Keepin’ The Romance Alive

When you’re married with children, it’s damn freaking hard to find alone time to spend together.  The kids and their continuous needs inevitably take top priority.  And trying to keep that spark alive isn’t the easiest task in the world when your spawn are always lurking over your shoulder, trying like hell to blow out the fire.  Take, for instance, our anniversary.  Now in a perfect soap opera world, my husband would’ve whisked me away for a romantic weekend on some remote tropical island to celebrate our 14 years of wedded bliss together, right?  Unfortunately, though, we don’t live in the fictional town of Port Charles, so there was certainly no whisking and absolutely nothing tropical about our monumental moment.

The night of our actual anniversary was unfortunately spent in a hot, crowded room with a boatload of other over-stressed parents, registering my daughter for the travel soccer team.  Real idyllic, huh?  I’d seen my husband for a total of thirty seconds throughout the entire day, and it was only prior to the meeting as we raced by each other on my way out the door.  The timing of the whole thing didn’t even allow us to eat dinner together.  I’d had to shove down some food with the kids and left him a plate of pasta on the counter.  We were holding out hope that maybe, JUST MAYBE, we’d steal some time together after finally getting the kids to bed.

Regrettably, though, our children have decided to boycott sleep these days.  Just when we think we have the all-clear, a little body pops up on the stairs, which is exactly what kind of scenario played out on the night of June 8.  Somebody was hungry; somebody was thirsty; somebody had a sore throat; somebody was scared; somebody had to poop — on and freaking on until I literally started threatening alien abductions to anyone who dared get out of bed again.  And wouldn’t you know that by the time we FINALLY heard the last peep outta the twinkies, I glanced over to find my hubby sawing some serious logs on the couch.  So much for romance.

Luckily, we were eventually able to escape for a quick sushi dinner together last night after my son’s baseball game.  We sat outside and even had < gasp! > an uninterrupted conversation!  Naturally, though, this blissful state of mind was poo-pooed the very moment we stepped through the front door of our house and heard the babysitter negotiating with the little vampires upstairs who were supposed to have been asleep by then.  I seriously think we may have to start hooking up in the car like a couple of teenagers in high school to avoid the inevitable interference from the shorties.  So if the wheels are a rockin’, please, for the love of God, don’t come a knockin’!!!!