Car Pool Dates

Recently Jason and I have been carpooling to work. It’s practical in that he has to basically drive by my office building on his way to work. So, it’s not out of his way. It also saves on gas, which was significantly more important last fall when gas prices were skyrocketing. And, it reduces the wear and tear on our vehicles. An unexpected benefit to carpooling is our time spent together. Those 20 minutes alone every morning and afternoon are great. It’s rare we are in the car ALONE anymore so that slice of the day is welcoming. The mornings are usually quieter because we are both barely awake and/or are checking email on our BlackBerries (hmmm, is that the plural for BlackBerry!?). But, for the most part, we like to just talk. Talk about stuff. What’s for dinner, what’s the day going to look like, the kids, the economy, etc. Stuff. We are like most busy couples I suspect: we have more than full time jobs, we co-parent, we are busy with the house stuff, and we work out. What we don’t do enough is date nights.

There are a few reasons for this. 1) Hiring a babysitter is expensive. Not sure if you’ve noticed, but babysitting pays well. Very well. An evening out can easily set you back $40 without blinking an eye. Add dinner and/or a movie to that and well, we’re in the triple digits my friend. 2) Our babysitter is in demand. We love Penny. She’s awesome. And, sadly, other people think that too. We’ve tried to keep her identity hidden from our neighbors and friends so they wouldn’t try and poach her but it didn’t work. ;) I’m only half-kidding here. 3) We can’t think of stuff to do. Ok, sort of. I mean, we go out to dinner, but we don’t feel like going to the movies, and there’s only so many times you can go to the casino before you realize that it’s boring and you never win any money. We’ve tried to organize some group dates with our friends and neighbors and that hardly ever works out for reasons #1-3 above. So, we’ve had to become creative when it comes to carving out our date time. We’ve taken a few hours of vacation and hit the furniture stores, or to IKEA. We’ve taken WHOLE DAYS OFF!!! To do whatever we wanted. Again, if you think about it, that probably cost us waaaaay more than a babysitter if you factor in our salaries for that day. Ha. Oh well. It’s not that we don’t like to spend time with the kids, but really, all couples need couple time and parents especially do.

So, for us, the daily Car Pool dates and the rare nights out will have to suffice. Here’s hoping we both come down with a cold on the same day and can take a sick day together. How romantic.