Date night
Saturday, May 23, 2009Wonder Woman decided to take the reigns of our oft-postulated, rarely executed plan for a semi-regular “date night”—which is how we came to have one for reals last night.
“Be creative,” I was told.
I was operating on about four-and-a-half hours of sleep, which I enjoyed on our fold-out couch, as Wonder Woman was afflicted with both a cold and brutal seasonal allergies … and, yes, my love for her knows no bounds—except when she has both a cold and brutal seasonal allergies, at which point my love knows I am bound for the couch.
I have been begging Jayna at bedtime, night after night, to please, please, PLEASE, for the love of Tinkerbell and all things holy, not serenade us with song and babble until 6 a.m. has arrived … and she has been assuring me that she will respect our wishes on the matter.
LIAR!
After impressing upon her at bedtime Thursday night that I really, really, REALLY meant it (is it still considered abuse if I don’t actually press the hot iron against her skin, but merely threaten to do so?), she, to her sort-of credit, didn’t start singing or babbling at 5:10 yesterday morning. No, she started fake coughing! Yes, she staged a lengthy, on-again/off-again coughing fit whose fraudulent nature was painfully obvious. The only way it could have seemed more contrived is if, instead of actually making a real coughing sound, she instead just said the word “cough” over and over.
Up the stairs I went to remind her about the iron the 6 a.m. rule. She shushed up, and I jumped back on the couch in a futile effort to fool myself into thinking I’d actually get some more sleep.
At 5:20, I heard footsteps descending the stairs, and then saw Zan come strolling into the room.
“Oh. Hi, Daddy.”
“[squint-blink-squint] … What are you doing up?”
He slapped one of his palms against his forehead, a la “I shoulda had a V-8.”
“Oh, man, I forgot!” he said.
He turned and went back up the stairs.
He forgot? He forgot? Well, it might be time to get him tested for Alzheimer’s, because we have done everything short of tattoo on every square inch of his body the instruction “Don’t come downstairs before 6 o’clock.”
I mean, Christ, we even hung this on the back of his bedroom door:
In fairness, I think what he meant by, “Oh, man, I forgot!” was, “Oh, man, I didn’t know you were going to be out here on the couch and thereby capable of intercepting me before I crept into your room and convinced Mommy to let me crawl into her side of the bed.”
He returned to his room … and then began a singing-and-babbling concert of his own.
What is it with these kids? Don’t they understand that sleep is more precious than diamonds? More rare than unicorns? More satisfying than Snickers?
No. No, they don’t. But they will someday … and I continue to warn them that “someday” will come.
“Someday,” I say to them, “I will be waking you up in the morning, and you will be saying, ‘But I need more sleep, Daddy.’ And I will say, ‘More sleep? You want more sleep? You could have had years of more sleep … but YOU BLEW IT! NOW GET YOUR SORRY ASS OUT OF BED! PAYBACK IS A BITCH, MOTHERFUCKER!”
Or something like that.
By 5:30 p.m., I was practically catatonic from a combination of sleep deprivation and heat exhaustion (it was about 90 outside, and the first-floor A/C doesn’t cool my office when the door is closed, which it has to be when the children are home, because sweet Christ, the screaming and fighting), and Wonder Woman was practically comatose from wrangling the kids all day while enduring nonstop sneezing fits, watery eyes and extreme congestion.
And nothing screams “DATE NIGHT!” like that last paragraph, am I right?
I asked Wonder Woman if she wanted to bail on the idea, but she apparently was on a mission from God to carry out her date-night plan, so off we went.
Normally, we go to a nice martini bar and restaurant in our town, or into Boston, or up to Cape Ann. So, based on her “Be creative” edict, I crossed those places off the list of Inaugural Date Night destinations, and instead settled on Finz in Salem. There, we cozied up to the bar and drank a couple rounds of these …
… while being all flirty and cuddly and semi-inebriated—and CHILDLESS—and I’ll be damned if Wonder Woman isn’t totally on to something with this whole “date night” thing.
