Today after church, Joey and I had to go to the mall for something.  Well, I thought it was in the mall because I read Google Maps wrong.  It was across the street in another shopping center, but the incorrect location left us in a great spot for lunch.  Since we’re running out of days of just the two of us, we decided to hit up Cheesecake Factory and do one of our “eat for cheap and yet still delicious” specials.

I signed us in, got the buzzer, and in the short amount of time we had to wait, we walked over to Gap to check out what’s new.

Mostly I just wanted to see what I have to look forward to wearing once I am no longer prego.

I lost my place in the store and suddenly found myself standing in front of a clearance rack of men’s jeans. No, no, not for me silly Internet.  For JOEY.  I found a wash that I thought looked pretty awesome and discovered that he wasn’t priced badly at all.  So I dragged Joey over to have a look at it and said, “I think those jeans probably look fairly hot.”

Joey was all I AM GOING TO TRY THEM ON RIGHT NOW.

So he tried them on.  And then we bought them.

Conveniently, it was a 30% off anything if you give them your email address day, so the jeans were a whopping $25.00 once we got done discounting everything.  I love it.

About this time we realized we’d better head back to the big Cheese or else, so we walked back and were seated immediately.  We decided to order waters (Joey had a headache and requires forced hydration when he has one of those) and skip the appetizer and just carb out on the bread.  For the entree, we split some kind of chicken thing which was really delicious.

UNFORTUNATELY.

Joey found a really big cloth fiber in his piece of chicken.

“Give that to me!” I said, snatching the plate away from him.  ”I’m going to get us free dessert.”

Joey was still cranky because the water hadn’t taken effect yet, so he just kind of glowered at me and said he didn’t care if we got free dessert or not.  But I knew that in 15 more minutes when he had finished his mashed potatoes and water, he would look at the world in a whole new way.

We wound up eating all of our foods.

Every pice.

We were both starved.

Our server came to clear our plates, and I casually mentioned the large cloth fiber we had discovered in Joey’s food.  She came back, presented us with the dessert menu, and told us it would be free.  I think I am the luckiest person, because inevitably there is some kind of hair or screw or cloth fibers in the food I order, so we get free dessert a LOT.

I was also correct about Joey’s morale.  He was flipping through the cheesecake selections and seemed very firmly set on the Reese’s Peanut Butter one.

“But…I think I may see nuts in the peanut butter layer,” I pointed out.

Joey smashed the menu to his face for a closer look.  ”OH.  Good catch.  Yeah, that’s not going to work.”

Five minutes later, we decided on Red Velvet Cheesecake, and ten minutes later we were happily eating it, down to every last white chocolate curl and red velvet crumb on the plate.  Our server brought our ticket, and we giggled when we saw that it was for $14.12.

Joey, naturally, tipped our poor server based upon the full value of our meal, so we wound up paying like $19.00 once he added on a very nice tip for her.  It wasn’t her fault there were CSI fibers in our food.

Gosh, maybe there was a murder in the kitchen and that’s how cloth fibers made it into our chicken.

In any case, it was yummy and it was inexpensive.  And it may have been the last time for a long, long time.  (Well, if this child would just hurry up and get born already!)