Ever have one of those dates that just didn’t go quite the way you planned? That was our Saturday night.

Mark and I don’t go out very often, same excuses everyone has, but we make sure to hit the special occasions, even the ones arguably created by Hallmark.

We (I) secured a babysitter for Valentine’s weekend, but last minute she had to cancel and asked if we could go out the next weekend instead. Talk about foreshadowing!

So, this Saturday came around and the day was booked: annual celiac testing for M and trying to get me fitted for compression stockings in the morning, followed by nap time and a party for M’s playgroup. We left for the babysitter’s when we were supposed to be arriving there. Whoops.

Mark made good time though, and we got to the restaurant only 10 minutes late for the reservation I am very glad I thought to make. However, the restaurant was so packed they were running behind and we weren’t seated till a half hour after our reservation time. This meant sitting, freezing, by the front door (it’d been in the 40s and pouring rain for 2 days), with a hungry, screaming baby.

Now, the perk to a crowded restaurant is that while it was too loud for Mark and I to hear each other well, it was also loud enough that people probably couldn’t hear Baby J hollering either. But no sooner had we been seated and I’d situated J nursing, then I looked down and saw the huge puddle of bright yellow poop in my lap.

Yep: My child who never has a blow-out diaper had managed to shoot poop out of the top of his pants all. over. my. skirt. without actually getting HIS clothes dirty. That, my friends, is talent. And of course as soon as Mark had changed his diaper, J spit up all over himself. And of course this was the ONE TIME I hadn’t packed a change of clothes for him.

That last disappointment came with our food, when my fish came out tasking like Van Der Kamp fishsticks.

Now, you might read all this and think wow, was there anything redeeming about the place we’d picked to go out on one of our rare dates? There was!

Just as we were preparing to pay our bill and leave, the manager approached our table with a sundae in hand. “We made one too many sundaes for another table,” he said. “I was wondering if perhaps you two would like to split this one for free.” Would we ever! Mark and I agreed it was the best tasting sundae we’d had in ages and totally made up for the rest of the evening.

What “interesting” dates have you been on?