is this together?

ah, togetherness. we saw 'knocked up' last night with rod, erich and monica and it held up pretty well after reading such effusively glowing reviews. it seemed timely (as everything does these days) to watch a movie about how ironizing marital togetherness produces an even greater bond of loyalty in the end.

it's hard not to love hollywood in moments like that, especially when the movie diegetically played one of our favorite new lily allen songs and washed the credits in a lovely song about a daughter. anyway, i've been thinking about togetherness a bit lately because of two anecdotes:

on saturday, after having looked at baby stuff in the morning, ted and i had lunch at a brew pub in chapel hill (mom, we must take you there for the onion rings). when we finally flagged the waiter down for the check, he asked us if it was together or separate. we thought this was hilarious because we assumed that it was obvious that we were um, like, totally together.

so again, on wednesdsay evening after going to the 'meet the midwives' event--which ended in an extensive tour of the maternity ward at unc hospital--we went to a restaurant, had a nice dinner together, and our waiter asked us, again, if the check was together or separate. at this point, it was so funny that i couldn't resist going beyond mere speculation (is it our body language? did we want to leave too early? is it because i never ordered a beer? do we somehow look miserable? did we have a catastrophically loud and public fight that we've both blanked on?). i asked the waiter as i was waiting for ted to finish washing his hands if there was something about certain tables that inclines him to ask if the checks are separate. he explained everything from a general situational perspective (most everyone who eats there gets their own check, even if they're sitting at a table of four) and was then completely surprised to hear that not only have we been married for five years, but that we had a baby on the way. he promised to always ask us if we wanted separate checks, which means i'll definitely be going back.

i'm still not sure why this is so funny to me, but i do relish the notion that we are so very much together while also being separate.