PART I
Last Christmas, Barton gave me a trip to Asheville. It was really sweet and creative; he had made a power point presentation with five different “vacation packages,” an assortment of options for hotels, restaurants and activities to do. All I had to do was choose which package I wanted, and we would be off!
Cut to August of this year, and I still hadn’t cashed in my gift, because I refused to leave my tiny, helpless infant in the care of anyone else besides my controlling @$$, thanks to a hardcore bout of postpartum anxiety (more on that later). This was new for me because I didn’t experience this sort of anxiety after Scout’s birth; I had no problem leaving her and did so pretty early on in her life. I’m not sure I’ll ever tell her this, but the first time I ever spent the night away from her as an infant was to go to a Justin Bieber concert in St. Louis. I’m not sure what that says about my parenting, but I do know what it says about my exquisite musical taste, AMIRIGHT, you guys?
Anyway, by August I was feeling much more confident that other fully competent adult human beings could also care for my offspring, so we got my parents to come stay with the girls while we finally enjoyed my Christmas present. Except we last-minute switched destinations to Charleston (RIP extensive, thoughtful power point presentation), because I’d never been and everyone was telling us that Asheville was better to visit in the fall. Also, it was Barton’s big idea to conveniently use MY Christmas present on HIS birthday weekend, which kind of stole my thunder a little, but I knew football season was looming and this would be one of the last times I’d have any semblance of real conversation or interaction with my husband until January. So off we went!
THURSDAY
We touched down in Charleston, hopped in an Uber and arrived at The Dewberry, where the gravity of the situation at hand (i.e. being at a nice hotel without my kids, in a city far away from my kids) finally hit me—in the best of ways. I could do an entire post on The Dewberry and how much we were enamored with it; I highly suggest splurging and staying there if you want to feel luxurious/pretend you’re Beyonce.
We immediately went to the hotel restaurant, Henriettas, for a bite to eat. The first thing I did was order a glass of champagne to toast the start of the trip. Barton instantly blurted out “make that two!” to the waitress because he knew from much experience that not toasting me/making me drink alone on such a big day would completely derail me. We were a vacation team and he needed to prove it by clinking his glass against mine and saying some sort of generic toast a Bachelor contestant might say, like “Here’s to a wonderful journey together!” He calls it “high maintenance” and I call it “loving companionship.”
I was freakishly giddy, doing a weird and unattractive huge open-mouthed smile, and I was glowing brighter than I was on my own wedding day. Immediately Barton sensed the joyful stupor I was in and smelled trouble.
“Yeeeeeesh. Wow. Yeah. I am already absolutely dreading Sunday because of how insanely depressed you are going to be when we leave,” Barton said, in between choking down sips of $18/glass champagne. He wasn’t going to leave one sip behind because he did the math and it came out to about $4.75/sip.
“Honestly, I’ll probably be ready to go by Sunday,” I said confidently. “I’ll probably be so ready to see my babies and be missing them SO hard.”
Narrator: But she was wrong. Oh, so wrong. In fact, she’d never been more wrong in her life. Including the time she went on a date with someone who wore Crocs.
After lunch, we went out walking up and down King Street, which is basically the main drag for all things cool in C-town (that’s what the Charleston “insiders” call Charleston*) (*No one calls it this at all.) The only thing that really stands out to me from this outing was that I tried on and fell in love with a pair of $300 Ray-ban sunglasses that looked bomb on me, and Scrooge McScroogerton pulled the ol’ “we are already spending a fortune on this trip, let’s not blow hundreds of dollars on sunglasses our kids will break within three minutes of us being back home.” Leave it to Mr. Frugal McDugal to pull a stunt like that on vacation, of all places! “BUT I’M ON VACATION” I yelled violently at the man next to me, whom I mistakenly thought was my husband, while I was busy and distracted checking myself out in the sunglass store mirror. (That man promptly left the store. C-towners can be so stiff sometimes.)
Spoiler alert: I employed the use of the “BUT I’M ON VACATION” line more times than I could count on this trip, and it only achieved its desired effect maybe 8% of the time. Mainly Barton just got annoyed and innocent bystanders stared a lot. I suggest going another route.
FIG - For dinner we knew we wanted to go to FIG, which is the place everyone AND THEIR MOMS had told us to go (is that still a saying? Someone LMK ASAP, because I have plans to use it at other points in this recap.) So we left our hotel at 4:30 on the dot to walk there and wait outside for it to open at 5pm.
At the risk of alienating myself and possibly destroying several close friendships of mine (my friends were really passionate about this restaurant), I have a confession: we were not blown away. But before you cut me out of your lives forever, let me explain.
I always begin every single dinner of my entire life asking the waiter no less than 75 questions about everything. Food, drinks, his favorite things on the menu, the status of his love life, his strained relationship with his father, you know, the usual restaurant banter. Barton literally tries to physically crawl under the table and hide, but he’s 6’3 and not very flexible so it’s never a successful attempt. I end our get-to-know-each-other session with asking the waiter to essentially tell me what to order, since I am truly not capable of making most decisions in life myself.