(About the photo: Yeah, the BlackBerry continues to underwhelm with its relatively poor picture quality, but the image still captures the moment. I mean, just look at that delicious pair of … margaritas.)
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Ach, it is ALL about SLEEP! Time for some hard-core bribery. Take a trip to the dollar store, SHOW her the cool stuff you got, and tell her she can pick something AFTER 6 a.m. in the morning! I love your website, and yes, I’m sorry, but I’m yet another FEMALE fan…:)
i found you through bossy, i feel your pain about children waking too early and oh gods the fighting…and my husband would say something similar about a picture of me holding 2 margaritas in such a “pleasent” manner!
Oh I hear ya!
Oh yes I do!
We will do a happy dance to get a Kid to sleep til 6am!
So far have’nt had to “bust a move”….4am was the final nail in the coffin tho.
So if we get to 5am-5.30am we are thiking we are doing well….
The Last photo truly encapulates:)
I have the opposite problem with my girls. Actually getting them to get their asses up and get ready for school is the bane of my existence. Ok, mostly the 14 year-old. My 17 year-old is good about getting herself up and off to school. I have threatened the six year-old with … well, never mind what I threatened her with if she comes in my room before 7am. She crawled into my bed at 5:30 this morning. To my credit, she is still alive. And to her credit, at least she went back to sleep.
Just wait until they are 14…then you can scream “Hey, you never let me sleep when you were little, so now it’s payback time! Get the hell up!!” And then bang some pots together. It’s fun.
When I was young and cute much like your lovely chillins I would lay in bed and when my parents would come to check and see how I was sleeping I being CUTE AS HELL would “snore”
HONK , SNER HONK SNER,…………
I would “snore” because that was how my parents sounded when they slept and if I was “snoring” then I must be asleep. I think I fooled them.
Great to have discovered your blog thru bossy. I’ll look forward to perusing more…..any man who can wear a hello kitty band-aid, have a date night with his Wonder Woman despite lack of sleep, and blog about it at the same time, deserves to be perused.
Your day will come ….just count on it and it’s so much fun trust me! Waking up a teen is the ultimate pay back!!
Margaritas look wonderful…maybe I’ll have to try Finz when I’m there in August. But can I pass up Dube’s?
More satisfying than Snickers?? That is a toss up:)
Margaritas…YUM. We never make on date nights either, so last night I whipped up 2 pitchers of margaritas, sent Stinker to play in the sandbox, and we toasted to the idea of a date while sitting on our patio.
I’m 18, and I perfectly willing to come and explain that angering your parents now will only make them CRUEL later on.
I mean, they actually open the curtains and let the light in. And PULL OFF THE DUVET.
I’m chilled just thinking about it.
I just KNEW you’d have a double entendre regarding that picture!
I hope I don’t jinx it here at my house, but my kids are pretty good at getting up around 6 or 6:30 am. They could sleep ’til 7 am, but that’s if they’re beat. We get ‘em up at 6 am when my oldest has to go to JK since there’s so much to do before the 7:30 am bus pick up. Yes, that’s right, the BUS comes at freakin’ 7:30 AM!
You’re a riot! The stop sign has me roaring…what a great idea (albeit not as effective as you’d like…).
Ooooh I love FINZ! Color me jealous! Glad you two got the night off
I need a babysitter… date night is genius.
I am sitting here on the sofa, next to my mother ( both of us with our own individual laptops ) and I am busting my guts laughing!
.. meanwhile she is staring at me like I’ve grown three heads and a picasso face ..
Thank you for sharing with us your humorous perspective on love, marriage and children! You are a joy to read.. even when your not feeling so entirely joyous.
~ Kathleen
http://katrunk.typepad.com
@katrunk
We played REVENGE when our kids got to be teenagers and wanted to sleep late.
We would BOTH climb into the kid’s bed and squeeze the living daylights out of them and steal their pillows and stick our fingers in their ears.
Your day will come and it will be wonderful and fun.