Skinny-atliss, part 1

You know how you're supposed to have a date night when you're married? How you're supposed to deliberately nurture your relationship with your spouse by protecting a regularly scheduled night just for the two of you? How you're supposed to have a standing babysitter so that you can go off to all of your hometown's little romantic spots and revel in the blessing that is your love?

Yeah, we don't do that.

We do sometimes get to go out together sans children. More often than not, though, we end up at Lowes or Target or someplace equally utilitarian, and not to browse paint samples and dream about the future, but usually to buy toilet paper or figure out how to repair the hole that someone put in the wall where there shouldn't have been a hole.

So if we're not careful, we'll sometimes discover that it's been a long time since we've done anything fun together. LONG time. That's what motivated me to aspire to "Go away with Mark to someplace we've never been." (#26 on the list, I think.) I honestly can't remember the last time we did an overnight getaway without our children that was just for fun. But once I put it on the list, I started looking for getaway deals online.

I've been playing around lately with sites like Groupon and Living Social, which harness collective buying power (power to the people!!) to produce terrific local deals. Living Social also lists heavily discounted getaways, and it was there that I found a package deal to Mirbeau Inn and Spa in the Finger Lakes region of New York state. We'd never been there, and it looked like fun, so we grabbed it and booked it for this past Wed-Fri.

We enlisted the aid of Mark's very, very, very helpful parents, who agreed to come and stay with our kids while we were gone, and after a bit of oh-my-gosh-your-parents-are-going-to-be-living-here cleaning frenzy, we actually managed to get away together.

On the way up to New York state, we stopped for lunch in Scranton, PA. We are fans of The Office, so we searched en route for an Office-related restaurant and landed at Alfredo's Pizza Cafe. For those of you who care, it's the pizzeria mentioned in "Launch Party" (it's the one with the good pizza, not the one whose delivery guy they kidnapped). It turned out to be an unremarkable, friendly little spot in a strip mall. The food was really quite good--Mark had the fettucine alfredo (in honor of the Fun Run episode) and I had some crazy-thin pizza that was way better than I expected. A couple of exterior shots for you.

The GPS took us to Alfredo's by way of the back roads of Scranton, which left me totally depressed and thinking that I'm really, really glad I don't work for Dunder Mifflin. Ugh. On the way out, however, we went through a much nicer section of the city (past the Steamtown Mall, which I'm pretty sure I've heard about on the show...anyone?), and I am less horrified. Still, I'm glad we didn't book our whole adventure for Scranton.

After that we powered straight through to our destination: the little village of Skaneateles, NY. Go ahead and try pronouncing it. My best guess was way off, but once I started looking for the answer it was not hard to find. It's pronounced "Skinny-atliss." (Did you think the post title was a weight loss reference? My atliss hasn't gotten any skinnier of late.)

The geek portion of my brain (and a large portion it is) bucks at "Skinny-atliss" and protests that "Skanny-atliss" wouldn't be any harder to say, but there you have it. This information was plastered all over the web, and while we were there I heard at least three of my fellow tourists being instructed by locals in the nuances of pronounciation.

It's a little absurd, but I'll admit it's fun to say.

Anyhow, it's a pretty little town on the shores of...can you guess? Skaneateles Lake. We had only been able to get a one-night deal at the Inn and Spa place, so we found a good deal at a cheaper place in town for the night before: the Skaneateles Boutique Hotel.
They post last-minute deals on their website, and so I was able to get a room with a Jacuzzi in it for half price. This makes me feel like I've won something, somehow, which is probably a deliberate move on their part.

We made our way there and checked in just in time for the rain to begin...first a downpour and then a series of never-quite-breaking-off showers that lasted the whole first night. But we didn't let the rain deter us from walking around and exploring the town a little. Lots of cute little shops and quaint, pretty vistas.
Come to think of it, I have no idea how the chalkboard in the first pic escaped the rain. Such is the magic of Skaneateles, I guess. That last pic is of someone's house, right next to the public library, I think? Right on the main street. It looks so much like one of the other touristy spots that they needed to have a quaint little sign that identifies it as a "private residence." I suppose that would be the downside of living in a house that looks like it belongs near the entrance of Disney World.

I'd forgotten that traveling four and a half hours north will have a significant effect on the growing season, but we noticed that all the lilacs were just coming into seriously-gorgeous. Ours at home are already done and shriveled up, but these were everywhere and fragrant and lush and all dewy with the light rain...beautiful.
Now, if you've been following this list-related journey since November, you may have already caught something that it took me hours to realize. I was already thoroughly damp, my hair having long since gleefully abandoned any pretense of cooperation, before I realized that we were walking in the rain!! That's on the list. And now it's crossed off.

All giggly with the headiness of being away from home and getting rained on and crossing something off the list, I sought to document this event for YOU, gentle reader, with a photo. I stood like a dork in the middle of the sidewalk and posed with a stupid (but authentic) grin on my face, looking up at the rain and waiting for the camera to warm up. Here's what we ended up with.
Yeah, I'm an idiot. But that's ok. I'll take it.

We eventually squished our way (I was unwisely wearing flip flops...ew) back to the hotel and just RELAXED. No one whined. There was no agenda. Mark watched the Bulls in the Eastern Conference finals (which was a huge throwback to our dating years in the early 1990s), and I gave myself a pedicure. We availed ourselves of the complimentary snacks (Oreos, peanuts, orange juice, oatmeal) that this quirky little hotel offers. The Bulls lost, and my toenails turned out pretty terrible, but neither of us cared. It was quiet and relaxed and fun and a perfectly lovely evening.

Stay tuned for part two, in which we get in way over our heads at the spa. :)