratkartoffeln für zwei

we usually stop for gelato a few stores down

Nathan got this concoction, I was too full to have any