When the big monsters were babies, I always had built-in family babysitters if I ever wanted or needed to go anywhere, so it wasn't that long ago that I thought the mere concept of Date Night a silly one. I likened it to one of those clumsy, rife with expectation and potential for failure sitcom scenarios in which a marriage counselor tells you to get gussied up, "accidentally" meet at a bar, pretend to be strangers, try to seduce one another, and let the general awkwardness and hilarity of role playing ensue.
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a goat cheese and puff pastry small bite to
enjoy with our wine tasting |
Because - who does that?
I mean, who needs to try that hard to spend a little QT with someone to whom you have presumably cleaved for the rest of your life??
And aren't you spending all kinds of time with that person anyway???
Don't you live under the same roof and sleep in the same bed????
Well, YES. You do generally breathe the same air, eat the same food, sleep under the same covers, vegetate on the same couch and zombie walk through the same hallway...
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| carrying over the paon (French for peacock) theme... |
Because you are also both slaves to a tiny, curious, wide eyed tyrant who demands you pay whatever is left of your frayed, frazzled and generally sleep deprived resources to her, loves to climb things and terrorize the family pet, thinks sleep is for weenies and weaklings, and only succumbs to it as briefly as is needed to recharge her evil but adorable internal Energizer bunny battery. Oh, and when she does, it's sideways, in the middle of your bed. And she happens to be a very tall evil but adorable tiny tyrant...
And then all those hours spent in the same space are no longer together. What's left of you is often tired, testy, and generally unfit for human consumption. Someone is getting the Q from your T, and it's not either one of you.
Which is mostly as it should be. That someone is only little once, and in the grand scheme of things, only for a short while.
But then one day, and sooner than you know it, she'll be off in her own home, fighting her own sleep deprived battles with her own tiny tyrant, trying to find some QT with the father of said tiny tyrant, and the two of you will have several many chapters of your lives left to spend together with more T on your hands than you've ever had before and know what to do with.
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| Veal Sweetbreads |
Whether there's any Q in that T will largely depend on whether you took and/or made opportunities to nurture your relationship and give it a life both integrated with, and independent of, your parenting careers.
And all of a sudden, Date Night starts to sound not only like a not silly thing to do, but an absolutely intelligent and necessary thing to do.
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| Mission Fig Salad |
A few unhurried hours away in which you can both remember yourself, the other, and your relationship for what it is and can be beyond the things that take you away from it - even the good things, like tiny, amazing, adorable, precious tyrants.
Enter Paon Restaurant and Wine Bar. A rare find in our neck of the woods - a lovely, quiet and relaxed environment with a sophisticated but casual menu, a great wine selection, music that lends to the ambience and doesn't detract with its volume, a proprietor who still makes the rounds to ensure the quality of your experience, and friendly, attentive, unobtrusive and ungimmicky service. All for about what it would cost to eat at
that noisy, mediocre, overrated, oversalted upper-ish end chain restaurant.
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| Braised Beef Short Rib |
The kind of place that was made for Date Night.
That we happened to stumble upon their inaugural wine tasting event and were warmly invited to partake of it was just extra scrummy caramel sauce on our cannoli.
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| Cannoli with Banana Creme & Caramel Sauce |
A little splurge at their wine shop didn't hurt, either.
And then you come home nourished, refreshed, recharged, reenergized, and recommitted.
To each other.
And all your awesome current, and once were, tiny tyrants.
Date Night. It's not just for weenies anymore.
shinae
Paon Restaurant & Wine Bar
2975 Roosevelt Street
Carlsbad, CA 92008
760.729.7377
www.paoncarlsbad.com
Full album
HERE.
