The Trouble with Parking

Saturday night Steve and I headed out for a date. It wasn't going to be a long one because we left Sarah in charge. Since she hasn't done much in the way of babysitting, we left after bedtime and after the youngest ones had already fallen asleep. This meant that nothing was open except Coldstone (gotta love small town life.) We got our ice cream and then took it up the hill to this great overlook a few blocks from our house. It's on property owned by the city so there's all these "no trespassing" signs but they are easy to ignore because it's a really good spot to sit and talk with a fabulous view of the valley.

So we get up there and NPR is playing smooth jazz and the moon is full. It was lovely and we were having a great talk about our busy week and some plans we are making (along with a few obligitory jokes about "parking" followed by the obligitory kiss) when the car dings at us. We had been sitting there for 20 minutes with the radio running and the heater fan going (no idea why, because the car wasn't running so the fan was blowing cold air.) Steve immediately tried to start the car. It groaned at him, quietly though because there wasn't enough power to groan loadly. We had drained our battery on NPR Jazz. It was for a good cause though. Parents of five don't get out much. I have no clue why the car didn't ding before the battery was too far gone to restart the car.

Luckily we were three blocks from home. Not so luckily I was wearing date shoes, three inch wedges that look adorable on but are not so adorable to walk in. I was also wearing a light jacket when the temp was in the 30's. We trudged down the hill on the lovely rutted dirt road laughing about how we were very glad we didn't have to tell anybody's father we ran down a car battery "parking."

We got the van, jumped the car, and I drove the van back to the house while Steve followed in his car. I hopped in and we went for a drive to get the battery charged back up. All in all, the date lasted twice what we planned on it lasting because of our little car mishap. We were also very glad our favorite hill was so close to home.

I think we have learned our lesson on that one . . . next time we go parking we'll take a battery powered radio instead of using the one in the car. Steve's got a set of speakers for his MP3 player anyway. Maybe I can get him to put together a parking playlist. ;)