Date Night

I took Monday off work this week so my wife and I could have a date night. We lined up a sitter (Nana) and began to decide what we wanted to do. There have been plenty of things that my wife and I have wanted to do for a while, so I started looking at those. I was truly surprised at just how many things are closed on Mondays!

We’d been talking about going to the Henry Ford Museum/Greenfield Village in Dearborn for sometime and almost booked a visit. However, when I thought about how my wife would be working Sunday night, I didn’t think the trip would be fun for her on little or no sleep. That will be a trip for another day.

She has been wanting to get a pedicure for a while, so I decided that we might be able to do that together. NOT because I like them, as a matter of fact, I’m not too keen on folks touching my feet. I would do it, however, if my wife wanted to because we’d get time together. I couldn’t get an appointment, so we skipped that.

Saturday night, we talked about getting take out and bringing our mattress out to the living room to watch movies. By Sunday we decided that we’d actually go to one of our favorite restaurants and do some shopping.

I made sure that Sam got to sleep through the day. I took the kids to Nana’s in the early afternoon, ran some errands, and was home by 3pm. When she woke up, we showered and got ready to go. We figured we’d shop first and then eat later.

Not too long ago, one of those cheap plastic legs on our couch cracked. We didn’t know at first because it was in the back. When I went to move the couch to sweep, I saw that the screw from the broken leg was digging into the wood floor. The couch was old anyway and we tossed it to the road. So we went looking for couches.

First of all, can I ask why cheaply made furniture is so doggone expensive? Wow! Sticker shock to say the least! We did find a few couches in our budget, but naturally, those were “No Delivery.” Uh, you are a furniture store! No delivery?! What’s up with that?! I was floored. Needless to say, we didn’t get a couch – yet.

Next we went up to the outlets because there were a few things we needed. I was in dire need of work shoes. I tend to wear them out pretty quick. So we stopped at the New Balance store and I picked up a new pair. My wife found some workout type clothes there and picked them up.

Next we stopped at the Goodwill store there. Sam loves thrift store shopping. I do, too, especially when it comes to books, CDs, or albums. She saw that they had all of these Halloween costumes out and they were like $2-$5 each. She loaded the cart with outfits for Ella and Andrew so they could play dress up. She struck gold there.

There was a cool antique shop close by and we strolled through there. I love going through those places. I am always guaranteed to see (1) casserole dishes that my mom and grandparents had, (2) the various glasses that McDonalds have growing up (Smurfs, Shrek, Bugs Bunny, and the McDonald’s characters), (3) some old toy that I had growing up, and (4) plenty of music and movie stuff.

Finally, it was time for dinner. We always say, “We really need to try such and such place,” but end up going to somewhere familiar. We decided to go to our favorite Mexican place. We always get take out from there and have never actually ate in the restaurant before, so we did. It had been so long since we have had a night together I splurged and got queso dip as well as salsa for our chips!

When we left dinner we were stuffed. We weren’t quite ready to go home yet, so we walked around Walmart. Sam wanted to get some containers and Command hooks for the outfits we bought the kids. As usual, we spent more than we intended to, but it was nice to just casually stroll around without having to yell for the kids to “stop touching that.”

At home, we enjoyed the remainder of the evening together. As a parent, you tend to forget just how much you need to share time together without the kids demanding your attention. To just be able to have conversation with each other was something that was so needed by both of us. We both need to continue to make a conscious effort to have those “mom and dad” dates.

Friday Photo Flashback

This is a “feature” I started a while ago with a Daily Writing Prompt, and I have enjoyed it so much, I have decided to keep doing it. This week – two for the price of one. I guess the common theme to these pictures is that they are both taken at my grandma’s house and they both contain … a couch.

It is hard for me to tell which photo is older. They look to have been taken relatively close together age-wise. I know that both of these pictures were favorites of my grandmother, the first one especially.

In the first photo, I am wearing “sleepers.” I remember always having them for some reason. I was probably 4 or 5 when I finally wore pajamas without the “feet” in them. One thing I hated about them was that your feet were always hot and sweaty! URGH!!! Parents must have always worried about their kid’s feet getting cold because even after I started wearing pajamas where the feet were free to breathe, I always seemed to have a pair of slippers on or close by!

That awful yellow couch had an ugly green chair that matched it. I remember the fabric being sort of rough and it always made noise when you sat on it. It reminded me of corduroy pants and the noise they made when you walked in them. At some point, my folks inherited the couch (maybe the chair, too) and it wound up in our basement.

Just to the right of the blue pillow in the photo, I can see the three chains that held the weights of the cuckoo clock I can still hear in my head. In the upper right of the picture you can barely make out the handle to grandma’s fridge, which was always contained a carton of Half and Half (which she called “milk”), eggs, and cans of Altes beer. The stove is to the left of that and on the far wall the sink. There was always a yellow water cup – the yellow matched the color of the couch!

Coincidentally, my sleepers seem to match the cup and couch, too! My grandma used to laugh out loud when she’d see this picture because of how my leg is cocked. I really don’t know if this is the way I always stood around, or if this was a lucky candid snapshot, but it kinda makes me chuckle, too!

The second photo actually makes me laugh out loud. Look at the attitude I am exuding in it! I know for a fact that I will still stand this way today. It isn’t odd to see me with my hand or arm up against a wall or something and my feet positioned with one crossed over the other. It’s obvious that I have been doing that for a long time.

It would not surprise me if that outfit was made out of corduroy! It sure looks like it. I would also wager a guess that those shoes I am wearing are Stride Rite shoes. My brother and I both had a pair. When my oldest boy was born, my mom made sure he had a pair too! I’m not sure that they were ever “bronzed” like my dad’s baby shoes were, though it is entirely possible.

My hair is a mess in both pictures and it’s odd to compare them because it seems that my hair is going one way in one photo and the other way in the other one. I really don’t know what the “lip pout” is about in this picture, but it seems I am pondering something.

What’s interesting about this picture is that it is taken in the front room of my grandma’s house. This was an “off limits” room for us. We just never played in there. We weren’t even really allowed to sit on the furniture in there. So why am I in there? Can’t tell you.

That couch I remember clear as day! There was at least one chair that matched it, maybe two. What I remember most about it was that it was on wheels, one of which you can see in the photo. The chairs had those wheels, too. If you were fooling around on them, they would move fairly easily. If that happened, my grandpa’s OCD would kick in and he would come in and put the chair back in it’s exact place – making sure the wheels went back into the spots by them in the carpet.

I remember those terrible pillows, which were obviously just for decoration, because they were scratchy as hell to the touch. I couldn’t imagine anyone ever wanting to sleep on one. If memory serves me right, there was an end table at each end of it. They would have had big ugly lamps on them and may have looked something like this:

Almost everyone had end tables that looked like that in the 70’s!!

The painting above the couch is one I recognize, but it may have been replaced with another as I got older. I went through some other photos and actually found one with the whole thing. I’m not sure exactly where this is supposed to be, maybe Hawaii? I don’t know, but it was almost as long as the couch!

I don’t want to sound like an egotistic jerk, but these two photos of me are among my top ten favorites. They bring back some good memories. It may seem weird to say, but as I look at them, I can almost smell the stale cigarette air that hung in every room of my grandma’s house. I’m sure that wherever those couches may reside today, they almost assuredly reek of Lucky Strike and Kool cigarettes!