Aretha Frankenstein's

With a name like Aretha Frankenstein's you know you are in for an offbeat experience, and such is the case when you eat at this quirky little restaurant in the North Shore of Chattanooga.

We discovered Aretha Frankenstein's several years ago when we were staying in a VRBO rental just down the street. We attempted a visit at the time, but the incredibly LONG lines deterred us.


On several different occasions we have driven by in hopes of a shorter wait, but to no avail.

More recently we ate at Crocket's Breakfast Camp in Gatlinburg where we tried the Aretha Frankenstein pancakes that were featured on the menu. The pancakes were amazing, so I decided we needed to make another attempt to try the local restaurant.

Daniel and I recently had the opportunity when Daniel was home on a weekday. After dropping Jack at preschool, we bundled Isaac up and headed down to North Shore.

Luckily for us, a cold Thursday morning is a perfect time to visit this popular joint. The decor matched the name of the diner with skeletons hanging from chandeliers and posters of cult classics plastered on the walls. 

I had the eggs and bacon with a pancake on the side while Daniel had a chocolate chip waffle. The food was all delicious. The restaurant also boasts an espresso bar, which I should have tried because the plain coffee I had was awful. I could smell how bad it was when they brought it to the table but tried to choke it down anyways. Moral of the story: Food = Fantastic, Coffee = Terrible.

The morning we were there, the speakers were blasting heavy metal music (the kind where the band just screams, and you are pretty sure obscenities are assaulting your ears). For ten in the morning it was a jolt to our senses, but mostly it made us feel old.

I don't know if we will be back. At this point in our life, Crocket's Breakfast Camp is more our speed (plus Aretha Frankenstein's really isn't that kid friendly, though they did have one booster chair for little ones).

On a side note, I recently picked up some Aretha Frankenstein's Pancake Mix from a local grocer and it tastes about as good as the real deal (though I have no idea how they make their pancakes 1-inch think... even with their mix, mine only were about 0.25-inches thick).

Biscuit Love

When we first became parents, I read a lot about the importance of continuing to date your husband (even writing about it here). Weekly if possible. In theory, I think this is a fantastic idea, but our reality never seems to measure up to that standard.

 

Daniel and I have had plenty of time to date (10+years if you include our dating years), so we don't feel too guilty when current dates tend to lean more toward "family" dates. Part of that has been changing our expectations and being ok with this. More often than not our alone dates include a bowl of ice cream and Netflix. I think you just do what you have to do and don't get hung up on a date being leaving your house, without kids. I mean, we even took our kids on our recent 13th anniversary trip.

But if we have the opportunity to go out, sans kids, we try to jump on it. Holidays tend to work in our favor in this regard. Our family loves the chance to hang out with our boys and who are we to turn down free baby sitting?

Most recently we were able to sneak off on a brunch and furniture shopping date. We left our boys with Daniel's sister and headed out to grab breakfast for lunch (my fave). We had initially planned to go to The Pancake Pantry but the line was wrapped around the outside of the building (and it was raining). So instead we found ourselves wandering over to the Gulch for a little Biscuit Love.

Biscuit Love also had a wait, but if you were willing to sit at the bar (we were, we didn't have kids!), you could get in immediately.

According to Nashville Guru, The "East Nasty" and "Southern Benny" were the dishes to get. And they did not disappoint.

Getting away was just what we needed – uninterrupted conversation, followed by time browsing local stores for a new dining table that we are dreaming about.

Our next date may not happen until Easter (hopefully sooner), but until that time we savor these moments together and embrace the days that our dates involve our whole family or just the two of us, on the couch after our kids are in bed.

Family Date Night(s)

When you become a parent, one of the main pieces of advice that you will read (or be told) over and over is that you need to continue to date your spouse. As a gal who was blessed with 10 years of dating my spouse (pre-baby), I totally understand the importance of working to stay connected. As a parent of a toddler (who lives in a rural area and whose closest family member is almost 2 hours away) reality is that (for us, right now) this task is equivalent to trying to climb Mt. Everest.

