The Worst Date Night Ever

This week I have been spending my evenings propped up in front of the television, taking my temperature and downing cold pills like candy.   The highlight of my nights have been trips to the bathroom.   So when I had one brief moment of clarity in between rounds of medication, I realized that yesterday was Friday night – date night, baby!

Friday night for me and Chris is date night.   We don’t really plan it, and I don’t even think I reazlied it until just now, but Friday nights are naturally reserved for the two of us.   If we go out with friends or something crazy on the weekend, its usually on Saturday night.   Friday is typically dinner out with just the two of us and either a movie or a trip to the bookstore or sometimes even a trip to the grocery store.   Nothing says romance like good produce and I don’t have to fight with the momiacs at the deli counters at 9:00 on a Friday.   I know.   We’re uber romantic.

Last night was no exception.   Even with my honkin’ big nose and my 90-year-old smoker’s cough, I dressed my sick self up for date night.   We went to our favorite sushi spot for dinner (shocking, I know), and then decided to see that new Brad Pitt movie, Burn After Reading (great movie by the way – really, really funny if you’re into oddball humor.   And I am.).   Because we are on this new Debt Diet from Hell, we only decided to go to the movies because we had a gift card to the movie theater (thank you, Alison!).   And this was our only time eating out this week, so we were still playing by our financial rules.

We get to the theater and I buy our tickets, and then we walked around the mall for a bit, laughing of the cute little gothic teenagers (why don’t parents love their children more?) and then we headed back to the theater.   We splurged on the smallest popcorn I’d ever seen.   Really.   It was tiny.   It was so small that Chris wouldn’t even carry it.   He said he was embarrassed to hold the tiny, bright pink bag of popcorn crumbs.

But when we got to the ticket taking guy, I couldn’t find our tickets.   Anywhere.   I KNOW I put them in the back pockets of my jeans.   I know I did.   Because I remember thinking that would be the easiest place to get them out of when we were ready.   But my pockets, they were a-empty.   So I force Chris to hold the tiny popcorn (which was actually a 10 minute argument itself, but not worth getting into because he was being ridiulous), and I start digging through my purse, my pockets, my jacket.   I retrace my steps, check with the popcorn counter – nothing.   I don’t know what the hell I did with those tickets.   And the whole time, Chris is just standing there, occasionally saying, “Did you lose the tickets?”   If our popcorn had been normal sized, I would have thrown it in his face.

Finally, I accepted defeat and bought two tickets to the movie.   There goes our fancy financing.   And our free freaking tickets!

So we go into the theater and sit down.   I’m completely baffled and Chris is pissed.   I sit down, get myself all settled and then reach for our mini-me popcorn.   And what do I do?   I drop the whold darn thing on the floor!   Spilled our popcorn everywhere.   Chris looked at me and said, “Do we just need to go home?”

We stayed and thank goodness the movie was funny because if I’d gone through all that for a stupid movie, I would have had to hurt someone.   Like my husband.

But I guess that’s what date nights are like.   Even when you’ve been going on dates with the same person for 10 years, some date are good and some dates are awful.   If we were dating, I don’t think he’d call me.   Then again, I wouldn’t answer even if he did.