Date Night in the Bathroom

Remember when staying overnight in a hotel meant spending a half hour in the shower trying out all the free products, lying in bed watching crappy cable for hours at night, interrupted by vacation sex, followed by deep sleeping, which went on and on and on, past 9am, past 10, sometimes past 11, at which point you'd have to fling your belongings into your suitcase and hustle down to reception to sweet talk the guy behind the counter into not charging you for late checkout?

That time is no more. It ended the day I had my first baby, much less my third. Now, even on the rare occasions when David and I sneak away for an overnight stay somewhere, neither of us can sleep past 8am.  We are biologically wired to wake, adrenaline coursing,  aeound 7:30am, to pour cereal and shove breasts into baby's mouths and pack lunches.

When we stay in hotels with the kids in tow -- once a year, on our way down to North Carolina -- not only don't we get to sleep late, we don't get to lie in bed watching crappy cable. That's because even though we only ever stay at hotels that offer two-room suites - where the living room and its fold out couch is separated from the bedroom with a door -- now that we have three kids, we don't get a room to ourselves. Baby is always on board. Baby could be tossed into the madhouse living room with her big brother and sister but those kids don't go to bed til the stroke of 10  - minimum  - and I can't cope with the possibility that they'd keep the baby up til then. I'd rather have a sleeping baby hogging my bedroom, essentially barring me from entry, than an awake baby screaming her head off, while I retain full use of the bedchamber. That's because I know full well that as long as the baby's awake I don't retain full use of anything; I can't enjoy the bedroom anyway with her clinging to me collar like a monkey and caterwauling in my ear. So we give the baby the bedroom, and we give the kids the living room and David and I are left . . .

With the the bathroom.

The thing is, by the time the kids finally succumb to sleep, we are so fucking relieved to be Off Duty for a brief spell that we don't give a shit that we're stuck in the bathroom.

i sit on the closed lid of the toilet and David perches on the edge of the tub. Occasionally, the bathroom is big enough for us to drag a chair in from the living room. In this incredibly glamorous set-up, we do exciting and sexy things like eat leftover cold cuts, and watch Scandal on my laptop.We could have sex in the shower, I suppose, but seeing as these hotel stays always follows a 6-10 hour car ride with three children, that is the last thing either of us want to do. OK, not either of us. I think David could drive a school bus full of kids for 72 hours straight  and still want to have sex upon exiting the vehicle. Still, the vacation sex of our pre-baby-days is out. So, we kvetch and snack and consume media, crowded in the bathroom. And we relish every minute of it because it sure beats sitting in the car with the kids bellowing three different songs simultaneously and beating the crap out of each other of out sheer boredom.

Yet another way the deprivation of leisure exacted by parenthood improves you as a person, making you grateful for the things you used to take for granted.

Happy Valentine’s Day: musings on Date Night Disasters

You’d think that as a harried parent with no time for myself, I’d just be so grateful to have a chance to catch up with my husband that I wouldn’t care in the slightest where or how that happened. Interestingly, the fact that we rarely have the chance to get out has had the opposite effect, making me even more choosy about the particulars. This wouldn’t be a problem except that David feels exactly the same way and our preferences are diametrically opposed to each other.

David ‘s ideal night out takes place in a pub, or more precisely, a gastro-pub, where microbrews abound and well-reputed cuts of steak are served up rare. He likes there to be loud music involved. After a loud meal of beer and beef, he’d like to proceed to an art film, ideally in another language or in English, but with British accents so thick it might as well be another language. If it is not subtitled, or British, he’d like it to be science fiction or scary or four hours long.

My ideal night out takes place in a candle-lit restaurant with fantastic chandeliers overhead and coat check. Crusty bread served hot is non-negotiable and olives, pickles or olive oil with vinegar should accompany it. There should be wine, ideally sparkling. There should be music, but only enough to buffer the sound of what the couple sitting next to me are fighting about. It should be popular and bustling but not so much that I have to wait over thirty minutes. Goat cheese must be a core ingredient on at least one appetizer and chocolate ganache should be featured on at least one dessert.

