little did i know...our recent trip to san francisco was a test! i was informed of this on the bart ride back to the airport on our very last day. had i known...
jay is a pretty hard guy to annoy. he's laid back, patient, giving, kind, generous...etc. so finding out that i've annoyed him is kinda hard to hear. he'll probably read this and think...now you know how i feel...as i am definitely the easier person to annoy.
here's the sitch...
the first morning we were in the eclectic city of san francisco we set out to find breakfast before a day of sightseeing. we were both quite hungry and still tired from the traveling the day before. we hadn't done much research on where to eat near our hotel but figured it wouldn't be too hard...this is san francisco after all! fyi - i'm a strict vegetarian and jay is a fish eating veg head (a pescetarian if you will). to make a long story short jay ate well all day and i had to resort to bagel and pb and bread and hummus due to our lack meal planning and knowledge of the area. i was hungry, grumpy and shaky all day and almost died and went to heaven when our friends took us out for thai food later that nite. but because of that first day i vowed to find vegan friendly restaurants. i scoured the internet and wrote lists and planned. unfortunately, most of the vegan restaurants listed on the internet were not in the same neighbourhood as our hotel. SO jay and i would hop on the bus in the morning so that i could have a good breakfast. this went on for days. until the last day when we were short on time because of hotel check out time...we went for a stroll on polk street and by chance came across a coffee shop that served vegan goodies and my all time favourite thing...SMOOTHIES! i exclaimed 'if only we had found this place on the first day!' jay gave me a look and said 'if you would have just been open to exploring these places instead of always planning everything on the internet we would have!'
as we were barting to SFO i told jay that i was hurt by his comment at breakfast. i suggested that a response like 'i know, this place is awesome' or 'i know, that totally sucks, eh?' may have been more supportive and appreciated. that's when i found out that our trip had been a test. he knows that i am a creature of habit and that i am definitely pushing my boundaries with this extended trip we are planning. so the sf trip was for him a way to gauge exactly how much i was willing to push. he thought i should be more open to exploring and i had no idea that i was annoying him.
we agreed that more open communication was definitely necessary if we are going to be spending a year traipsing around the world together. its easy to let things slide when you are in your routine lives because if you need to escape the other person its pretty easy to play the avoidance game. things blow over and you're back to normal. BUT when you are always together little annoyances can fester into bigger deals than they really need to be.
i wouldn't say that we failed the test just that there is room for improvement :) i'm still going to research vegan food options wherever we go but i'll also try to be more open to living for the day.
over and out,
corina
