You can take the Mommy Out of the House…

But you can’t take the Mommy out of yourself.

The shining silver lining of an unexpected overnight business trip yesterday was the opportunity to stay with one of my best friends and have dinner with two of my best friends — sans kids. Between us, we have four boys and two girls, all under the age of five (Nate’s the youngest). Two harried lawyers married to harried lawyers and one stay at home mom with an occasional out-of-the-home-gig-to-keep-up-her-skills married to a guy who runs tech support for harried lawyers. When it came to pass that babysitters other than husbands couldn’t be had, we gleefully set off for a girl’s only, adult dinner. We giggled as we pulled into the restaurant parking lot — “look! adult lighting!” We giggled as we assessed the menu — the original requirement being we had to go somewhere that didn’t have chicken fingers on the menu, but that got revised slightly when we saw a chi-chi chicken fingers-esque option on the tapas menu to no mac-n-cheese. We marveled that we were all wearing nice shirts and didn’t have to worry about them being slimed by young ones. We laughed a lot.

But as soon as we got down to business, what did three adult women who have known each other for upwards of 15 or more years and hardly get to see each other talk about over good food, good wine, and good chocolate? Our kids. There was no smoking, there was no drinking to excess, and we were all home by 10 p.m.

And you know what? It was the best time I have had in a long time.