Last night’s dinner was something of a lesson in humility. The plan was to make Roasted Butternut Alfredo; the recipe had been tempting me for a week and I’d roasted and pureed my butternut squash on Saturday in preparation. All we needed was white wine, because the wine we’d gambled on at the co-op on Sunday turned out not to be vegan (winemakers, y u gotta filter your wine with fish bladders and egg albumin?!). After work, S rushed off to World Market to purchase some animal-friendly wine while I set out to prep the rest of the meal.

I opened my laptop, pulled up the recipe, and immediately realized I’d made a huge mistake. The night before, as I’d begun to drift off to sleep (only to dream of Ann Romney’s back and Barack Obama failing to find vegan food for me in London – no lie), I’d remembered that the recipe required soaked cashews.

“It’ll be okay,” I’d said to myself. “I’ll just start soaking them in the morning.”

Because, y’know, we always remember to do what we tell ourselves to do just before falling asleep, right? Yeah… no. Anyway, once I realized my terrible error, I called S and abashedly apologized. He took it in stride and decided to pick up the wine anyway since we’d need it tomorrow. I settled onto the couch with Moria to contemplate dinner and ponder my failure.

You see, I am not the forgetful one in our relationship. That title definitely goes to S. Don’t get me wrong; I’ve met people with worse memories… but things do tend to slide out of his brain rather easily. Sometimes I might react a little harshly, because I am impatient and I have an irritatingly sharp memory. (Have you ever had to pretend you didn’t remember some little tiny detail an acquaintance mentioned once in conversation three years earlier? Yeah, it’s… awkward.) Anyway,  this error on my part chastened me a bit. I felt guilty for forgetting and for throwing off our dinner plans at the last moment.

And then the door opened, and S walked in empty-handed. I raised my eyebrows.

“I forgot my driver’s license, so they wouldn’t sell me the wine. They’re holding it for me.”

I smiled and forgave him graciously, when perhaps in another circumstance I would’ve been annoyed and sharp-tongued. My personal moment of forgetfulness was, er, forgotten, and our world was back in kilter.

Oh, and dinner? I told S to pick up one of those Indian meals in a box when he returned to World Market to get the wine. We served it with rice, and it was lazy eating at its finest. Neither S nor I could possibly have messed this one up!

Embarrassingly easy.

What do you do when your dinner plans change at the last minute? Are you forgetful?