I'd like the selfie combo platter, please. With a side of shut up.

My lovely bride here has taught me two nights in a row now how to employ the modern-marvel technology of iPhone photo filters for our mutual benefit. These miracle filters can remedy uneven lighting, reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles -- as the anti-aging-moisturizer industry so clumsily phrases the issue to avoid the inconvenient commitment of making any actual promises -- assuage the heartbreak of embarrassing oily shine, eliminate telltale ethnic features and -- if you filter our picture to simple, classic black-and-white duotone as she has done here -- perpetuate my above-stated illusion that we're two crazy young newlyweds -- neither of whom is in actuality a raging gay homosexual man who photographs as such in color -- honeymooning at an unnamed (so I can gossip on my blog) restaurant with a waitress who is committed to total transparency regarding her extended family's marriages, biological children, infertility issues, adoptions, incomplete educations, pregnant high-school friends, income levels, career disillusionment and declared lack of racism. For a full hour after closing time. Impressively without breathing even once so we could maybe jump in and transform her relentless monologue into perhaps a conversation. You know: like the kind two friends intend to have when they go to a restaurant and share a two-person booth. 

On the plus side, my I'm-clearly-not-listening face didn't deter our waitress for one second from delivering her full, no-commercial-breaks monologue and I was able to compose pretty much this entire post in my head so all I had to do when I got home was just type it. And my lovely bride here is moving away in a few weeks so I hate her anyway and all I really wanted out of the evening was a photo and an engaging caption I could post on my blog. So really, everybody wins here. Except for our poor waitress, who has run out of patrons to trap with engaging tales of her family's myriad secrets. But there's always tomorrow. 

Meanwhile, good night to the rest of us who've mastered the art of shutting up so we can sleep.