Before tonight, Abe and I had gone on exactly two movie dates together. That’s a total count. We never went while we were dating (didn’t do that super long), and before we had kids Abe was so depleted from his stressful job that he never had the energy to go. When the Harry Potter movie came out that year, I was so desperate to see it that I finally just took one of the girls I babysat to see it with me.
Since we clearly get out so rarely, you’ll understand why the movie we just saw left me in a state of rapture.
All the more since we weren’t planning on going to a movie tonight. A couple months ago when we were at the temple (which we really should count as a date, although I have mixed feelings about that), Abe bumped into one of his old friends. Ever since, the two of them have been trying to coordinate schedules. We were supposed to have dinner tonight, but we cancelled at the last minute because Lydia and Mary are sick. They’ve been sick for over three weeks, and I honestly don’t anticipate them recovering until May. At least, that’s how last year went. So maybe in May we’ll finally coordinate dinner with Andrew and his family. In the meantime, Abe and I decided at the last minute (while, in fact, we were out on a run up City Creek Canyon–watch out, there was a recent bear sighting there!!) to go on a movie date a mere two hours later.
**Is the sentence structure of that last sentence nearly as hysterical to anyone else as it is to me? Why, oh why am I incapable of clear, linear thought?! I just get so bogged down in tangential asides that real communication must seem awfully obscure to any reader besides myself (for whom parenthetical asides are simply the organic by-products of thinking–and often the most interesting, too…although this one hardly passes muster in the “interesting” category.)**
Anyway, we successfully procured one of the young women in our ward to “babysit” our sleeping children (9:05pm movie, 10 minutes from our house), and off we went. I can not rave enough about The Saratov Approach, although Abe and I are really confused about the title. Why is it the “approach”? I could see The Saratov Event or something a little more catchy-yet-vague, but “approach” left us befuddled. At any rate, the movie is the true story of two Mormon missionaries who got kidnapped in Russia in 1998, and it’s the story of how they endured the terrible crisis and finally returned intact. Lest I spoil it for anyone planning to see it, I won’t say more, other than my insides feel like they have been liquified from two straight hours of suspense.
Which is a nice change of pace, since I spent most of the day in a less-than-palpitated-state.
I lay around reading scriptures and my novel while the children either napped or played next to me…pretty much all day. Actually, I had a lovely time reading in bed this morning while Lydia cuddled with me and played puzzle games on the iPad. Later, while Lydia napped, Mary played contentedly for over an hour while I made a dent in Death Comes to Pemberly. Granted, she came over for hugs and kisses every two and a half minutes, but I looooove dispensing those, so it was a win-win situation/day.
When Abe came home, I popped the dinner I made yesterday in the oven, and then we all went on a run together. After the run we got the girls fed, bathed and ready for bed, brought over the babysitter, and left on our merry way.
