UPDATE: Success! We ate steak, cake and had a shake (actually we had coffee, but let's pretend because it rhymes) Best of all, nobody died, including the babysitter. Moreover, she offered to watch them again sometime and I believe referred to them at least once as 'little angels' or something, and not in a sarcastic way like I normally do.

Foolish girl. They haven't unleashed the wrath yet but they will, in time. Hopefully we'll get a few more hours of outings in before she pulls all her hair out and runs screaming out the door. Let's all cross our fingers!


A friend of mine told me that my last post was 'Naughty. Funny, but naughty.'

Isn't that what The Maven is all about? I'm naughty and funny. Funny-looking, anyway. Especially right now, in my ratty Dayton, Ohio shirt t-shirt and bootylicious track pants. Neither item flatters the more Rubenesque figure of yours truly. Couple that with my wet hair and naked face and you have quite a sight. Funny-looking? Absolutely However, I highly doubt I could get anyone to do naughty things with me in this condition.

All of this will be resolved shortly. I'm about to get all gussied up for a night out. Blue jeans, cute top (actually two tops, as I'm about three years behind the times and have just discovered the art of layering one's clothing for effect). I'd wear nice shoes, but I only own a single pair; they're new and need to stay that way for Saturday afternoon. More on that in my next post.

Where am I going, you may ask? Make sure you're sitting down.

Are you sitting? Put the coffee down, too.

Mouth isn't full? You're not going to spit all over your keyboard?

Ok. Here we go:

I, The Maven, am going out with my husband for dinner without the kids.

You heard right: No tag-alongs. A gremlin-free zone.

For the first time ever, we are hiring a sitter - like, paying real money and not asking a relative - and venturing out into the great unknown for steak and fancy napkins and after dinner coffee.

It's not like we haven't gone out together before. Back in the day of only-child bliss, we used to go on dates at least twice a month. I had teenage siblings with no cable t.v. at home who would jump at the chance to hang out at our place with a busy but easily entertained Intrepid.

Then, that damn infertility had to go away and we had a second and third child. The offers to babysit all but dried up. Where were The Siblings? What were they doing with their time?

It's a lot harder to book The Sibs to babysit these days. They'll do it, but it has to fit around their schedules. Who gave them the right to make schedules? Also, the sibs got these life thingies I'm not quite thrilled with. Boyfriends and girlfriends and parties and licenses and jobs and school and stuff. They just had to get all independent.

Anyway, I knew we'd eventually have to bite the bullet and get a sitter sometime. I just have these little, um... trust issues. Yeah. Something about leaving my ankle-biters with people I don't know very well who might string them up by their toes and throw marshmallows at them the minute we walk out the door. This may be a small part of why I've always been so adamant about the whole stay-at-home-mom thing. They may be around a raving lunatic every day, but at least it's a raving lunatic chock full of maternal love.

It took something incredibly special to get me to reach out. For one, AAngel is a girl we've known and adored for about a year. If I had daugther, I would want her. But not the her the way she is with her mom, but the her that is around me and surely would always be so nice and sweet even if I was her mother because I will never have teenagers who yell at me because I'm an amazing parent.

Phew. That was a hard lie to convince myself of.

AAngel has watched our gremlins a few times while we've been nearby. She's amazingly good to them and they seem to like her and not wish to torture her with their demonic powers. This is most definitely a positive sign. Also, it's quite impressive if you can amuse a ten-year-old, a four-year-old and a ten-month-old at the same time. It's a skill I've yet to acquire, and yet she pulls it off like it's nobody's business.

Ten years ago today I walked down the aisle in a beautiful (rented) dress and greeted my husband-to-be. We exchanged vows and got all kissy in front of 80 people. Intrepid was nine months old and cried every time he saw me, as apparently I looked like a strung-out, has-been show girl in all my getup. We ate roast beef, toasted our newly tied knot with non-alcoholic punch and danced the night away.

Two children and ten years later, I still adore the man. He also seems to still adore me. We still make time for each other. We still dream about the future. We work well as a team. We say 'I love you' every day and mean it. We talk to each other when there's a problem. We argue sometimes and we say 'I'm sorry'.

You know, for all my weirdness, we still manage to have some normality that I can't quite put my finger on. Maybe it's because we're both strange beyond words and we just 'get' each other. Maybe it's because we're terribly accepting of each other's little faults.

Maybe it's the drugs I slip into his morning coffee.

But for whatever reason, it works and it works well. A decade or marriage between two recovering alcoholics/drug addicts. We should get a free vacation or some sort of plaque at the Betty Ford clinic or something.

Anyway, time to get gussied up. I'm going out to eat some steak!