I have been dithering over this blog post for a couple of weeks, partly because I’d read something that CafeBebe had written about relationships, and committing to date night and partly because it’s my wedding anniversary shortly. 5 years of wedded bliss. In some ways I feel like relationship wise, all I’ve ever known is Lovely Bloke and in others, it seems to have gone by so quickly.
Lately, we’ve both been working very hard and it’s paying dividends which is great, but we’ve been suffering. Childcare from the inlaws and my mum and dad has been for practical reasons – when we are both working. Not for nights out together.
So I arranged childcare with the inlaws for our wedding anniversary, overnight and everything. I told Lovely Bloke I’d got childcare and that we would be going away somewhere together. I then went on a hunt to find a yurt for us to stay in, because Lovely Bloke has been saying for years that he wanted to stay in one. Sadly, they are usually available for a minimum of 3 nights and cost around 400 for accomodation alone, so that one was out of the window.
Then he looked at a hotel in Norwich and showed me the link. But it’s a good £200 for a night in a lovely hotel. And then he did his usual thing of working out that a day of shopping, eating cake, drinking coffee and dinner and a night away would turn out to be really expensive. So he said the usual “why don’t we stay at home and go for a meal together”. Yes my love and why don’t we make it a McDonalds whilst we are at it? I was so disappointed about this. I felt really upset. So yesterday I got worked up and said he wasn’t prioritising us and surely that was the point of this, to put me and him back on the top of the list. I did my bird thing, getting increasingly worked up and not letting him get a word in edgeways.
Then he sighs and says how we was going to book our night away anyway, when he’d seen how disappointed I was. And how annoyed he is that I can’t be surprised. I can’t help it, that I’d been feeling really down and dejected that we weren’t going to go away for a rudey night of drunken passion together.
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Anyway, today, we ended up in John Lewis, buying E’s first pair of school trousers. And we ended up with two lamp shades, which are both fabulous in my opinion. And two rugs. The point is, that we realised that we’ve got two of those uber expensive rugs, that are old fashioned 0r “classic” shall we say and that apparently, we’re going to be able to sell them to a dealer for a 50% profit on what Lovely Bloke bought them for 10 years ago. Yippeeee.
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So what have we done with the profit – we’ve bought the lampshade and E and W some new pants and socks. And a Buzz Lightyear duvet for E. And I can’t remember what else but it’s all stuff for the house and the remainder is for the new kitchen fund…
We didn’t both say “yippeee, a night in a hotel for us two”. Nope. We were practical. And we bought stuff for the house and our boys. Not even a racy pair of undies for me or him, in preparation for our wedding anniversary. Maybe it’s a good thing that we both thought along the same lines together. Maybe it’s not. Maybe one of us needs to break out of our practical thinking and push us back to being a couple, spending couple time together – reading the paper, drinking a warm cup of coffee and going for a swim without 3 divers, 2 sharks and some zoggs to dive for when other people decide they are bored of that game…
Anyway, that’s my day. And my thinking. Does anyone else find this a bit of a conflict – whether to be practical or spend money on being a couple? Anyone else got any ideas for helping us manage both?
Liz Weston is Cambridge Mummy, a self employed, full time working, mummy blogger and mummy to two lovely boys and wife to Lovely Bloke. They live in Cambridge (I know, but it’s good to be clear) and have a lovely life together. Most of the time.
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