Out Without The Kids

Despite the Fleet Foxes show eluding us the Mrs. and I still got the chance to enjoy a night out of the house without the Bear and Mouse. We grabbed a couple salads, and the best French Onion Soup ever, from a little place across from the hospital where both our kiddies were hatched. It was in that very place that I had my first meal as a father.

I ate alone that night as I watched my MSU Spartans drop yet another big game to Wisconsin in the finale of the Big Ten regular season. I was completely self-aware and more than a little self absorbed that evening. I looked around at the other patrons, certain they could all tell I'd just became a daddy and quietly, on the inside, they were congratulating me and thinking to themselves "He is going to be one hell of a dad". Not that I had my newborn Bear strapped to my hip or anything. I like to think that my situation was given away by the unable-to-be-removed-by-human-hands bracelet that dangled with an epic coolness from my right wrist. The kind of coolness only a new dad possesses. The kind of coolness that tells everyone "I just laid witness to my wife's vagina being stretched to unthinkable extremes as a slimy wet crying baby emerged from said vagina yet here I sit, calmly enjoying a juicy burger and an ice cold root beer while watching a basketball game". Ain't no cool like new daddy cool.

If the bracelet didn't give me away the heavy bags under my eyes definitely did. They came courtesy of a restless "sleep" on a god-awful cot with a pillow that didn't deserve to be called a pillow for it amounted to nothing more than a pillow case inside of another pillow case.

Oh, where was I? Yes, our night out without the kids...after dinner we saw Mongol, the beautifully filmed and superbly acted 1st film in a Genghis Khan trilogy. Check out the clip below. I can't recommend this movie enough. Go see it and you'll be very cool, even if you don't get to wear a hospital-issued bracelet.