Grow balls, swing with discretion

This is not my kitty. It was, however, an image freely available for use. That, and I kind of want to snuzzle its tummy.

And my husband said, “I know, I know…you’re going to tell me, ‘BUT IT WORKED.’ “

That, naturally, was his follow-up to saying, “I can’t believe you just did that.”

Here’s the thing….there is this awesome pizza place near us that we discovered recently, that I can’t recommend enough (except I can’t actually name it here, because it would narrow down our location too much).  The food is delicious, extremely reasonably priced, freshly made from scratch (and very quickly, at that), and — yes, it IS possible without making it yourself at home, it seems — not greasy at all.  The service is good, efficient, and friendly.  The manager gives all staff the power to do extra-nice things for customers at their own discretion.  Heck, when we first went there to check it out as an option for upcoming birthdays, the manager overheard us talking about Ash, approached to ask if he’d heard correctly that our son is autistic, and then told us that if we brought him in on a Monday, when he (the manager) is there all day and business tends to be slow, he would give Ash a special treat they normally reserve for birthday parties….take him behind the scenes, let him help make a special pizza, have all the staff make a big to-do over him, etc.

Yeah, you’ve got my business, buddy.

Best yet (at least, until we can take him up on the aforementioned offer), this place seems to put coupons in a local flier, every month.  Cheap prices get even cheaper, but they don’t even leave it at that.  One of the things I never got to blogging about last week, was our first attempt in years at taking Ash out to eat — we had plans with an ex-boss of Steffan’s (the only one that ever put effort into being decent to him).  I had one coupon for “Two can eat for…”, and the cashier told me she’d just pretend we had two of the coupons, so the four adults present could all get in at that price.  AND she accepted the coupon to get Ash in free with one adult meal bought, which was coupon-combining, which also technically isn’t supposed to happen.  It cost approximately $20 to feed four adults and one child a complete dinner, prepared and cleaned up by other people.  TWENTY FREAKING DOLLARS.  We’re still not going to be going out to eat with any regularity, but daaaaang.

Eniways, one of the other coupons they’ve got is for FIVE LARGE ONE-TOPPING PIZZAS FOR $25.  Seriously.  (Right across from it in the flier was a coupon for another pizza place, to get five large plain pizzas for $55.) It would be hard to do much better than that, making it yourself!  We used that coupon last month, since Ash got to liking pizza and it generalized to home.  We got three cheese pizzas and two BBQ meat pizzas (my favorite from there).  I stuck ‘em in the chest freezer and pulled out slices on demand.  With only one thaw and reheat, they still tasted great, and even Ash had no complaints.  Well, they got eaten, a slice or two a day, so it was time to use the same coupon from this month’s flier.  When I called in the order for pick-up, I said I just wanted to use the aforementioned coupon.  That being the case, when I was asked if I wanted to order anything else, I found myself feeling uncharacteristically ballsy, and said, “Not unless you want to pretend I had two of those coupons.”

Guess who, TWENTY MINUTES LATER, picked up TEN LARGE PIZZAS FOR $54 (including tax)?!  That’s right, baby.  Our chest freezer is now full of 7 cheese pizzas and 3 BBQ meat pizzas.  My kid can eat all the 3-food-groups-at-once that he wants, Mommy’s got a quick fix to raise my blood pressure (nobody understand why I have low blood pressure problems) when I need it but don’t have time to do more than push a button on the microwave, and we’ve got a stash started for birthday parties to come.

I win.