Date night

My Mom came in town to help out last week and, in what I suspect may be the first of many efforts to convince me not to stick her in a nursing home somewhere down the line, even offered to stay over an extra night so that Nick and I could have a date night.

I'm embarrassed to say that I can't remember the last time Nick and I had a night to ourselves that didn't involve a Family Guy marathon. 

We decided to go to one of our favorite restaurants, The Stable.  You may remember this post about the glorious shrimp and cheese dip that I accidentally left in my trunk overnight but ate anyway from The Stable. 

One of the more interesting menu items is something simply called the "plate of food".  At $10, the plate of food is whatever the chef feels like preparing for you - no refunds.  We've never been adventurous enough to order it for ourselves but we've seen it arrive on other tables in the form of anything from lasagna to pot roast.

In the spirit of date night Nick decided to throw caution to the wind and go for it, hoping the chef would cook up something real special for our romantic evening.

I'm pretty sure the chef was either a jaded ex-boyfriend or a 9-year-old boy. 

With only the words, "are you sure?", we silently switched plates and I handed him my salmon. 

You may notice that in the time it took me to get my phone out of my purse and snap a quick pic the better part of one chili dog was annihilated.  This is because I've developed a really bad habit of eating like someone is about to steal my food, as my Mom pointed out when I burped and licked the last of the bread crumbs off my fingers as she was just taking the first bite of her sandwich as we ate lunch one day. 

It's not my fault - most of the time when I eat someone IS about to steal my food.  Two little thiefs that like to sit on my lap and eat off my plate so I have to be quick as lightning if I actually want anything for myself.

The silver lining surrounding the chili dogs is that I've been really stressed out about making a birth control decision before my 6-week post partum check up with J.T. next week, and I think the answer was served right up to me on a platter.

After dinner we decided to grab a drink at a bar we weren't nearly cool enough to be in.   

It occurred to me, as we were sitting there in a fabulous bar, with a fabulous view, having fabulous drinks and watching fabulous people strut around without post partum bellies or stuff leaking out of their boobs that now smelled of pinot grigio, that date nights have really changed for us.

For example, topics of conversation included:  "I can't remember the last time I shaved my legs,"  and "If you don't treat your athletes foot you're just going to keep giving it back to me."

Also we kept looking at our watches and saying things like, "I can't believe it's only 8:30!  It feels like 2am!"  

It's just interesting that what used to be a spur of the moment Tuesday night outing - dinner and drinks - is now something that we look forward to for weeks, giggling and prancing around the kitchen like school girls when we thought about it.

I'm working on teaching Ellie how to drive the van so that next time she can DD.