This is my ongoing blog series about trying to date my husband. We have been together for 20 years, married for 17 and decided to make togetherness a priority! Our quest for reconnection gets stalled. Being a freelancer and us running a delivery service 7 days a week can lead to busy times!
Last week I worked 12-15 hour days at the Indspire Awards, and we saw each other when he picked me up each day. We spent maybe a few minutes a day on the phone troubleshooting challenges in deliveries. Romantic it was not. We had made sure to plan time for the family the Saturday after, even hiring someone to run our delivery service for the day, but their car broke down and Josh was on the road for 12 hours himself that day. No romance.
This week has been busy but we had a date planned for Friday night. Yay, Friday date night! I caveat here; date night this week was really just me doing comedy and him coming to watch. Yes, once again our dating invovles my work, but we are working hard to at least spend time together where we can! The rest of the week is out so Friday was going to have to be it!
Friday morning came and excitment was in the air! You can never understimate a parent’s desire to be anywhere away from the kids with the one they love. I love my kids, but man, I really love time away from them too. Gives me time to miss them! We were excited and we even flirted on the text a little bit. As much as he can flirt I guess. It usually goes like this:
Me: What are you wearing?
Him: Clothes.
Me: Clean at least?
Him: Nah, stain from salsa.
Sexy yes? Well we tried to flirt, and then we got a call from one of the schools…congragulations, your child has been suspended!!! Not congrats so much as “crap”. If the kid is being a pain, how do we go on our date? If we can’t trust him, how do we leave and have fun?
We felt our three options were:
- Leave him at home and see what happens
- Cancel date night
- Bring him on the date and makes sure we kiss and grope lots in front of them.
We truly at times feel like lack of time, having kids who have behavioural challenges and no family in the city to help out is like dating jail. I am sure other couples feel like that; like they just want some time together but life just gets in the way. Well we chose number 1, but let me tell you he got a lecture of what would happen if he ruined my evening. If I had to come home for any reason I was going to find the grossest task (something with tampons) for him to do. He gulped, already in trouble from school suspension he smartly chose to be good.
We drove off to my gig. Carleton Place, what a place for a date! We arrived and there was nowhere to sit, which is good for the promoter, but less so for us. I found a seat for my man and then charmed another comic into giving up his seat and the date was off! Ok the date also included other comics but that’s okay right? It was like grade seven, where we only date in groups now!
The venue was understaffed, severely. We finally got our food order taken and it arrived right when I was going on stage. I was the feature act (last one on) so it took 1.5 hours for them to get our food to us. I went onstage, had a great show and came back to half my food being eaten. Josh and/or other comics decided that cold food would suck for me, so they helped by eating it!
So there was no romance. There was no connection at the event for us, but, there was no kids and that is always something! It’s our first step out of jail, getting the freedom to actually go out together without fear of our house burning down or some other trouble the kids could get into.
On the way home we talked about our lives. It was a half hour drive and we talked about how different our lives would be if we had never met. We talked about what would happen if we ever parted now. He said “there is no ‘what would happen’ now. For better or worse (better) we are a team. We are Jenn and Josh, Josh and Jenn and we belong together and make each other whole”. That was the most romantic thing he has ever said. I should add he had to beer steins but whatever, reconnection occured, slowly but surely, we take our time where we can to be Josh and Jenn.
Next week, our date is (shockingly) comedy related. This one I am not performing at, but there is a tour coming through (American Heretics) that we cannot miss, so we excitedly will be at Yuk Yuk’s Ottawa watching amazing comedy and hopefully get another day out of dating hell!
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