Don't misunderstand me and think that we don't spend time together. Typically (at least once a week) we end up grabbing a RedBox and collapsing on the sofa... where one or both of us may fall asleep. Not exactly romantic. 

Alternatively, when we visit family, we always have good intentions of leaving Jack with whoever we are staying with and sneaking off for a date, but we are typically exhausted from traveling and dates rarely happen. Once we snuck out to grab a late dinner and we both struggled to stay awake while waiting for our food. A late move? Forget about it. We have managed a handful of dates in the last year and a half (including canoeing and a trip to a coffee house), but this is nowhere near the "weekly" dates we had before Jack came along.

Recently I was feeling kind of getting depressed about the fact that we can't seem to achieve this "weekly date thing." It just isn't happening. Besides, there aren't that many places locally that we would even want to go to for a date. So weekend nights can seem lame.

This passed weekend and something changed – my attitude, perhaps. 

We have been trying to go to a series of free concerts at the Lowe Mill Docks in Huntsville for the last 2 months. Something always seems to come up to prevent us from going. This past Friday, we were determined to go. We didn't care that it was forecast to rain all evening. We packed up Jack, our camp chairs, the BOB stroller and rain jackets and headed to the city.

On the way there a friend texted me to say the concert had been cancelled. Bummer. We were already on our way, so we kept driving. We ended up at Bridge Street where we tried Tommy's Pizza for the first time. We were served up a 21" New York style pizza while it poured outside. After eating, we hurried through the rain (it's an outdoor mall) to Barnes & Noble where Jack enjoyed the train table and we enjoyed sitting in one of our favorite bookstores, browsing through the latest magazines. After B&N, we headed over to Toys R Us to see if Jack would be interested in a mini powerwheels four wheeler (he was). We also ran into one of Daniel's roommates from TTU (unexpectedly). We have a baby now, they have a baby now. Life marches on. On the way home, Jack was asleep and we stopped at DQ to split a Blizzard. 

So the difference in dates, was that instead of feeling like, "woe is me, I don't have a baby sitter, I'm stuck in Hollywood," we just went to town and dragged Jack along with us. I have no idea why we have put off weekend family dates like this. We take Jack everywhere else with us, why not do something fun as a family date? So, we may not see a movie in a real live theater for another decade, but there is still fun stuff that we can do.

I think we were both feeling good about our Friday night outing (even though it rained), so when we needed to run an errand to Chattanooga on Saturday, we decided to stop at Taco Mamacitas for dinner and then run over to Coolidge Park to let Jack play.

We ended up stumbling on the Beer over Dirt fundraiser at Renaissance Park – which happened to have live music. So we missed our live music on Friday, but we still ended up catching some live music on Saturday. 

Jack had his first experience with a water fountain. He was a little intimidated by it. We enjoyed walking through the park. It rained a bit, but we still had our rain jackets from Friday and it was a great weekend.

I guess I am saying all of this because it has taken me 18+months to realize that I can have fun with my family and I don't have to feel bad for myself or my relationship with Daniel just because we can't seem to go out on a real date. Real dates will happen again, but for now I can choose to be content and know that even if Jack is along, we can have a pretty fun family date!

Project 52 Date Nights: The End

It is hard to believe that we have made it through a year of intentional dating. I am a firm believer that doing anything intentionally adds value to your life and in this case to our relationship.

I have discovered that Daniel and I date quite a bit. We have gone on far more dates than I have taken the time to write about. I am so thankful to have a husband who still loves to hang out with me after 10 years together.

This final date was not anything special. We spent part of Christmas Eve making scarves together for Daniel's sisters. Then we wrapped all of the goodies that we had made or bought.

The last 10 days have been full of various visiting with both of our families. We have seen grandparents and parents and siblings and cousins and our niece. We enjoyed a white Christmas {a rarity in the south}. We have been very blessed this year and we are looking forward to next year and all the dates that we will continue to make time for.