I am a new woman

There's an old movie (that I don't remember loving) in which Queen Latifah gives another gal a drug that makes her want to touch everything, including Danny Devito's bald head. It's an odd thing to be thinking about, but it occurred to me this morning that it was applicable.

I feel like that today. What mystical drug has given me this feeling? What could make me feel this alive?

8 hours sleep.

Straight.

No interruptions. No waking up for anything. Our youngest sleeps without waking from about 11:00 - 6 most nights, but someone else is up if she isn't. And on the rare night that no one needs mama in the middle of the night, I'm so used to getting up, that I still sleep restlessly and wake up anyway.

Not last night.

Yesterday, we sent the boys to stay the night with friends and the girls to stay the night with Grandpa and Grandma while Chris and I went on a date. It was awesome.

We weren't sure what to do with this new found freedom, so we drove an hour to the library and then tried to decide what to eat. There were a lot of options, so we decided we'd choose the 17th restaurant that we ran across. Unfortunately, the 17th restaurant looked like a case of food poisoning waiting to happen, so we drove on and ended up in the "downtown" area that we rarely go see. We parked the car and walked because most of the streets were One-Way and we were just wandering anyway. Our dining procrastination turned our date into the Best Date Ever.

First stop was the Brewery, where they serve the best waffle fries ever. They have a homemade root beer which was very good, live music upstairs, uniquely tall tables, and it was great to sit next to my best friend for an hour and talk about nothing.

Next we wandered and paused for a while on the square where a band was playing Jesse's Girl. We climbed up a fountain and sat at the top, listening to some great music, people-watching, talking about deep things this time, digging bugs out of my shirt, watching 4 cops walk a guy away in hand-cuffs, laughing at a guy in a red wife-beater t-shirt who LIVED for Tina Turner music (he had an entire dance routine choreographed to Proud Mary and he was NOT with the band,) smiling at the sweet couple dancing like they were the only two people in the world, and nodding at a cool guy witnessing to people all around the square.

We walked around some more and then took a ride on a bicycle rickshaw. We had an interesting conversation with our driver who took us to see a small art display that, frankly, scared me. Mushrooms. Lots of mushrooms. And buddha and lightning and fireflies. Sound like an interesting combination? You'd be amazed. He called it Collage Art. I called it someone tripping.

It got pretty dark and we started to head toward the car, but heard some great music coming from across the street. It was a dueling piano bar and it was SO COOL. I got carded, which made it a great night all on its own. We paid our cover charge and went in and were amazed. I'd never heard of a dueling piano bar. It was set up with two beat up grand pianos facing each other with a set of drums in the middle. These guys were amazing. They could play anything you threw at them. We heard everything from Journey to Def Leppard to Garth Brooks to Beach Boys to Nickelback to Bon Jovi and tons more. The sense of community was amazing. When we wandered in, there were around 2 dozen people in there. By the time we left at midnight there were at least a hundred. And everyone knew each other. There were college students and retirees and everything in between. The piano players worked the crowd and it was a blast. At one point, we were singing happily along to Margaritaville when everyone in the room shouted out "SALT, where's the "SALT, where's the M-@#&$ SALT?" Is this a local thing, or common? We thought we'd requested a rather innocent song, but Chris and I turned to each other with jaws open wide and just cracked up.

It was so good to spend so much time with the greatest guy I know. I fell in love with him all over again. I fell in love with downtown, too. Very interesting.

I've been a lazy blogger lately, but this date was the icing on the cake of a New Beginning. Life post-VBS is awakening like Spring. Ahhhhh. School is getting done. The house is getting clean. Books are being read. And...what's that?!?...No McDonalds??? No. Meals are being cooked again. Life is good.

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