The List

Lately, my husband and I have been caught up in the throes of what can only be described as Babysitting Fever, which is sort of like Football Fever,except that it doesn’t involve football.

After losing our last fabulous babysitter to a student teaching job, I spent most of Christmas break trying to find a new girl- not an easy task since all the colleges in town had plotted against me and shut down for winter break.

Finally, though, I found someone. A wonderful someone, whom my daughter says “maybe might be the greatest babysitter ever.” This babysitter is so great, in fact, that when she couldn’t come on a recent requested evening, she sent out an e-mail to her entire sorority, which produced five more potential babysitters, all available on weekends, evenings, and different days of the week.

Can you even imagine? Where once I had a few sketchy names scrawled in my calendar, names like, Bessie Splutnik and Parquetta Lipshitznicki, I now have a list of Grade A babysitters! Babysitters who speak English! And don’t have criminal records! And babysitters who, most importantly, will willingly play Punky’s favorite games, like “Horse Helpers!” And, “You’re-an-Evil-Witch!-Okay-That’s-a-Little-Scary-Now-You’re-a-Good-Witch!”

Now that we had this list (one certain moms, I happen to know, would pay a hundred dollars to get their hands on), Hubs and I realized we could do the unthinkable- go out on a Friday Night!

Yes! A Friday night! Otherwise known to parents as the Date Night Dead Zone- a time when a babysitter is about as easy to find as a natural blonde in LA.

But… as you can probably guess, our Big Night Out totally didn’t go as I had expected. I wrote about it in this week’s newspaper edition of Suburban Turmoil. The full text of the column is below.

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As all parents know, trying to find a babysitter for a Friday or Saturday night is like trying to find a picture of Karl Dean in women’s underwear.

It ain’t gonna happen.

Even your most reliable weeknight sitters will do an abrupt about face when you ask whether they’re free on a weekend. Those cherub-faced Benedict Arnolds will suddenly claim they have boyfriends to date, movies to see, parties to attend. They have, like, you know, lives.

So when a planned Thursday date night with my husband fell through last week, I e-mailed our babysitters about the possibility of a Friday night gig with a sinking feeling in my gut. And, just as I’d suspected, none of my regulars were available.

However, one of them was kind enough to send an e-mail to all of her sorority sisters, one that I can only guess must have included the top secret details of our endless ice cream and Little Debbie stash — because within an hour, I had five responses.

Five responses! From Vandy girls! I felt like I’d won Babysitting Powerball!

Without hesitation, I signed one up, and, just like that, Hubs and I had a Friday night to ourselves. We drove into town at seven that night with no firm plans, giddy with what seemed to be an endless array of possibilities. Little did we know that those possibilities were actually quite limited.

“How about PM?” Hubs asked. “We’ve been wanting to go there.”

“I heard PM has an hour-and-a-half wait,” I said. “I’m not really down with that.”

Instead of heading to PM, we drove around for 45 minutes, arguing, I mean, discussing which restaurants were likely to have an available table. We finally narrowed it down to Captain D’s and Mafiaoza’s. We chose Mafiaoza’s because it was closer, but when we arrived, we found a long line of people snaking out the door.

“I don’t get it,” Hubs said. “It’s never like this. Isn’t there supposed to be a recession or something?”

“Apparently not on Fridays,” I said. Sighing, we slunk back to our car in defeat. It was now eight o’clock and we were no closer to eating dinner.

Finally, we settled on Tin Angel, where we resigned ourselves to a 45-minute wait. Wearily, I sat down on a bench while Hubs went to the bar to get me a martini. When he returned, I stared at the doll-sized glass barely visible in his hands.

“Hubs,” I said sourly, “I asked for a martini. Not a mar-tiny.”

Hubs shook his head.

“Take it back and tell him the sample was good and I’m ready for the rest of it,” I said.

Silently, Hubs handed me the mar-tiny. I sipped it morosely as we waited for a table. Some Friday night this was turning out to be.

Eventually, we finished our dinner and decided to head to Lime for one last drink. I knew we were in the right place when I saw that the bar had both a doorman and a bouncer, which in Nashville means, We is hotspot, y’all.

Inside, the place didn’t disappoint. It was filled with men wearing ridiculous cashmere-blend scarves around their necks, and women tripping around in stilettos and body-baring black dresses. Since there wasn’t a seat to be found, I stood behind the chairs at the bar, clutching my coat and purse to my chest.

“You look really awkward,” Hubs informed me.

“Sorry,” I said. “I haven’t had to stand at a bar since, like, 2000. I’ve forgotten how to rock that look.”

Fortunately at that moment, a seat at the bar opened up. I sat down and Hubs draped himself casually over the back of my chair. We tried to think of stylish things to chat about.

“I’m wearing my new Snuggie to lunch on Sunday,” I told him seductively. That didn’t go over so well. I took another tactic.

“So, some collections agency has been calling every single day.”

“We paid that bill,” Hubs said impatiently. “It’s some sort of insurance screw up.”

“Well, I just don’t want my credit ruined over it.”

“Our credit won’t be ruined over a 42-dollar insurance dispute.”

“We could lose the house!”

People at the bar turned to stare.

“Sorry,” I shrugged, looking around. Where were the other married people, anyway? Obviously, I was just making conversation.

I gulped the rest of my mojito, looked at my watch, and realized our dream date had come to an end.

And so had my dream of Friday and Saturday nights out. It didn’t matter whether I could find a sitter — as long as my marriage remained intact (and I have reason to believe that it will), the weekends would never again be ‘our time.’ Clearly, they were for singles, men and women who didn’t mind the long waits and crowded bars and wanted only to see and be seen.

I looked down sadly at my lap, and realized that it still bore signs of the time my son had wiped his crusty nose along the skirt of my dress.

Suddenly, being seen wasn’t something I had any interest in whatsoever.