Movie selections should be two hours or less, ideally featuring actors up for an Oscar, They can be tragic but always with an uplifting ending. If anyone has sex, they should be good-looking. No sci fi, horror, suspense, or subtitles, apart form Almodovar or movies featuring that hot young actor Gael Garcia. No movies where children get kidnapped, sick or worse. No movies where anything takes place in the future.

As you see, it is nearly impossible for David and I to settle on a night out which satisfies both our needs. Sometimes we just stay in, if you get my meaning, and that works well, but then we get hungry and then we’re back to square one.

A few weeks ago, we had a disastrous date which involved dinner at Jimmy’s No. 43, on 8th Street, which was mobbed with NYU students shouting about inane things and jostling me as I waited FORTY FIVE FREAKING minutes for a table. Then we saw the new Mike Leigh movie, Another Year, which rendered me miserable and melancholy all night. First of all, how many freaking cups of tea can a person drink? And how many cups of tea am I, a paying moviegover, expecting to WATCH someone drink? I wonder, too, if Mike Leigh’s intent as a film maker is to have his audience off themselves upon leaving the theater? Why else would he create a movie in which nothing funny, promising or even generally positive happens? If I am going to watch people sink into abject misery and loneliness for two hours, they’d better be gorgeous Hollywood types, otherwise the whole thing is just too unbearable.

This is what I told David on the way home from date night.

“Next time, you choose EVERYTHING,” he grumbled.

So I did, and for our early Valentine’s Day celebration, we went to Buttermilk Channel, where you get four different kind of pickles and a chocolate pecan pie sundae in addition to a kick-ass rib eye and chocolate stouts for my beer-and-beef beau-hunk of a husband. Then we saw the King’s Speech where I could understand every single word and I only counted TWO kettles of tea being made. Brilliant underdog overcomes adversity! Now that’s a movie I can get behind, especially when it’s so well-acted I don’t have to feel guilty about being so irredeemably mainstream. Even David had to concede he felt pretty damn cheerful when the credits rolled.

And since my parents took the kids overnight, we got to sleep in until a delicious 9am the next morning and then we got to stay in bed til, oh, about half past ten.

I’m sure it won’t happen every year, but it was one Valentine’s Day celebration sans argument which is enough of a present for me. That, and the heart-shaped box of chocolates I sincerely hope David is bringing home for me.

Dinner and a movie

David and I have a decent track record of making it out for dinner together and an equally respectable one for sneaking out to a movie sans kids. But dinner AND a movie, well, now you’re talking three, four hours of adult evening entertainment and there are few people who can withstand the force of our children for that long, even when we pay them. So the only time we are able to score dinner and a movie is when we get my parents to take the kids overnight – which is precisely what we did on Friday.

Dinner at Resto, this delicious Belgian place that had the impressive ability to please David (Belgian beer! burgers!) and me (fancy sauces for my pommes frites! Wafels with chocolate sauce!). Plus it was restaurant week which is perhaps my favorite New York holiday ever, so three course ran us $35.

Movie was Inception, in IMAX. The great thing about when I see movies nowadays is that whereas before I used to hear all the buzz and read movie reviews and know what to expect, these days I don’t know jack. Which means when we’re choosing a movie David gives me a two-sentence sum-up, mentioning names of stars or directors, and the basic premise (we do get into trouble sometimes since David often has a different read of movies than I do; take, for example, his description of American Psycho as “not scary, no, comedic in a suspenseful way!”) Now, I show up to movies ready to be surprised. This is great because I don’t ever get disappointed when a movie doesn’t live up to its hype.

Consequently, I go to Inception, and I’m like, “Whoa, cool. It’s a dream within a dream!” and then I got to have my mind blown when it was actually a dream within a ream within a dream within a dream. I didn’t love it the way I did Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind but I give it major kudos for making some pretty thought-provoking existential ideas very mainstream and accessible, I did leave thinking however that the movie might cause an overly thoughtful or sensitive person to go straight to the looney bin. The subtitle could be, “Inception: recipe for insanity.” I will, for instance, never mention the idea to Primo, who frequently wonders aloud, while eating dinner or watching TV if he is, in fact, dreaming. Of course, there is the distinct possibility that he’s right and I’m the one who’s dreaming right now. Maybe in my waking life, I’m an accountant living in the Tulsa and this dream of blogging and drinking coffee in Brooklyn, is just mind-blowingly exciting.