I saw the garnish, I knew what it was, and I ate it.

Miss Edith is older than she used to be and to celebrate, Notarius took her out for a lush, rich meal at a lush, very High Design restaurant in town.

The appetizer? Mine was a little... weird; my beloved's was, he tells me, divine.
The entrees? Both wonderful.

The drinks we ordered were also very nice: I had a Pimm's Cup and he had a mint julep. My drink came with a little slice of cucumber stuck over the rim of the glass, as is traditional. Notarius's drink, on the other hand, was garnished with something that, in the dim light, I could not identify at all. I peered at it from across the table and wondered if it was, perhaps, a stalk of pickled parsnip; or, maybe a very long piece of raw ginger? The garnish was maybe three inches long and a quarter of an inch thick; it wasn't a small object by any means. (Well, as far as it goes with things you would find garnishing an alcoholic beverage.) I asked him, "What is that thing in your drink?"

Notarius confessed that he had no idea. I took it from the glass and carefully bit into the end that wasn't residing in the drink. It had a sweetness to it and a slight crunch, but could not be bitten through. It was incredibly fibrous. I spent five minutes putting the end of this thing into my mouth and lowering my teeth experimentally, and couldn't guess what the hell it was. "I thought maybe it was from the core of a pineapple," Notarius said, "But I don't think it is."

Finally I asked our waitress what the fuck it was sticking out of the glass, and she said, "It's sugar cane."

Sugar cane.

Talk about something I never would have guessed.

Mystery solved, I returned to my drink, with its comfortingly familiar cucumber garnish. I took a bite of the cucumber and then popped the rest of it into my mouth. "I saw the garnish, I knew what it was, and I ate it," I said happily.

Notarius Gives Me Gold

I know there are a zillion other jokes like this around, but...

The other day, out of nowhere -- long after Easter, please note -- Notarius turned to me and said, "Wouldn't it be great if they made marshmallow Peeps but instead of being little chicks they looked like Samuel Pepys?"

This is the man I married.