A New Kind of Date Night

Date night used to be a semi-regular part of our lives. But, of course, under the circumstances (yes, my back and, perhaps even more, the loss of our now-collegiate babysitter), we don't do that anymore.  But my new therapist--a LCSW and cognitive behavioralist who is helping me cope with the emotional issues surrounding chronic pain and teaching me some techniques to "manage gracefully" (my new favorite phrase from Sylvia Boorstein's introduction to Buddhism, It's Easier than You Think)--suggested we try to adapt our enjoyment of date night (usually a restaurant meal and some casual bookstore browsing.) to our new circumstances, to think outside the box, to give us something else to do or talk about besides our worries and to-do list.  Take out, a new movie, another at-home activity, anything new that we can do once a week or so at home once the kids are asleep.

And so, being an A student and loving a project, I spent some time thinking on what we could do.  I remembered that Gretchen Rubin, in The Happiness Project, mentions that one piece of good advice she'd learned was for every couple to have two games they enjoyed together, one outdoors (like golf, tennis) and one indoors (like Scrabble).  Mama and I don't have an outdoor game (and probably won't, beyond short walks), but we do like to play chess and our new Harry Potter Lego game.  And we also used to do puzzles.  So we opted for a puzzle night, focusing on a holiday puzzle Mama had gotten last year after the holidays and was eager to do.  We brainstormed how I could do a puzzle--sideways on a board on the bed--and we rushed cleaning the kitchen and such last Friday night.

It was such fun!  We issued a moratorium on digital gadgets and stressful discussions to help protect the evening.  Then we curled up with the puzzle while listening to our music playlist on shuffle.  It was just what we needed to get us out of our rut and have some relaxing fun.  It will be so easy to do again--and we want to, especially because we didn't finish it.