A Night on the Town

You know you are 30 when you prepare for a night out with the girls by squeezing in one last chapter of your book while you wait for your lift.  This is just after you have spent the last half hour going through various outfits, attempting to find something both warm and appropriate for dancing.  I went from tights and a short skirt, to jeggings and strappy heels, to finally settling on jeggings with thermal socks and boots.  Oh, and I managed to hide a warm singlet under my sparkly top too.  Yep, definitely 30!

As I was packing up a purse, I asked Marty which card I should take.  He replied "yours".  I batted my eyelashes: "I don't have any money left".  He told me I should have budgeted better.  And then let me take our EFTPOS card.  Love you babe!  Next, I considered whether to take my drivers licence for ID...and then I realised that I AM THIRTY!  For goodness sake, surely I don't need ID anymore (sigh of sadness).

Out for dessert in a hip little place on the pier, our girls night was going great, and we were having a wonderful time out...when it suddenly hit me that our lively and interesting conversation was all about The Wiggles.  Oh dear.  How cool are we? Take us away from our kids and we end up talking about them.  Next topic please!

We made our way into a known hot spot, and were just walking up the steps when a big burly bouncer stepped in front of me and said "Have you got some ID ladies?".  OH. MY. GOSH.  I think I actually squeeled with the glee, before I asked him if he was serious.  Without a hint of a smile, he assured me he was.  Pretty much jumping up and down with sheer joy by this stage, I told him that "I hadn't bought any with me...I was 30, would he like to see a photo of my 3 children on my phone?"  He looked at me for a moment, and then after a word with his co-bouncer (who told him to let us in) he moved aside and let me in.  Hehehe...made my week!

We settled down on some plush sofas by the fireplace,  waiting until it finally got late enough that there would be some dance music playing and hopefully a few people on the dance floor to help our confidence along.  In Napier, this means waiting until midnight strikes.  I got myself a drink, just about choking at the $8.50 I was charged for my short glass.  My, times have changed.

And this is when the night got really entertaining.  A bloke about our age wandered over and asked if he could warm himself up by the fire.  Goodness, it's not my fire, so I nodded that he could stand near for a while.  Well, the guy promptly plonked himself down on the arm of the sofa!  Vicki Lee giggled at the look on my face as I wiggled closer to her side of the couch.

"What are you ladies up to tonight?" the hopeful lad asked us.
"Oh, you know, you having a girls night out without our HUSBANDS and CHILDREN" I casually replied to him.
...With that out of the way, he recovered very well and didn't just get up and walk away, but stuck around and chatted for a while about our children's ages and husbands occupations.  I am not sure he knew what an evangelist was actually, when Vicki Lee told him her husband's job title!  

Anne Marie was having trouble getting a decent photo of us all by holding her phone out, so our new friend took our photo for us.  Eventually he went back to his workmates that he was out with - I think they felt a bit left out because they brought us all a round of drinks and invited us to come and chat with them.  We politely declined, decided that now was a great time to hit the dance floor, which had just started warming up a little.

It didn't take long before our dancing trio became 5, as two guys somehow managed to join our wee circle of fun.  That was ok, we don't mind being friendly and dancing is always fun with more...I just made sure that part of my awesome dance moves included waving my wedding ring in their face a few times.  These guys were very gracious though, and asked us if we would like them to turn around and dance elsewhere..one of them yelled in my ear over the music something along the lines of "have a dance...then go home...not being a jerk....all good!".  With a few eye messages between us girls, we decided that they were just out to enjoy the music and have a dance like us girls, so we allowed them to stay.  After an hour of sweating, jumping and twisting to songs such as "Billy Jean", "Mambo #5", "Footloose", "Loveshack" and "I gotta feeling", we waved goodbye to the guys and headed outside - ears now ringing with deafness.

We left at 1.15am...and at 7am this morning I was up again, getting ready to take Jaimee to her gymnastics testing day and Kate to her swimming lessons.  And so the real life returns...with a coffee firmly grasped in my hand.

What a great night out!  I Can't wait for next month, when we plan on doing it all over again...