Fast food + Appliance Shopping = Romance

There are many lovely places to go for a romantic Valentine’s Day dinner in our fair ZIP code, but Chik Fil A isn’t one that naturally springs to mind. Yet that is where my husband and I wound up this past Monday night with our two kids to celebrate our 16^th Valentine’s Day as a couple.

If the idea of eating fast food on Feb. 14 with your husband, a 3-year-old and a baby doesn’t make you swoon, then you won’t be turned on by our next stop: Sears, where we bought a new clothes dryer.

It had to be done, regardless of the Hallmark holiday. Our old dryer, which was born sometime during the last century and had been taking two hours to dry a load of clothes, suddenly gave out on the last load of weekend laundry the night before. The idea of going without a way to fully wash and dry clothes and bedding in a house with two little ones was too scary to consider putting off the decidedly unromantic shopping trip, even if it was the most romantic night of the year.

The thing is, neither of us really cared. Sure, we weren’t excited about plunking down hundreds of dollars on something as boring as dryer, especially when we had to walk by a display of tantalizing flat screen TVs to get to the household appliance section. It’s not like we had any big plans to go out on a date on Valentine’s Day – in fact, having to buy the dryer is the only reason we ate out on the big day.

And Chik Fil A turned out to be a rather sweet place to eat that night. For one thing, there was not much of a crowd. And the people that were there were just like us – little families with young children, having a low key night out. And Sears was also quiet, I guess because most ladies prefer a more traditional gift from Smyth’s as opposed to a Kenmore to be delivered 48 hours after the fact.

So I would argue that the fast food/appliance buying date was the perfect, low-key way to spend Valentine’s Day. I think maybe a night out like that would actually be a good litmus test for a young couple early in their relationship: If the two of you can make the most of a night built on fried chicken sandwiches, waffle fries and appliances, then you are on the road to domestic bliss.