Where have all the servers gone?

My daughter and I eat lunch out way more often than we should. We were both also brought up going to better-than-average restaurants. Our family has friends in the restaurant business.

We are both spoiled brats. I was raised by my parents. My child spent most of her formative years with her paternal grandparents. We are both used to getting what we want. We are both willing to pay for this privilege. Yes, this is where you pray for Shorty.

This tale starts about a month ago. We had lunch at one of our favorite restaurants. The waitress asked if I wanted dessert. I said that I would like a bowl of strawberries and some whipped cream. This is not on the menu but my husband has ordered this since the restaurant opened.

The waitress came back and said that they didn't have enough berries to do that and would I like anything else. I asked if they had strawberry shortcake and she said that, yes, they did. I asked for strawberry shortcake, hold the cake. She told me they couldn't do that. I said that of course they could.

The cook came out to tell me that they did not have enough berries for me to have just berries. I asked if they had enough berries for me to have strawberry shortcake. She said that they did. I said, fine, I would like strawberry shortcake, hold the cake. She huffed off and I got my bowl of berries.

Today, we had lunch at the same restaurant. Julie ordered chocolate meringue pie, no meringue. The waitress said, "We can't do that". Juls and I, simultaneously, said, "Of course you can". The waitress looked at us askance and I told her to just scrape the meringue off and throw it away. She went away, conferred with our regular waitress, and Julie got her meringueless pie.

We never ask to be charged less, or differently. We never ask them to go to a different restaurant to procur what we want although this was the norm when we were growing up. I just want to know when the customer ceased being right. When did it become the norm for a waitress to tell you that she "can't" do something? I understand some things are difficult. I understand that some things are outside her frame of reference. This does not make it impossible. Holding a piece of cake or scraping the meringue off of a piece of pie should not cause this much angst.

Ribbit, redux

Sunday morning, I did not have to be at work until 10. Lil Man, Juls, and I decided to take the Grampits out for breakfast. Julie was going to meet us there.





I backed out of the driveway, put the car in drive, and started down the street. Buddy, who was unconfinable, was running down the bar ditch, as always.





Unlike always, he turned left. I hit him and killed him. I killed my husband's dog on Father's Day morning. I should have sent him to Australia.

Rest in peace, Buddy.

I am a grown-up dinosaur!

Thank you all for your comments re; the sexy pastor. I finally figured out why I was so bothered. I think that religious leaders, no matter what their age, should be leaders and not "friends". I think this much the same way that I think children need for their parents to be parents and not "friends". I would not want the word "sexy" written on my teenage child's car either. Cute, yes. Pretty, yes. Adorable, yes. Sexy? No.

No great news flashes here. I just wanted to make sure thank all y'all for your input.

Not Quite as Windy

After two days of the dogs in the pool and dogs out of the pool and dogs in the pool and dogs out of the pool, the water was less than pristine. Add to that the fact that, when Lil Man and I set up the pool, we inadvertently put it right where Shorty intends to put the new sewer line and ...

and in answer to your question - yes, we feed the child!

Dinosaur? or Grown-up?

Sometimes I feel like a dinosaur. Or like I was born in the wrong century. Or like I am so much more conservative than I ever intended to be.





Case in point:





I went to pick up my grandson at his church-run daycare today. His daycare is not at the Church that we attend but it is affiliated with his school.





In the parking lot was the car belonging to the childrens' pastor, a female. Her car had been decorated with the ubiquitous shoe polish windows, apparently by some of the youth group. There was a frame around the driver's side windshield and on the other side of the windshield? The words "sexy pastor" with an arrow.





Sexy pastor. Yeah.





I cannot, in my wildest thoughts, imagine putting this on the vehicle of any religious clergy and/or minister. More to the point, I cannot imagine any pastor/minister leaving this on their vehicle. I cannot imagine what the heck they were thinking or what the heck kind of relationship they have with the youth of the church.





So, what do you think? Do you think I am just being over-reactive? What would you do?

