State of the Date (long do beware)

O.K. ladies, and Scot who reads this blog.

My sweetie of a sister offered to come over with her fantastic family and take care of our kids (yeah, it takes a village) so that Gary and I could go out on a date. I know, I know. We went on a date last month too. Imagine that. Two dates in two months. I am so blessed. The date came at a great time. Gary had been on call the week before and we hadn't spent some significant time together.

We had lots of discussion as to what to do. Do any of you do that or do you just know? We thought we go here, then we decided to do this, then we changed it to that. . . .I think with having kids we need to do more planning, both for time and for budget. Anyway, we came up with a great plan. Let me tell you in advance, it was a great date.* (Notice the asterisk. This will be significant later.)

We decided to first go and spend some time with Noel Furman. She is one of my former campers from Camp Roger. She is in her fifties and has Down Syndrome. If the name sounds familiar, it is because our Noel is named after her. I love her. I love spending time with her. She enjoys being with me too. We talk about Camp Roger mostly. The interesting thing about Noel Furman is that she wants to be by herself and she shuts down when staff members or her housemates come into the room. We've had trouble in the past with our visits because there are other former campers of mine who live with Noel. They come in the room and essentially, my visit with Noel is over. Well, there is a new worker there named Melissa who recognizes this about Noel. She visited with all of us Camp Roger crew and then announced that Gary and I needed some alone time with Noel. BLESS HER HEART! Noel and I then laughed. We hugged, she gave me kisses, we sang songs. . . it was delightful. It was our best visit ever. She even hugged Gary. Thank you Lord!

Then, we drove out towards Camp Roger and went hiking for a bit. It was fun to talk and to dream about the land that we'll never own. Dreaming is free. We know we'll never have lots of acres up north with a sweet cabin, but it is fun to imagine.

Finally, we went to Honey Creek Inn for super. It is a great little restaurant in Cannonsburg that I've eaten at many times, all of them with some of the most special people in my life. We ate slowly, we ordered something new (fried green beans: delicious!), had several free refills, and just talked, laughed, and prayed together. I love this guy. I love him. I love being with him. All the while, we knew that our kids were having so much fun with their aunt, uncle and cousins. We arrived home by 10:00 so I got to bed on time. My house was cleaner than when I left it (my sister has many gifts that I don't have: thank you Tricia!) and my children were sleeping. It was a great date.

*So, here is the rub. Gary and I are very different when it comes to driving! There are four, count them four specific things that happened on our date. . . .and Gary knows I'm blogging about it. We talked and laughed (much later) about it all. First, as we were driving, a squirrel ran in front of us. What did Gary do? Nothing. Nothing except run over the squirrel. You do not need to hit squirrels. You can swerve. Gary won't swerve because he wants us to be safe. He says he made a promise to himself that the people in the car are more important than an animal on the road. I agree, except that he could have swerved and this squirrel could still be darting on the road trying to find the nuts he buried last fall. Next, Gary does not recognize yellow lights as being something that you slow down for. I do. I'll go through a yellow light on occasion, but I was taught (thank you Mr. Kos my drivers ed teacher) that if you can stop, then you do. If you can't, then you go through. Gary went through four in a row and he was extremely proud of it! What?!? At least he wasn't proud of the squirrel. Third, Gary is a darter. He darts in and out, he passes many on the highway. If our exit is just up ahead, it doesn't matter. He'll still dart. I'll pass people who are going slow, but if our exit is less than two minutes. . . why go through it? Gary will and did.

O.k., I've muddled through the little laughable ones, but this one takes the cake--and you know how I love cake. Sick of reading yet? Here is it, the big one. As we are approaching Leonard exit the gas light goes on. Time to get gas. I myself rarely see the light. I don't like to come close to being out of gas, so I try to stop when we get to a quarter of a tank. Not Gary. He prides himself on getting as close as he can. He comes close to running out of gas but always just manages to squeak by. He carries two gas cans with him because he likes to play this game. Sometimes he'll add a little bit to make it to the gas station. He is clever like that. So, not only is the light on, but our little monitor says we have 6 miles until empty--plus, there isn't an extra tank of gas in the car. This is not your work truck I remind him. Let's just say that I am NOT doing well with this. Shanda is not o.k. I tend to get a little stressed out at times. Good thing I married a cool, calm and collected kind of guy. "We'll be fine" says Gary. I can't hold his hand. What are we going to do? We are going to run out of gas on the highway. Gary turns off the monitor so I can't see how close we get. I'm nervous. Seriously, I am nervous. Those few miles were silent in the car except for Gary telling me that it'll be o.k. We aren't going to run out of gas. At the end, I did grasp his hand rather firmly. Our monitor said "0" as we pulled into the station. He put 16.2 gallons of gas into our 16 gallon tank.

I was stressed out and my guy took care of me. Like I said, it was a great date.