Two Days, Two Dates, Too Old

For the past year and for the next coming year, I’m taking classes as part of my process of completing my teaching certification. Some of the classes are online, but two or three a month I have to take an all day class in person. During the school year, they offer these classes on the weekends, so it isn’t a problem with the kids because Chris can usually keep them. But during the summer, they only offer the classes during the week, which means that I have to find something to do with the kids. Thankfully, my parents live close enough that they have come down to stay with them for the day. Since I had class all day yesterday, Chris and I took the kids up to my parent’s house on Sunday and they spent the night there Sunday night and last night. I’m heading to pick them up this morning. It’s been a nice break for the kids because they love going to my parent’s house, and it gave Chris and I the chance to have TWO dates in TWO days! A first for us in a while!

DATE ONE:
We dropped the kids off with my parents on Sunday around 3:00. My parents live in The Villages, a retirement golfing community that is, in fact, an enormous city. It’s beautiful. Kind of like Disney World, actually. Only, with golf courses instead of rides. The nice thing about The Villages is that it is centered around people with a fixed income, so prices there tend to be a little cheaper than we find in downtown Orlando. Case and point? In Orlando, we pay anywhere from $12-$17 for a movie ticket, while it’s only $7 in The Villages. So, we checked the movie schedule as we drove away from my parent’s house and decided we could catch the 4:00 movie in The Villages.

We had an hour to kill, so we sat on the downtown square (one of them; they have several downtowns) at an outdoor bar and had a margarita while we waited. It was just us and 15 old people. No biggie.

So, we get into the movie theater and grab a seat. We decided to see Ted (which is ridiculously stupid and/or insanely funny depending on how strong the bartender made your margaritas). Ted is about a boy whose teddy bear comes to life and lives with him throughout adulthood. When they get older, they do HIGHLY inappropriate things which I will not go into on this here family blog, but basically, it’s nothing you’d want to tell your grandparents about. And here we were sitting in a theater full of grandparents. Really. It was almost a sold out movie to all grandparents. And us. On our date. Awkward didn’t begin to explain it. Seriously, go see the movie and then imagine watching that with your grandparents and an extra 50 sets of grandparents in the room. There ain’t no margarita strong enough to make that funny…

On our way home, Chris and I talked a little bit about how we were doing in our marriage. It was the typical, light conversation just checking in to make sure we were both happy. And we were both very happy.

“Do you think we’ve become boring people?” I asked him.

“No, not at all. I have fun all the time with you,” he said.

“Me, too,” I replied. “But usually we have fun sitting on the couch watching TV or reading a book. Isn’t that boring?”

“Well, look at us now! We just had drinks and a movie on a Sunday afternoon together! That’s fun, right?”

“Sure…” I said, “But it was…you know… in a retirement community.”

“Well, yeah…”

DATE TWO:
The day before we dropped the kids off, Chris and I worked out in the front yard cleaning out flower beds. Chris is allergic to something in the grass here and always gets really itchy for a few days after being outside. So, Monday night after my class and a quick 5.5 mile run where I thought I was going to die from heat stroke, Chris and I decided to go out for a second date night to a Mexican place.

Through the entire meal, Chris kept scratching his legs. CONSTANTLY. He was like a little kid.

“Do you think I could use that extra fork over there? That would feel awesome on my legs!”

“No!” I shrieked. “And quit scratching! You’re grossing me out!”

But the scratching continued. And then he kept talking about the itching. I was telling him how my shins were doing much better on my longer runs now because I was stretching more and taking rest days, and he would interrupt with things like, “You know what’s not doing better? My legs.” I mean, it was getting ridiculous.

Finally, after we’d finished our dinner and margaritas (again! don’t judge…), I took Chris to a Walgreens on our way home to get something to make his legs stop itching. We were cruising the “Itching” aisle, and Chris was scratching like a dog and I was whispering things like, “Stand up, you look like a freak!” He was rubbing his legs up against things to make the itching stop. He leaned against the frozen foods cooler for a while. He found a back scratcher and I thought he’d never leave. Only the promise of cooling, menthol Cortisone was enough to entice him back to the car again. But he refused to drive until he put put the cream all over his legs right there in the parking lot, while singing, “I’m sexy and I know it…”

(sorry for the bad picture…  Chris wouldn’t pose again…  Party pooper.)

Ahhh… how date nights have changed. They used to be bars and candlelit restaurants and now we’re down to retirement communities and pharmacies. I knew we’d grow old together, but I thought we had a while before that happened! Still though, as old as we get and as boring as date nights might seem, both of us are still having fun. There’s nowhere else either of us would rather be than the “Itching” aisle at Walgreens or a geriatric happy hour, as long as we’re together. Though, we did say that next time, maybe we’d go wild at Chili’s instead. Live it up while we can, you know?