yummy

Tonks and I had a girls' night out last night. It was really nice. I needed it with all the recent life stress. She suggested a great place I hadn't been before, Spitfire on 39th. Yum.

Here's the recipe for a perfectly relaxing evening:

• Dirty martini
• Appetizer of homemade gnocchi smothered in cheese fondue (S.J.B made me try it. My hips blame her.)
• Salad of grape tomatoes, goat cheese and asparagus in a vinaigrette
• After dinner White Russian (We were channeling the 80's--even if Tonks was but a babe in that decade. She's such a youngling; she had a heart attack when I said I am 42. Sad, but true.)
• Splitting a dessert of champagne covered strawberries with whipped cream and crushed biscotti
• Browsing a used book store

It really was a lovely, little evening. Thanks Tonks.

At the bookstore, I had an interesting conversation with the owner (at least I think he was the owner). We were discussing the fact that, as parents, MY generation spent our youth hiding things from our parents and now we are hiding things from our kids. It's an interesting idea.

I certainly hid a LOT from my parents. I was not an angelic teenager by any stretch of the imagination . . . but good grades and other success meant my parents didn't look too hard to discover my bad girl proclivities. My mother is a star at seeing the less-than-perfect as perfectly, perfect. They essentially ignored the punk rocker living in their house. I think they figured their daughter would return. She did, but there will always be a punk residing within.

My kids, on the other hand, are much more puritanical. Ok, maybe not puritanical but straight-laced. I don't remember saying, "I'm going to wait for marriage." They say it all the time. I grew up before "Just say 'no'!" and the DARE program. We said "yes" all the time. Tonks was a little shocked to hear that I starting drinking as an eighth grader. I didn't drink frequently at that age, but did raid my parents' liquor cabinet at least once toward the end of that school year. (My crowd of girls mixed drinks before a dance. I do believe I actually mixed beer and OJ. An orange beer? What an idiot.) I lied, sneaked out, went out of town with boyfriends when "spending the night at a girlfriends", and generally "experienced" life.

I am a spy-mom. I don't ignore anything. I really don't think either of my girls has had a drink (other than when I let them taste mine). I know that Eldest is in the "exploratory" stage with her boyfriend. She's finally stopped saying she's going to wait for marriage. (While I find this more believable than her prior position; it's still a bit discombobulating to hear.) DARE really affected them; they are ardently anti-drug. I was ardently curious, but pretty scared of drugs. In that way, I was pretty good girl. Not perfect, but too scared to be truly wild. However, there were always drugs at the high school parties. While I stayed out of it, there was always one room with pot, shrooms and sometimes coke. It was the 80's and I lived in a university town.

I'm not sure I really "hide" anything from my kids now, other than what I did as a kid. But the idea that the teens of the 80's are hiding their pot from their kids, the same way they hid it from their parents 20 years ago, is quite amusing.

(For you younglings, that's an 80's house. )