"We may have the lamest dates ever."

So says my fabulous husband after yet another of our aimless excursions sans children.

We have a long history of ridiculous "dates" which is topped by our silliest ever, dubbed "The Teenage Date." Our adolescent adventure was not supposed to be that way. We were on our first overnight away from Sebastian when he was 18 months old. We decided to stay about an hour away at an inn with a hot tub (woo hoo!). The inn was in a college town, so we thought there would be plenty to do and see, but of course we were not really prepared. We decided to drive down to the next town to find a nice restaurant for dinner. On the way, we spotted a mini-golf establishment which Jeremy could not pass up. Thus, the date began. One round of golf on a horrible course later we were on our way, where else?, to the mall! Yes, we found out the mall was just down the road, and considering we hadn't gone to a mall in about 3 years at this point, we just had to go. That went as well as you may imagine. Nary a purchase was made, and after passing the food court, we became simultaneously hungry and nauseated. It was getting dark, and we spotted a movie theater showing Mean Girls, found out what time it was playing and went in search of a restaurant. What we found was the creepiest, ex-factory town nightmare with no restaurants in sight. (Not that we probably would have trusted any place operating there anyway.) Now we're running out of time before the film and getting a little desperate. So, where did we have dinner? At Burger King, of course. After the film, we went back to the inn, precariously perched the television on the edge of the bureau and watched SNL from the jacuzzi tub. Not exactly the romantic get away we had planned.

Yesterday, we had a similar experience. Only this time, there wasn't a film we wanted to see. For whatever reason, we weren't really interested in watching an Afghan boy be raped. So, we went downtown where nothing seemed appealing, got in the car and headed to the Thai restaurant at the corner of the Price Chopper plaza and the Walgreen's. I know that doesn't bode well, but the food was really good and we had a nice, uninterrupted conversation. Now it was about 8:30 and we didn't know what to do with ourselves, but it would have been shameful to go home. We tried to go out for a drink, but there wasn't anywhere quiet enough for picky old me, and we were really full from dinner still anyway. So my big idea was to go get a slushee drink. We went to investigate the new convenience store just outside of town where I got a blue raspberry/green apple mix. I don't know what I was thinking. All I could taste was chemicals. Damn you, natural lifestyle! Meanwhile, the clerk was totally giving me the eye, so maybe I should find out what kind of date he would plan. We were home by 10:15.

Will we ever get it together?