I got to leave town today, to sneak off on assignment for an article I'm writing, leaving the kids for 24 hours, and Thad for 24 hours, and life as I know it...for 24 hours. Which means I get to do the one thing I love to do more than anything in the world.

Listen to a murder mystery book-on-tape as I drive alone in my minivan.

In my previous life, there were far more devious things I loved to do more than anything in the world. But, that was before the minivan. Now, the thing that functions as currency in my marriage, the thing that my husband and I trade in, that we barter back and forth, is "alone time."

Because even showering is not alone time. Showering is me standing in the tub while my two-year-old climbs up on the toilet and turns on the water in the sink, which makes her sleeves soaking wet (sleeves of the shirt that I gymnastically dressed her in roughly six minutes before) and makes the water in the shower hot as exploding lava bubbling up directly from hell. And pooping? There is no "alone time" in pooping, considering my four-year-old inevitably barges in, stares at me the entire time, then asks, "Can I see it?" Even on weekends, when Thad and I sneak away for a little nooky when the kids are napping is not alone time. Because Thad is there.

So, we do what we can. We each take a turn sleeping in on one day over the weekend. It's not that I'm sleepy. It's that I get to be all by myself. He plays X-box late into the night. And, sometimes, I pretend I don't feel good on Sunday afternoons just so I have an excuse to "go lay down," like some kind of 1950s housewife who drinks too much.

I walked into the library this morning all giddy, like I suppose people feel when they're meeting a lover for an affair, and scan the books-on-tape. I pick a James Patterson book. He never lets me down. And this one seems like it can't fail. It's called "The Quickie." I literally can't wait to get in the car, to get on the road, and put the first CD in. The narrator is Mary Stuart Masterson (who had me at Some Kind of Wonderful.)

Halfway through my drive, as I switch from CD1 to CD2, sad that I'm actually that far through the story, it occurs to me--I think I prefer this "Quickie" to the other kind.

No.

I know I do.

Today, at 4:00, while I was watching myself on Oprah, my 2-year-old daughter was at the sitter's where she is every day when I work, watching me on Oprah.

The sitter thought Drew would love seeing mommy on TV. Plus the sitter wanted to watch Drew's mommy on TV. Everyone was excited that mommy was going to be on TV. On Oprah, no less.

As soon as Drew saw mommy's face on TV, she ran up to the TV, yelling, "Mommy! Mommy!" Then mommy went off the screen. And Drew started wailing, "Mommy! Mommy!" Then she started clawing at the screen, "Mommy! Mommy!" Then she fell down to the floor in her very dramatic Drew way, which involves balancing, somehow, on the tip of her head and the tips of her toes, in an inverted-V shape. It didn't matter that, a few minutes later, I was on the screen again. Drew couldn't see me through the tears, dripping off of her upside-down head.

The sitter turned off the TV.

Drew cried for an additional 27 minutes.

It is possible that Drew will never watch Oprah again.

I'm addicted to Dirty Dancing.

When people ask me which movie I'd take to a deserted island (and, strangely, people ask me this a lot), I say, without shame, "Dirty Dancing." They wince. They laugh. They think I'm kidding. I'm not kidding. No matter where I am, in what state of feeding, clothing, bathing, coloring, or pretending-I-think-building-forts-is-fun with my kids, if I come across Dirty Dancing on TV, I am compelled by some inner force to watch.

Just yesterday, after Thad and I put the kids down for a nap, we were flipping through our 843 HBO channels and...there it was. Of course. As if a day goes by in the turning of the earth where Dirty Dancing isn't on a channel. Somewhere.

"Keep going," I said. He clicked past it, past 27 Dresses, Harold and Kumar, Terms of Endearment, 27 Dresses in Spanish....

"Wait!" I yelled, too loud. "Just go back and see what scene it's on."

I remember the day when I was 16 and my cousin told me I had to see this new movie, Dirty Dancing. I wasn't interested, and not just because she lived in Texas. I mean, she'd recommended La Bamba. I saw La Bamba. I liked La Bamba. But Dirty Dancing? People grinding against each other in a Catskills resort 20-plus years before I was born? I'd never been to the Catskills. I didn't even know where the Catskills were. I'd barely even been to overnight camp, especially if I didn't count that week at Church Camp, where I had to sing the lead in the Church Camp musical, "Down By The Creekbank," which completely ruined all chances of having any kind of romance with the blond boy named Scott who was a year older than me and infatuated with my blond friend Jodi who actually looked like I girl and didn't have to belt about crickets and tadpoles and frogs "down by the ole holler log."

But I saw Dirty Dancing anyway.

My life, henceforth, was never the same again.

At the time, I assumed my obsession was because of Baby's hair. Because Baby had the best hair. And she got to wear cut-offs. And she learned to do that lift in the water with Patrick Swayze. A few years later, I liked it because she got to have sex with Patrick Swayze. Then, a few years later, it was because Patrick Swayze came back to get her, and pulled her out of the corner, proving that it's always wise to wear a lovely low-backed dress to any end-of-the-season gathering. I wanted to be Baby. I would have killed to be Baby. And I was Baby, except things for me never progressed much beyond walking into the cool dancer's cabin with a watermelon in my arms.

So Thad clicked back to Dirty Dancing. It was at the scene it seems to be at about 87-percent of the time when I randomly come across it on cable, where Baby and Johnny are dancing together in the studio, post their big sex night, singing "Come HERE loverboy," right before Neil walks in on them and says, "Hey Baby...I could teach you a few moves," which, to this day, still made a little puke swirl up in the back of my throat. We watched it to the end, with not a single protest from Thad, who I suspect harbors a little fantasy himself of being Johnny Castle in the rain, who unlocks the door to his Chevy by breaking the back window with a cement pole.

I know I'll make my girls watch this someday. And I know they'll roll their eyes like I did that time I was home with the flu during high school and my mom brought home Breakfast at Tiffany's on video. It was cool and all. But it was no Dirty Dancing.