Movie and Dinner

Well we made it through the first date (if you can call it a first). Rayette called me back on Wednesday asking if I would like to get together on Friday to go to dinner and a movie. My only problem with it was that I needed to leave my kids at home, but it was time to give Kevin some responsibility. He is 12 (almost 13), and is a fairly responsible kid. Normally early in starting to date someone I won't date on the weeks I have the boys, I would just rather not have to worry about them, but Rayette and I were way past that before, so I felt I needed to not treat this as a first date. I agreed to go out.

She told me that her younger son (12) was going to a sleep over birthday party that evening, but her older son (14) would be home by himself. We made plans to see one of the newer movies, either Red Eye or Flight Plan. I was wondering if she had a thing about intense airliner movies.

I informed my kids on Thursday night over the phone that they would be home alone Friday evening so that I could go on a date. I didn't want to divulge just yet that I was going to go out with Rayette for a couple of reasons. First I didn't want to get their hopes up, and second I didn't want them telling Irene about us dating yet. She sticks her nose too far into my business.

Rayette called me later on Thursday night to see if I wanted to just bring the boys down to hang out with her son. I knew they would love it, so I said that it would be great. I told her I would have to get Kevin from football practice at 5:45, then we would be on the road. So our date wasn't going to start until about 7 since it would take us an hour or so to get to her place. We planned on seeing an 8 o'clock-ish show. The timing was going to be very tight. I was hoping for favorable traffic.

Irene called this afternoon to tell me that she would watch the kids while I was out. I told her that there was a change of plans. I didn't want to freak her out making her think I was going to leave the kids at a strangers house so I let her know I was going to be seeing Rayette. He immediate reaction was, "I thought you were through with her?". I think she got the impression that I was the one that broke things off before. I kind of just told her that things change. She's obviously still jealous of me seeing anyone, especially if they are good looking. Irene has only met 3 women that I have dated. Rayette, Laura, and Chantel, all of which made her extremely jealous. All three having totally different features. It's not as if Irene is ugly on the outside, but she seems to be on the inside.

Kevin called me in the afternoon from his mom's house. I asked him why he wasn't at practice. Well apparently his entomology teacher made deep fried and chocolate covered crickets for everyone in the class to try. I guess it made Kevin sick, so he bailed on practice.

Kevin is trying out for the basketball team Saturday morning, so we needed to get him some shoes tonight. I left work early to pick the boys up, get the shoes and get down to Pueblo early so we wouldn't have to rush to get to the movie. I called Rayette to let he know we'd be there earlier. Her son answered and told me she was still asleep (she worked the night before). I told him to have her call me as soon as she was up.

I called when we were 3/4 of the way there to make sure she was up. She was just getting up... and she was running very late. She got on the phone and sounded annoyed. I was hoping she was not upset with me. She told me her kids had already eaten and she needed to get her son to the party, so I told her we would give her more time and I would get the boys some dinner. Taco Hell here we come. We took our time.

I called and she was on her way back home and needed to shower. I made sure she was ok with us coming over right then... the boys could play. She was in a much better mood. All was good.

I had forgotten how long it takes her to get ready to go somewhere. We were pushing the limits on time for the movie. She had told me the times of the movie the other night, but she didn't pull up today's times. They had changed since new movies had opened today. We got to the theater and the only flick starting right then, and not hours later was Red Eye... we lucked out. We sat down and the movie started. I was not upset at all by having to miss all the damn commercials. I do like to watch the trailers though. Oh well.

The movie was pretty good, not great. We headed over to Ruby Tuesday's for a bite to eat afterwards. She had not had any dinner and I didn't get my usual popcorn for the movie (she even commented on that earlier). Nothing on their menu looked very good except the Asian Dumplings. Well, I knew they would not be up to Chinese food standards, and these were very far from it. It ended up being an appetizer only evening. She order a quesadilla and chips & queso. The food kind of sucked.

I know I wanted to get to talking about us dating. I was clearly nervous, or at least I felt it. I asked her if she was nervous about us going out again. She said no, and seemed very sincere about that. This got us to talking as I had hoped. We discussed some of what we had in the past that was good. She asked if I was nervous. I told her that I was, but in a good way. I told her how I had always hoped that one day we could try to straighten things out. She told me again how she had hoped she had not caused any problems with me and Chantel (not that she knew her name). I reassured her that it was already ended, but in the messy stages. She had me explain what had happened.

I know I didn't want to tell her about having Chantel move in, but I knew I had to since it was the right thing to do. It would eventually become known, so I may as well come out with it. She was quite surprised, but was also glad that I knew to ended as soon as I did instead of dragging things out like people tend to do.

Over all it was a very good conversation. We also talked about some of the horror stories she has had since we'd dated. Get this... One guy that she went out on one date with, followed her and her kids to Las Vegas a week or so later. She did not know he was going to do this. She didn't know he was even around until she spotted him when she was at Lake Meade with her kids. Obviously this freaked her out. I already knew part of this story because she had called me to get directions back to Colorado going a different route than she took going there. At the time she told me a little about what was going on, but tonight she told me the whole thing, including having to get a restraining order. The scariest thing about this was that he also took his kids on the stalking trip. What a freak!

We talked a lot about the kids and how we both did not want to get too serious right now. We got a lot of stuff out in the open. There is a lot more that I wanted to say, but we don't need to get it all out there on the first date. We've already agreed not to go too fast.