Planning regular Date Nights is becoming as impossible as a good, hot bubble bath, shaving my upper leg and a dinnertime game of Scrabble. The baby always wants in and she’s not putting down the razor ’til she gets her way.

I’d love five hours with him every Saturday night, creating a wonderful, weekend ritual like my friend Lisa and her husband, Dave. But, our lives just don’t work that way. Many Saturdays we teach, others Jamie does private events and, finally, when that jewel of a Saturday is free, we’re so exhausted that we just want to share the couch, a season of Dexter and a bottle of wine.

So we sneak in our time when we can, between meetings, during naps, right when the sun goes down and we still have our energy and our smiles. But, sometimes, I want just a little more.

Today, at the intersection of 58th and 5th, we’re pausing our day and having martinis at The Plaza. At 4 o’clock. At an hour when we should be writing/cooking/changing diapers. A meeting in Midtown is first and then we’ll play like Redford and Streisand (circa The Way We Were, hopefully with a happier end-scene) in the belly of New York’s most famous French Renaissance chateau. Will we feel guilty? Maybe just a little. But the salty cashews and dirty martinis will do wonders for our conscious.

Our lives are much different than Nick Carraway’s  (The Great Gatsby) and Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade’s (Scent of a Woman); we can’t linger in the Oak Room and the gilded hallways for hours. One good drink, one hour dedicated to each other and then a subway ride back downtown to responsibility, sippy cups and baby’s bath time. But that’s enough. I’m not an actor or a romantic lead–I’m just a mom and a wife who needs an hour away.