The darker, the better....

Hi. My name is Angie and it's my day to guest blog in Erikka's absence. What an honor to have her ask me to step-in with all these other great people - I'm not worthy.

Taboos? Guilty Pleasures? I wasn't sure how far to go with this topic. Even though I've read Erikka's blog for some time and she is a cool, open, hip chick - you just never know - but then I scanned some of the other guest posts and decided to go for it.

Every so often, my husband will take the afternoon off and he and I will come up with some mundane errand we need to run or at least tell the kids that's what we are doing. We head out to a neighboring town, find the most non-descript little 'hole in the wall' bar, the darker-the better, as the title says, belly-up to the bar and escape.

Now this might seem strange to some. Why the need to go to a bar? That's simple. Because they have beer there. The afternoon is not about getting wasted, it is about escaping, relaxing, talking, listening to music, playing pool and most of all - reconnecting. Remember the days when you didn't have kids, a house, animals, responsibilities? It's like going back in time and reliving those days when the only thing you had to do was skip class or call in sick to work.

We've been married for 16 years this year. We have 3 teenage daughters and one going off to college in September. We own/operate an organic vegetable-flower farm with various animals, in addition to his full-time job. All of this requires a lot of time and energy and very little time to reconnect. This is how we accomplish that.

Sometimes we only stay a couple of hours and sometimes we find that 4 or 5 hours have gone by and we still don't want to leave. It reminds us that we were a couple before we were a family and it allows us to be two individuals who have things to say and share that don't involve who is driving to what practice, who paid what bill, what groceries we need or who needs clean underwear.

There are times when we are driving each other nuts, arguing over the details of life and we don't really feel like hanging out together. We go anyway. We have yet to end the afternoon without figuring our shit out or agreeing to disagree and come to a compromise. Without having this outlet, I'm not sure we would have survived some of the more stressful times in our lives.

Our life doesn't allow us to take vacations or many long weekends with just the two of us, so this is our little guilty pleasure. Something about taking off in the middle of the afternoon and skipping out on our responsibilities makes it more fun than say, a date night, which always seemed too contrived for me - more of an obligation. I'm not sure, but I think these little get-away afternoons have done wonders for our marriage. It's like a secret just between us.

Maybe if I'm asked back, I'll tell about our trips to the porn shops:) Another great marriage builder!

Thanks, Erikka - hope you're having a great trip and taking Nova Scotia by storm!