Dates

J and I are on a date tonight. You can tell it's a hot date because I'm blogging in the middle of it.

No, we really are on a date. A lot of our dates are at home nowadays, because we have a small bear that lives upstairs. We've had to get creative since he entered the picture, because "dinner and a movie" requires "lots of phone calls and emails to get ahold of babysitters and then additional time to prep outfits-diapers-and-food and then heartbreaking separation anxiety when we drop him off and having to get back by 7:30 anyway so that he gets into bed somewhat close to his bedtime."

So we do that sometimes, but more often than not we have our dates at home. This requires creativity, which is a lot of fun. A few weeks ago we made up our own game where we advanced across a homemade board by answering fun conversation cards. We played a game of I Spy awhile ago, but we were "spying" into the five places where we've lived since we were married. We look at old photos and reminisce. We made our own "jazz and dessert" night with cheesecake, dressing up in our finest, and dancing to old Miles Davis recordings in the living room. For awhile we were doing a once-a-month date of cooking international food and taking pictures to show off to the general public. We haven't done one in awhile, mostly because we're saving money by not buying food to help defray the cost of our recent auto repairs. (Paypal donations can be made here.)

So anyway, tonight's date is "lines from the pocket," which we stole from Whose Line. I wrote out about 20 random lines for us to draw out of our pockets and read aloud (in the midst of whatever conversation was happening otherwise) at 10 minute intervals. Don't worry, most of these are not super-romantic lines. There is no card that says "When I gaze into your eyes I see all the splendor of the starry beauty of a sable summer night." There is, however, a card that says "Did you remember to take out the trash?"

I did remember to take out the trash. I was going to take it out after he went to bed, but at 5:30 he was pulling empty cans of crushed tomatoes out of the recycling and dripping their remnants onto the kitchen floor. He's become obsessed with the trash bin recently. I think it's because he figured out that there are empty yogurt containers in there and there might be something left at the bottom. If he's left unattended in the kitchen he knocks the top off of the garbage and digs until he finds an old yogurt. The trash is also dangerous because we're no longer sure what we're throwing out. This afternoon, unbeknownst to James, I watched him take two of my cornet mouthpieces and drop them in his diaper genie. (Ewww...) J asked me recently, "Do you think, if we had a little girl, that we'd be dealing with these sorts of things?" James was standing in a rocking chair and sucking on a power cord at the time.
 

He's been pushing the chair up against the table, and using it to climb up and reach whatever we're hiding.

But back to our date. We're having a grand time. The trash it taken out, we're having some good dark chocolate, and James is in bed. We need good dates nowadays. Thank you, THANK YOU, to all of you who gave us gift certificates to nice restaurants for Christmas. We will love a chance to have a date out of the house.

Now, are any of you interested in doing some babysitting?