out for coffee

Last week we picked a night, left the kids with a babysitter and ventured into the city for dinner alone. We did it for several reasons, the greatest being that the boys beg me to find any excuse for her to come. She floats on air, builds castles, or feeds them baskets of candy. I haven’t figured out the secret, yet.

Dates are not huge with us which feels contrary to everything society tells me. I should crave the experience of going out with my husband and leaving the kids at home. But we enjoy their company and on the occasions we get out by ourselves we wander around aimlessly and repeat “Well, what would you like to do?” several times. Sometimes aimless wandering is fun.

After we’d left the restaurant and explored four city blocks we climbed in the truck and headed home. Stopped at a red light, I glanced out the window and saw the cutest little coffee shop on the corner. It was all bright lights, live music, and stacked with laughing friends and after work business men with laptops in tow. I penciled it onto my mental to-do list right then.

Yesterday seemed an appropriately dreary and frigid day for quaint downtown dark roast. And because I’d remembered the name of the shop but not the location, we turned circles around downtown trying to find it again. Google is no help when you’re standing in the median between 11th and Broadway asking for “The Iron Bank” and getting every actual bank within 20 miles and nothing to do with coffee.

We finally arrived with frozen noses and numb fingers. Coffee never tasted so good. It was worth searching for.