“You should 100% get the XX.” He was extremely passionate in his response but I don’t even remember what he said because I had already tuned him out and was waiting until he was done blabbering on and on about his amazing dish so that I could order the polar opposite of what he told me to get. (I should mention I also have a tendency to never order what the waiter tells me to, another charming restaurant quirk of mine that makes Barton take a butter knife to his wrists most dinners.)
True to form, I ordered some random fish dish that the waiter never even mentioned, to which he essentially scoffed at and asked me if I was sure. “I’ve never been more sure of anything,” I looked him dead in the eyes and said with more vigor than I had had for anything in my thirty years of life.* (*I am convinced I’m 30 even though I’m pretty sure I might be 31. But that’s neither here nor there.)
My random fish dish arrived and I dug in, only to severely question the texture of the fish. I kept eating, telling myself that this was FIG, of all places, and I was supposed to love this place more than both of my current children and possibly any future unborn children combined. I kept saying a little too emphatically, “Mmmmm-mmm! This is de-LISH,” subconsciously trying to convince myself of it. But about midway through, I came to the super valid, super educated decision that my fish was NOT COOKED THROUGH. Which, if you know me, is probably the biggest anxiety trigger I have— well, besides germs of any kind, being around sick people, my kids getting sick, being contaminated by chemicals, expired expiration dates, getting HIV, having various forms of cancer/tumors, etc. But undercooked food was up there at the top of the list. My stomach dropped and I started to break out in a cold sweat, and Barton immediately knew what was upon us.
“No…don’t do this… Hayley….please….”
But his pleas fell on deaf ears, wide panicky eyes and a lurching stomach. I had already convinced myself that I was mere hours away from the throes of food poisoning, but I was desperate for someone to change my mind about that. So I looked to our extremely busy, extremely indifferent waiter for some comfort.
Spoiler alert: homeboy wasn’t amused. And he definitely didn’t offer me the emotional support I was frantically seeking.
Me: “HEY! So, we LOVE this dish. It’s like, SO GOOD, gah! But I just had one tiny little random question, no big deal at ALL. But the texture seemed a tad bit undercooked, like just a teensy bit maybe? Is it supposed to be like that? Like, is this the way this fish is supposed to be cooked? Again, LOVE it. To die for. Just curious though. But like, do you think it’s fully cooked?”
Him: “Yeah, think so.”
Me: “Cool, cool. Yep. Thought so. Back to eatin’ now!”
I obviously made Barton finish off the fish, and he dug in with zero hesitation (what a psycho, that guy.) That’s another thing I do—when I’m convinced something isn’t cooked properly (which is literally always) and that I’m going to get food poisoning, I always force Barton to eat it, too. That way we are in this together, til the very end, you know? I guess it’s kind of like a modern day version of Romeo & Juliet, except much less romantic and actually not at all like it in the least.
Needless to say, the rest of my night was pretty touch and go, as I basically went through the motions on autopilot just waiting to start vomming everywhere from the poisonous fish dish. We made the rounds to three more bars, and with every drink I ordered I felt a little less frantic and a little more in the clear. And with every drink I ordered I also cross-examined every bartender, asking them if they’ve ever heard of anyone getting food poisoning from FIG. I’m a SUPER FUN dinner date, you guys!!! Don’t everyone ask me to hang out at once, k??
The Belmont - A super small, super chill little craft cocktail joint on King Street. There was only one bartender in here and he was basically making out with his girlfriend the entire time… but I didn’t care because in between french kisses he explained to me that fancy restaurants these days have a cutting-edge way of cooking fish to where it seems undercooked to us silly, lowly peons, but it’s really not. No idea if he was just appeasing me but I wanted to also french kiss him after that comforting revelation.
The Vendue - We then made our way to the rooftop bar of the Vendue, which everyone told us we had to check out, but honestly I wasn’t super into it. As far as rooftop bars go ambiance-wise, it didn’t hold a candle to some of the rooftop bars in Nashville, like Rare Bird or LA Jackson. I didn’t order a drink here because their plastic solo cups made me feel like I was at a college bar in Panama City on Spring Break surrounded by people with questionable calf tattoos, and Barton kindly requested that I take my judgey-ness down a notch or five.
Pearlz - By this point we were hungry again, so we stopped into Pearlz with a “z” (I have big issues with places spelled with a “z” where there should be an “s” so I was extremely skeptical, to say the least), and it was actually really good. I spent a long time trying to find something on the menu that wouldn’t be terrible to throw up (because at this point I was still 45% sure the poisonous fish dish would wreak havoc on me later in the night) and I somehow decided on shrimp tacos, which in hindsight doesn’t seem very vomit-friendly. Barton got some repulsive raw oyster shots that you couldn’t have paid me to consume.
The Living Room - Lastly we made our way back to The Dewberry where we stopped and had a drink at the Living Room, the gorgeous hotel bar that looked like a scene out of Mad Men. Everywhere we went in Charleston people told us we HAD to try out The Living Room because of its cool vibe and amazing cocktails, and I got entirely too much joy from rattling off “Oh perfect, that’s easy, because we’re STAYING at that hotel anyways.” Barton ordered the most extra Mai Tai of all time with basically a full bouquet of pink and purple flowers as garnishes, and I sipped a glass of cabernet like a normal person.
Stay tuned for PART II!