Date Night

With forty hundred children and Rob burning the candle at both ends, we don’t often get a friday night to ourselves.

That plus the fact that at the end of the week the last thing either of us want to do is anything that doesn’t involve a sofa and TV and for me, my fluffy pink piggy slippers.

So this week we decided to resurrect friday night date night and go to a movie. My sister gave us Gold Class cinema vouchers for christmas last year so we thought we should probably use them given they expire next month. Plus it’s the closest thing you can do outside the home that involves a sofa and TV.

I was already all dolled up in a dress and heels because I’d been to a blogging event that day so as soon as Rob got home from work in his suit we bid farewell (read: slammed the door and ran) to the babysitter and left the house looking like complete wankers and way too glam for a trip to the movies.

We wanted to squeeze in dinner beforehand but given the cinema was in a shopping centre that only had food court style food it had to do. We ended up at one of those ‘Healthy Burger’ places because sadly it was the healthiest of all our options.

As we sat there I started having a bitch about how it’s just not right they can use the word Healthy in their name and said it reminded me of a burger joint I went to on my last trip to Melbourne where they totally ruined my meal by sprinkling dried herbs all over the chips.

Mid conversation Rob’s meal arrived with sprinkled herbs on his chips. Same place, apparently it’s a chain. (Side note: Nobody could ever convince me that dried herbs could improve the sacred and holy hot chip. I just don’t understand, is it just me?).

Anyway after our classy dinner we had time to kill so I leant over to Rob and whispered quietly so nobody could hear “let’s go to Aldi and check out the middle aisle specials”.

He looked at me with that “are you effing serious” look and I think in his mind he was probably thinking all his Christmases had come at once given my love for high end clothing and shoes. That maybe he was actually going to save money given the shops I could be dragging him into.

Fat chance.

I have a love hate relationship with Aldi. I very rarely go in there because my last job I had when I still worked in construction was building Aldi’s first Sydney Distribution Centre. A time in my life spent in Minchinbury that I still have nightmares about. So every time I walk into a store I’m reminded of that job and the massive douchebag I used to work with.

So off I trotted in my ridiculous high heels to check out Aldi.

As I was standing there looking at all the specials in my lovely dress I couldn’t help but wonder where the hell my social life had gone. Was it hiding under a pallet of $1.69 toothpaste? Or am I just a 41 year old loser who has nothing better to do than stand in a budget supermarket with my husband on a friday night wearing a pair of shoes that cost more than what either of us have spent at Aldi in our entire lives, all whilst we’re paying $20 an hour for a babysitter?

Whatever the case may be, it wasn’t long before I was distracted by the array of items for sale that I clearly needed in my life.

Like beach towels. Doesn’t everyone go to the supermarket for towels? On the way to the movies?

Some paintbrushes (I am a total neat freak and we don’t own paint. We don’t even own playdoh).

Some new glasses we don’t need and that I have approximately zero kitchen space for.

A giant art desk for all the painting I will never let my kids do. A desk that I am now going to have to ditch a piece of furniture for so it will fit in our house. Plus by the look of the box it comes in ten billion pieces with instructions in German.

Date night was also when I realised that another reason Rob and I are such a great couple and are so compatible is that even though he bitches and moans about my spending habits, he isn’t much better. It was him after all that considered buying one of those caddy’s you tow children behind your bike in like they do in Amsterdam that Aldi had on offer.

He is just as impulsive as me but in my view a beautiful handbag on sale is a far more interesting and valuable impulse buy than a child wagon for your bike that you don’t even use.

The final (and my favourite) item we decided to buy was this.

Luggage scales. We aren’t even going anywhere.

Whoever said romance was dead?

Now tell me your most outrageously ridiculous Aldi purchases.