City Mouse/Country Mouse-An Evening of Contrasts

Dating is not something that JP and I are exactly expert at.  There are a lot of things we could blame it on.  Money, small towns, lack of suitable babysitters, you name it.  We have used every excuse in the book for being lousy daters.  But what it really boils down too is a lack of creativity.  Granted, living in a couple of small towns with few options that weren't bars,(and I don't mean TGIMcFunster type bars, I mean dives) kind of exacerbated our lack of creativity.  I mean, when there are bars, bars, bars, a burger joint and a movie theater in town, your options are a little limited if you're not the drinking type.  But still...its a matter of creativity, right?  Right.

But every once in a while, we get it right.  And it seems to be always when we really REALLY need to get it right. Its those times that someone's (singular or plural) mental health depends on it.  This past Friday was one of those rare events when we got it just right and we were able to return home refreshed and ready to be parents again.

We kind of lucked out, because the day started off with JP having to do some chores for work that he didn't really want to do, but while he was out, there was a TV playing, and he was there during the morning news and he happened to catch the "Savvy Shopper" who was doing a segment on cheap/free things to do around Phoenix this weekend.  ( we canceled our cable, so we would not have caught her segment had he not gone in to take care of the work stuff.)  As it turned out, there was a free art show in town, and just days before I had asked JP how was it possible that he enjoyed the kinds of music he enjoys without being much into visual art?  He took that to mean I would enjoy going to an art exhibit, so he set the whole date up.

 We had a perfectly ridiculous evening!

 We decided to call it our "City Mouse/Country Mouse" date because we could not have contrasted our activities more greatly if we had actually tried to have an exercise in opposites.  We ate BBQ at a chain restaurant  and then went to an Art Exhibit Open House at a University.  JP wore a plaid shirt, I wore black and too much eye makeup (we had a little miscommunication about what we were wearing and I really did not want to wash my face and start all over again, nor did I want to ask him to change since A: it didn't matter, and B: I was feeling pretty lucky that he was trying this hard to do something new and different for a date.) We sat at a table where a waitress wrote on a plate with BBQ sauce, had pig-puns printed on her back, and used papertowels to wipe our faces at the table.  We listened to "experimental" music. There was laughing, knee-slapping, and darn near pants-peeing over things that were supposed to be humorous, and things that weren't actually supposed to be funny at all, but were just trying so hard to be serious that it felt like a joke.  There was regret that we hadn't spent any "young" years together, and gratitude that we didn't meet until we were grown up enough to appreciate each other.  There was Gelato, Facebooking, hand-holding, and squealing around corners while we pretended we were 17 again. And then there was returning home, trying to pay an ornery sitter...I mean sister...who wouldn't be paid, and falling asleep on the couch like an old married couple.

Oh, and by the way, we drove our American gas guzzling SUV to the Sustainable Earth Art Show...are you surprised that we got out of there without a lynching?

Best line of the night:

(about the actual cockroach in the road) "Oh my gosh this roach is HUGE!"
                                                              "I told you I smelled Marijuana"