Pizza Hut, Pocket Scrabble, & a Pair of House-Shoes

Who says the romance in a marriage dies once a baby is on-the-way? Sure, the mom-to-be is often too tired to even stay awake to watch TV at night, let alone leave the house for a hot night on the town, but there is always time for that unexpected date. And while nights with my husband while expecting a baby might not feel like some of the nighttime adventures from our past, e.g. grabbing dinner at a hip restaurant before meeting some friends for drinks, catching a movie, or even taking a salsa dance lesson, I have found that it’s the unexpected adventures that help keep the spark alive in the marriage. Anyone can go to a fancy restaurant for dinner or buy theatre tickets, but it takes a little creativity and an open mind to make any activity a fun-filled date.

My husband has been super supportive on the nights when I just don’t feel like cooking. Sometimes when I get home from work around 7:30, the baby and I are so ravenous, I feel as if we could eat a whole Thanksgiving dinner for a family of 4 and still not be satisfied. Even though I love to cook, since being pregnant, sometimes I don’t have the patience to prepare a meal after work --- all I care about is eating and eating quickly.

One particular weeknight a few weeks ago, I didn’t know what I was hungry for, but I just knew I was starved. We drove to the closest commercial street which happens to be peppered with fast food restaurants and local dive spots alike, but still I could not decide what sounded appetizing.

Then we drove past one strip mall with various stores and restaurants, including a Pizza Hut. Now this wasn’t one of those Pizza Huts with a drive thru that’s combined with Taco Bell. This was a Pizza Hut that existed purely on its own, and the storefront’s main focus was pizza delivery. We spontaneously decided, “Let’s just get pizza here. It should be quick.”

We parked the car in the parking lot and both got out of the car. In my haste to leave the house in search of food, I neglected to take note of my husband’s outfit: a dress shirt, ripped blue jeans, and house-slippers. Yes, house-slippers! Now, that’s what I call hot date attire. I couldn’t believe it --- here we were in the middle of this crowded strip mall, me with a big pregnant belly and my husband is wearing “old man house-shoes,” as we like to call them. Clearly the days where we both exerted effort deciding what to wear on a date were behind us. And yes, once we leave the house to get food, it’s considered a “date.”

We ordered our meal and were told it’d be at least 15 minutes until the food was ready, so what were we to do? We decided to wait outside in the car like two teenagers sans chaperones sitting in a parked vehicle. Only instead of us being turned on by one another or a smooth love song on the radio, we couldn’t wait to relax in the car together and play our recent obsession --- pocket Scrabble on our iPhone!

There we sat, under the glow of the overhead parking lot lantern, stomachs growling, passing our Scrabble game back and forth, each trying to outscore the other, laughing at ourselves as other cars came in and out of the parking lot to go to the liquor store or the drug store.

All in all, it was probably 20 minutes before our food was ready, although it felt like mere minutes because we were having so much fun. We laughed at what our night had become, but also enjoyed the quiet of it being just the two of us in the car, knowing that it didn’t really matter where we were or what we were doing, just that we were doing it together made it feel like a date.

Finally, my husband had a hunch our order was ready, so his trusty house-shoes took him back to the Pizza Hut counter to collect our cuisine. Instead of eating there in the ambient parking lot, we took our vittles back home and relaxed on the couch, eating pizza, playing Scrabble, and catching up on our DVRed television…and what started off feeling like just a normal weeknight turned into a fun and memorable “date” of sorts…what more could a pregnant girl want? Oh, and next time we go out, he promises to wear normal shoes.