The Fake Date

I get the morning off from homeschooling since Brooklyn got to go flying with her Daddy today.  So, I just wanted to drop in here and tell you about last night.

Sean and I recently implemented a survival tactic.  It's called The Weekly Date.  We've learned through the years that the seasons when we can have regular dates are often the best in our marriage and mental/emotional health.  This life we live is far more taxing than we realize and sometimes the chance to just step away from it all and be a couple again is the best way to let off some steam.  

Don't get me wrong, we LOVE where we live and what we do.  Sean loves flying and working at the dock/hangar/office.  I love homeschooling and cooking! (I really, really do.)  But still, it's exhausting and I can't even explain exactly why.  Maybe the heat?  Cultural differences always popping up?  Trying to operate in a different language?  Frustrations with getting simple ingredients?  Life with small kids?

At any rate, the chance to get away with Sean, to not have to cook a meal, and to be able to go anywhere we want without worrying about our kids is the most relaxing thing I can think of right now.  And we get to complete our conversations without interruptions once a week too!   We're blessed with a really great helper that we can completely trust with our kids - and our girls love her - so it's not hard for us to get away. 

Last night was our second date.  We rode the scooter and headed out to a new little hole-in-the-wall place we wanted to try.  We've been looking for a good place to get Mie Goreng (fried nodles) here in Palangka Raya that is close to our house.  Anyway, we went to this little dingy place and ordered our noodles from the owner of that fine establishment - a  surprisingly loud and obnoxious lady who wouldn't talk to me but flirted shamelessly with Sean.  Fun!

Then, it started to POUR.  The rain here comes DOWN when it comes down, so we settled into our cheap plastic seats and had a good talk over some pretty decent food....that I am now paying for with regular visits to the bathroom.  Wonder how Sean is?  He's flying so I guess he's not having the same issues I am.  It's my fault for eating the Es Buah (fruit and ice treat) that the lady gave us even though we didn't order it.  

Finally, the rain lessened enough that we decided to brave it - we had plans to go do some window shopping to discover what else is available here that we don't know about yet.  (I refuse to do that with three kids in tow.  Oh my word that would be torture....for all of us!)  Anyway, turns out that rain was COLD and we decided a stop for coffee would be much better than a ride downtown in the rain - or a trip to KFC for ice cream, which we also like to do.  (Yep, there's a KFC here with rice instead of mashed potatoes and potato cakes instead of biscuits.  But the ice cream is the same!)

We wound up at another new-to-us place, a business hotel in town that advertises a 24-hour coffee shop.  It was smokey and boring inside so we sat on a balcony just barely protected from the rain on the most uncomfortable faded red pleather couch, overlooking the "city" - we could see the mall, a huge Catholic church and the really nice hotel that we should have gone to for coffee in the distance. It was one of those kinds of places that seems like it should be fancy but instead it's just old, run-down, and really should have closed a long time ago.   Of course, the coffee we ordered was "kosong" (all gone) and we wound up with all they had on hand - caramel cappuccino -and we waited for a good 30 minutes for it.  It was pretty good, actually, but not exactly the coffee shop experience we were hoping for.  

So, we titled this rather pitiful attempt at a date The Fake Date!  But you know what?  That's not a real accurate name for last night because I had a blast with my best friend.  I laughed so hard I cried sitting on that stupid pleather couch - I don't even remember the last time I did that. So, it might not have been the most romantic date we've had, but it was certainly a memorable one. We ate fried noodles, we laughed a lot, we discovered where NOT to go in town, we got wet and cold, we drank coffee on a balcony, and we even apparently picked up some amoebas.  

I laughed harder than I have a in a very long time and I got goosebumps from being really cold.  It was a good date.

Wait...does KFC have ice cream in America?