Parents everywhere know that once in a while you've got to have "date night". Tonight Emma is having an overnight with her friend Kati and we are getting a nice evening to ourselves, including dinner at the local sushi joint.

We often get asked by people about the issues of intimacy and privacy in the Airstream, since we travel full-time with our daughter. Most people don't want to approach the subject directly, but we try to read between the lines and give realistic and carefully worded answers.

The short answer is that we try to take advantage of opportunities like visiting friends and relatives with children who are willing to babysit for a few hours. This happens surprisingly often. We don't let Emma away with people we don't know well, but we have relatives in both east and west, and we have trusted friends in many parts of the country as a result of our travels.

Any amount of time to take a break from being parents is good. It doesn't have to be overnight. Sometimes we just need to talk as adults for an hour to hash out issues or discuss future plans. It's amazing how much we can clear up between us in a short period of time.

Being together in a small space doesn't eliminate the need to converse and update each other -- if anything, it increases it. You don't want issues festering when there's so little personal space. Even though we enjoy the excitement of travel, we still need the same human considerations that other people do.

So Date Night is always a success, regardless of what we do with it. Tonight, we had a lot of time to be together and a nice dinner too, both of which are like battery recharges to us. Tomorrow we don't have to pick up Emma until dinnertime, so we'll extend Date Night into Saturday and do some "boring" adult things for a change. I can see a whole program of little decadences, starting with a very leisurely breakfast ...