In hindsight I feel silly thinking about this when there are real, serious problems in the world. But in my world, this was a rough situation at the time.
Mr.P and I are not blessed with local family to help with our kids. All of our parents/siblings live out of state. This is fine, except that when we do get out and away from our kids, we have to pay. A lot. $15 an hour equates to 25 cents a minute. 25 CENTS A MINUTE! Seriously, people, if we get stopped at a red light for 2 minutes, bam - 50 cents. I'm being facetious but it is pretty crazy to think about in those terms. With baby J in the mix, we are now paying even more for babysitting out of sympathy for our beloved babysitters (and too keep them coming back) our current pay is about $19 an hour for the three kids. If anyone has thrown a tantrum, barfed, gotten poo anywhere outside a toilet or diaper, or cried for more than 30 minutes, we add a little sympathy pay on top.
We spent Valentine's Day at home because - hello - you have to have reservations way in advanced, assuming that you even have a babysitter available on the 14th. So this year we had a babysitter booked for the 15th. We didn't really make a plan, so upon our babysitter Katie arriving, we had yet to decide where we were going. Katie told us all about her Valentine's night out with her boyfriend to a swanky cocktail bar, followed by dinner at a hot new restaurant near our old house in the city. We decided to take her recommendation since we are old, uncool people these days. We left the house just after 6 with a dinner reservation for Katie's restaurant pick at 7:45. We even decided to live a little and take Mr.P's 13 year old BMW sedan out and leave the minivan at home - even with the backup camera, parallel parking a minivan in the city is no bueno.
We started out the date night at my favorite brewery near our old house, Hilliards. They have a stout that is delicious, and a very down to earth, non-pretentious tasting room that is usually not too crowded. We enjoyed a beer, and then ventured over towards the cocktail bar our babysitter recommended. That place was way too crowded for my liking, so we wandered a little further and stopped in at a bar owned by one of Mr.P's favorite restaurateurs. The place reeked of malt vinegar (which Mr.P kept saying, "It smells so good in here!" and I kept trying not to dry heave since I loath malt vinegar).
At 7:40 we headed out towards our restaurant destination. I was starving at this point, and after drinking two beers I was also feeling tipsy because I rarely drink much these days since I am usually needing to be ready to nurse at any time. We got to the restaurant and before seating us, the hostess said, "Just to let you know, we are out of pizza tonight." Ok, bummer but OK. We sat down and began looking at the menu. No wonder they were out of pizza - they had some unique gourmet pizza options. I began eyeing one of the pasta dishes, and definitely the bread appetizer as I was starving!
The waitress came over and let us know that they had two specials - both with Ahi tuna (ugh, I hate Ahi) and she also mentioned they were out of 3 of the pasta dishes, and they were out of bread too. Um, what?! Basically they had one pasta (with shellfish which would be awesome if I didn't get violently ill from shellfish). I was so hungry and frustrated and while Mr.P ordered beer I was shooting him a look that said "we must abort this mission ASAP!" After the waitress walked away I said, "This is INSANE! Basically everything I would have ordered they are out of. As a matter of principle, I cannot patronize a restaurant that is out of this many options - that is poor planning on their part." So he found the waitress, cancelled his beer order, and we walked out. We hurried to the car and drove a few minutes to our old favorite neighborhood pizza place (which funny enough, as we drove past it on our way into Ballard I said I could be a cheap date and eat a slice of pizza there and be happy!)
So we stopped in and ate a slice of pizza so that I could get over my hangry disposition. We then spent 10 minutes in the car debating restaurant options. Over $3 of babysitting money spent arguing about where to go for our actual dinner. We ended up going to a place a few blocks from our old house, one that we have always liked and it did not disappoint. The food was good, the place was quiet, just what parents of 3 young children actually need. On our way home, the babysitter texted asking for tips on how to calm a belligerently crying baby. I texted back that we were 5 minutes away from home and would be there shortly.
No comments:
Post a Comment