A Confession

Ever since Miss Lily came home Jacob and I have only been out by ourselves twice. Yes, you read that correctly, twice, in five and a half years. One night my friend watched Lily so that we could attend her first ever parent night at school, we were gone for 40 minutes. She survived, we survived. We have been saying for years that we need to find someone to babysit but this is Miami and other than our close friends who are busy with their own kids we just can't find anyone we feel comfortable with. One time years back my sister came to visit and Jakey and I hightailed it out of the house for a dinner date.

My friend Jakie has been bugging me lately to let her babysit. I feel like it is an imposition as she is divorced with 2 girls and is always so busy. Her girls are teenagers. Well the other day we decided to have a garage sale as we seem to have accumulated way to much stuff, I come from a family of accumulators and it doesn't sit well with me. I detest stuff, it bothers me and I have never been one for keeping stuff. Every few months I have a good sort out and send it off to charity but this time I decided to try and have a garage sale and yesterday was the day so hubs had to be home with me. We had this light bulb moment when we realised that it was a Saturday and would be a perfect night for a date.

I wasted no time calling Jakie. I saw smoke cos I dialled that number so fast. She said yes. OMG we were going on a date. We were so excited. Following a day of haggling with cheap people who were buying our junk we fed the kids, bathed them got ourselves all gussied up and hightailed it out the front door with nary a glance over our shoulders. We were free.

We had such a great time and my hubby even opened the car door for me. He used to always do that but with the addition of little people it has gone by the wayside and I didn't even notice and when he walked to my side of the car last night I thought he wanted me to drive so I turned around to go to the drivers door until I realised what he was doing. We had dinner in a grown up restaurant with grown up food and drinks. No bibs were involved, no drool, no sticky fingers tugging at my sleeve. We finished our sentences, we laughed uninterrupted and then we walked around outside laughing and chatting. Of course there had to be catch and it was my migraine that I was trying so damned hard to ignore but after a couple of hours that searing pain just couldn't be ignored for one more second so I asked if we could go home.

It was still a really fabulous evening and it is going to happen again soon. Lily had a blast, she was still up when we got home but what can I say, it was a first for her and she was having so much fun. Rosie slept right through everything which was the plan. Jakie and Lucy, thank you so much. You have no idea what it was like to be out by ourselves. We love our kidlets to bits but we love each other too and being alone was fabulous.

As for garage sales: you can keep 'em. Yes, we made lots of pennies and it was a success but dealing with all those people is just yucky.