socializing

Wednesday night Leighton and I finally got our date night. Except for a lunch out in January when my friend Helene took Lilly for a stroll in a nearby park, and one late evening in June when our friend Hege came over and we went out for a couple of late night beers (Lilly didn't go down till nine or so that evening), Leighton and I haven't had a real date yet. So this week when Leighton's mom was here, we really wanted to have a night out. We tried Tuesday; no luck. Lilly did not want to go to bed and by the time she did, it was too late for us to go out. Wednesday she fell asleep by 6:55 p.m; we were out of the door by 7:10 p.m. We went to the Indian restaurant Chapati, our favorite restaurant in town. We had vowed to eat slowly, to really enjoy not having to down the food as fast as possible. However, we were both really hungry, and so we didn't manage to eat too slowly, but we still really enjoyed eating uninterruptedly and while the food was still warm! We were done by 9 p.m., and seeing all seemed calm on the home front, we went over to the Contented Cow, a pub owned by the same British guy who owns Chapati, and had a drink there by the fireplace. We struck up a conversation with a nice elderly man who sat there, talked a lot about Lilly ... And ourselves. Shared stories. It was really nice.

Then last night I had my first sleepover since June, when I had my very first night away from Lilly when Hege and I headed over to her mom's empty apartment for the night with a kilo of shrimp, a couple of baguettes, some cava and white wine. Yesterday afternoon I headed up to Saint Paul for a ladies' night out: tiny bubbles and appetizers at my friend Stephanie's house in the Cathedral Hill neighborhood, dinner after that at La Grolla's around the corner on Selby (I had a delicious seafood pasta dish and some of that velvety petit syrah we shared), and then the four of us finished off the evening back at the house with more red wine and chocolate cake from Cafe Latte. This morning I met another friend at Nina's Coffee Cafe on top of Garrison Keillor's bookstore, Common Good Books.

It was so lovely to have this time to visit with friends, to be out and about in town and city, soak in some of the flair of urban living.

And then it's so good to come home after that. On my way home, I stopped by Cafe Latte for some yummy organic ten grain bread and Trader Joe's to stock up on affordable wholesome groceries, got back to the house at a quarter till noon, just in for lunch. Lilly was so wound up, we were so excited to see each other again, she didn't go down for a nap till 2:45 p.m.