Marriage, Cheese, and the Advent of the Green Bag

We have been married for three years and maybe seven weeks. For our anniversary some nice things happened, and I am only getting to chronicle them now.

The First Thing

A brown box arrived via a person dressed in brown in a brown truck, and that was how we learned that our excellent friends had arranged for a special present for the anniversary.

Did they give us one three years and seven weeks ago? Apparently not, though I would have missed that one on the quiz. (Also, I can’t stand to think about them feeling guilty and worried, because it reminds me of the slew of excellent and generous friends I never bought wedding presents for in my broke and single days. A cold shudder, and an apology to the masses.)

But back to the happy, cheese-filled place: this year our friends enrolled us in a CHEESE OF THE MONTH club via the Bedford Cheese Shop. We will get three kinds of cheese every month for six months.

As I write, we have already received two installments. It’s exciting. So exciting that this happened: in the second, the dry ice was packed in an unusual way. It was disguised, in fact, as cheese. Everything that is wrapped in anything might be fancy cheese! I became very greedy and unwrapped this extra wax-paper wrapped thing to sniff and otherwise assess it . . . just before I realized it was actually dry ice! How dramatic! I am lucky that I did not evaporate!

We will get three kinds of cheese per month. Three. We have eaten a lot of it, and I made a riff on a gorgonzola sauce for pumpkin ravioli with one sort, and I made chicken with ham blankets and buttery soft Swiss double cream cheese with another sort. Also, we drink wine and eat cheese while making dinner and just generally live like kings.

This bounty, in addition to the accompanying bubble wrap that comes in the box every month for six months, is pretty great.

The Second Thing

On the day of the anniversary, I went out for a great dinner with my husband, at Savoy. As it happened I coughed like I was in the final throes of TB the whole time, but we had a super time and hopefully the other diners didn’t perceive me as too much of a vector. I had one half of a bacon infused old-fashioned cocktail, which is not as ridiculous as it sounds. Well, the one half part is, but the bacon part isn’t. It did not have a strip of raw bacon rimming the outside of a rocks glass, as I had momentarily imagined, or chunks floating within. It was simply delicious and the whiskey had a slightly smokey aspect. And, note to self: Wow, do I like spending time alone with my husband that is not cloaked in chores and tasks and decisions, and wow, is there barely any of that these days. Wowee.

Another Thing

By my husband of three years, I was given a really splendid little green purse with red stitching. I got it for being a GREAT WIFE. Wow, do I love this bag, hewn of leather of the fine caliber that I am of wife! Hewn! But it also inspires me to try to be a better wife: either to stay as good as the bag, or let’s face it, to try get there in the first place.

The next installment will be be a continuation of this post about the adventures of the green bag.