Hey Baby, Wanna Share my Lane?

Last week, I was invited out for drinks with girlfriends.

I love drinks with girlfriends.

I need drinks with girlfriends.

They complete me.

My girlfriends, I mean. And a few drinkies don't hurt.

But the invite was for Friday night and Friday night is "date night."

We've had date night since the second my first son was born. My mother-in-law offered to come over so we could steal away for a few hours on Friday nights and I remember crying the first few times we went out and I remember calling obsessively to make sure he was ok and and I remember going through all those feelings of guilt for leaving him and being away from him.

I remember the first time I actually had a *gasp* cocktail after the baby was born too when we were out for date night. A glass of wine. Ca-RAZY! I felt like a terrible mother.

I wasn't. But I felt like it.

Date night became something that even after a completely sleepless night, we'd come to count on. If we fought all week because when the baby was born let's face it, we were only married for a year and there was still plenty for us to hash out as a couple, date night would reset the week.

We'd duke out our issues and then we'd go have fun and be ready for whatever was thrown at us the next week. Mostly.

No matter what, we never canceled date night.

Sometimes I think date night is why we're still married. Well not entirely why, but I think things would not be nearly as good were it not for date night and the upholding the respect for date night. And by upholding the respect for date night, upholding the respect for each other.

We'd have let our problems fester, we'd have let something "come up," unresolved issues would go unresolved, failure to communicate would be failure to communicate, we wouldn't have put each other first and that would have hurt one of us in some way and most of all, we wouldn't have had this much fun.

And we have fun.

So when my friends called to have drinks on Friday, I just couldn't bring myself to break my hot date. I felt bad about it and I went over it in my mind, "Should I go? We could have date night on Saturday. But it wouldn't be the same. And I don't think we can get a sitter for Saturday. But everyone will be there. Gah, I don't know."

And then my best friend who lives in Georgia reminded me that I wouldn't even break date night for her when she was down for a visit.

Oh yeah, I remember that. Date night has always been pretty important to me. To us.

And so it was on this night. I kept date night, just like it's always been for the past 5 years.

And I'm glad I did.

Because there we were, in the pool at the gym, romantically swimming side by side in our neighboring lanes with an old guy in another lane and some dudes in the hot tub.

We swam 1500 meters in a big long set-filled swim workout and he pushed me to swim faster and I pushed him to swim longer and I swallowed a bunch of water while I tried to learn bilateral breathing and when we wrapped up our last lap in the 150 meter cooldown, we turned to each other and high-fived.

That was a great swim, he said. And then he asked me, Who does this?

And I smiled.

I don't know, I said.

We do.

And then we got some beer, played some trivia (I stayed within my calorie count) and we made out.

The end.

Thank God for date night.