Disappointment. (For Lisa)

If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.
-Henry David Thorough

Disappointment This week has been fraught with it. There has been the disappointment I've felt in Virginia and it's unrelenting heat. I'm so over the 100+ degree days I could scream. Seriously, summer, we get it. You're hot. Can we move on now? It sounds melodramatic, but I feel like the heat's affected almost every area of my life--I can't take the dog and the kids for a walk without putting all of us at risk of heat stroke, I can only enjoy our new screened-in porch by gazing at it from inside my house, I've been extremely irritable and impatient with my kids, and I'm L-A-Z-Y. The heat has zapped my motivation, which means no early morning workouts, which means working out later on in the day, which means not running or swimming or biking, which means a lower quality workout, all which translates into another form of disappointment--the disappointment I feel in myself.

Fortunately, last night I was blessed to have found something to serve as a scapegoat for my disappointment. Actually, it was a place--a restaurant I will call Shoe, or the restaurant formerly known as The Shoe, so as not to give away it's real name. Shoe is a local restaurant in a trendy area of town with a laudable goal: to "explore and preserve our fine Virginia heritage food-ways". Meaning, I suppose, it tries to buy locally grown food when it can and changes it's menu to correspond with the seasonal harvest. I can definitely support this. I enjoy jumping on bandwagons, as Shoe has done with the localvore movement (or, in our server's words, "the slow-growth movement"). So my husband and I, along with two dear friends of ours, decided to give their fare a try.

Unfortunately, Shoe is going to have a difficult time convincing anyone to eat local with food items such as they served last night. The biggest travesty they committed was in their calamari. A little known fact about my husband is that he LOVES calamari and likes to order it at most every new restaurant at which we eat. I'm sure if The McDonald's offered calamari as a new item on their dollar menu he would give it a try. Thus, seeing it on Shoe's menu as an appetizer, we decided to order it.

Bad idea. The server brought out the calamari. There were four of them. As in, four pieces. For those of you who have never ordered this delight, most places serve calamari much like french fries. There are a bunch of them and they are fried. Squeeze some lemon on them and muaw--delicious. So to see four pieces of grilled squid come out was a little--wait for it--disappointing. The squid had been cut up and stuffed with what the menu claimed was "shrimp, orange, black olives, basil, and zucchini". What the cooks REALLY stuffed in there was onions, onions, and some more onions with a side of mandarin oranges from a can. We all were game for trying it, though, as this was an $11 appetizer. As you can imagine, no one at our table was even the slightest bit impressed. The squid itself was rubbery and tough to chew. The stuffing was all onions, which I, for one, do not even like. As for the shrimp...well, if it had managed to find a spot in there amongst all those onions, I couldn't taste it. Nor had I the opportunity, as when you are eating one little piece of squid the size of your thumb you don't really have a chance to savor its flavors.

The entrees? I'm afraid they were a disappointment too. Jonathan's potatoes were cold, Kevin's lasagna was burnt, and our pasta (Lisa and I ordered the same thing)--which the waitress told us was far and away the best pasta dish being served--was, well, disgusting. And perhaps we should have guessed this, as we ordered black fettuccine. Come to find out that they use squid dye to give the fettuccine its color, which may make the pasta "a little saltier" than that which we are accustomed to. A little saltier and a great deal less edible, in my opinion. Yuck. Needless to say, we won't be eating at Shoe again. As far as I'm concerned, Shoe deserves The Boot (o; (this is an inside joke for those of you who are wondering what is wrong with me).

Fortunately, there is a silver lining to my week of disappointment. So I didn't work out first thing in the morning. I have just come off a two week vacation. I am ok with giving myself a grace period to readjust to normal life. At least I didn't waste my time taking a post-workout shower in the morning, only to step outside and immediately be drenched with sweat. Next week will be better (at least for working out). And although our dinner was yuck, I thoroughly enjoyed the company of our friends last night, as I think we all did. The nasty cuisine only made for more jokes. And because no one enjoyed their meals, no one ate very much, and we all felt entitled to get some ice cream following dinner. So I got to dine on a large bowl of Cold Stone guilt free. How's that for compensation, Henry David?

Now, reading this post you may be disappointed that it has almost nothing to do with the rest of my blog. Maybe you are right to feel that way. Or maybe you can view it as a form of solidarity--not only are you reading about my experiences with disappointment, you are experiencing a form of it yourself. We now have that in common. You see? I'm just doing my part to bring us closer together. You're welcome.