Caught in my own 3 ring circus

I downloaded the following picture off the web because I failed to take pictures this afternoon. Julie and Lil Man got home from a little over a week in San Antonio yesterday. I missed my Lil Man and his mom.

Today, while we were at the store, I bought this pool (good looking family not included). What follows is proof that I am not bright.


We dropped Juls off at her house so she could go to work and Lil Man and I went to my house. We took the box with the pool into the house to read the directions.

The wind was blowing 25-30 mph with gusts in excess of 50. My bright idea? Inflate the bottom of the three rings, take it outside, put the child and all 4 dogs in it to hold it down while it filled. I was smart enough to get the electric inflator thingy that goes with our queen size camping mattress. I plugged it in and we were in business.

My living room is 16 x 13. This pool is 10 x 6. Sounds doable, right? Yeah, I failed to take into account furniture, laptops, internet connections, etc.

That sucker popped open just like all of those inflatable rafts in all of those screwball comedies we all used to watch. So there I was, with a pool longer than my couch inflated in my living room. The wind?

Yeah, it picked up.

About an hour and a half later, I was tired of dealing with the pool in the house and decided that it was going outside. It did. Lil Man and I wrestled it out the door, across the yard and the rest of it worked as planned. We got enough water in it to hold it down, smoothed out the bottom, and I inflated the top two rings.

Holly LOVES swimming pools. She got a bad case of the Boxer Terrors - you know, where they run around like the hounds of hell are on their heels? She took off zooming, the other dogs chasing her and then, when they all had lost their minds, she just leaped into the pool. She is the only one tall enough to just walk into it. Duck scrambles. Buddy has to be lifted (I'm getting him a little surfboard thing tomorrow to rest on). George is still undecided about the whole thing.

Anyway, we all got in and watched the whitecaps. Yeah, it was still windy!

The Continuing Saga of George

George is still here. No huge surprise there. I have not taken him to the local pound. I have not advertised him as up for grabs. I have not tried at all (short of checking the lost and found postings on our local radio station’s website) to find his previous owners.

George is still here. George is friendly and affectionate and has only once tried to do “unnatural things” to my grandson. George has stayed on his side of the fence and my girls have stayed on theirs. Buddy, who is evidently exempt from every rule of good dog ownership, enters and leaves our yard at will. He is very frustrating and annoying. He is especially annoying to George as he chews on him continually. George has never retaliated.

When George first arrived, he could not bark. I really thought that his previous owners had deliberately crushed his windpipe. This is, believe it or not, common among dog fighters to keep the noise down on their “farms”.

Sunday evening, it was 8:30 and still 99 degrees. The dogs were out front, 3 in and 1 out of the front yard. I heard all hell break loose and figured the neighbor’s dogs must have come for a visit. Our neighbors own 2 beautiful Weimeraners who occasionally venture out of their own yard and come down to ours. We looked out and yep, it was Chief and Alice.

Barking furiously and positioning himself between the interlopers and my girls was - George. He was soon joined by Buddy but Chief and Alice know Buddy. They have been ignoring Buddy for a long time. They did not ignore George. George stayed on his side of the fence which put him in the parking lot of the business next door, with Chief and Alice. There was some minor skirmishing, some treaty talks, a few more skirmishes and détente was reached. As long as Chief and Alice stayed an appropriate distance from our fence, George wouldn’t eat them.

A few more discussions and the warriors (minus the nuisance, Buddy) went off to celebrate their newfound alliance.

Monday morning, when Shorty went to work, George was on the back porch steps, inside our fence. I have no idea how he got there but there he was. I let the girls and Buddy out shortly before noon and with one admonishment “Be nice to George”; there was harmony in the kingdom. It was kind of funny, though, watching the girls water the grass and then George would follow them and mark their spots and then Buddy would come behind him and re-mark them. I best make sure the boys have plenty to drink!

Fun Monday - Childhood Reverie

When I first saw this assignment at Return of the White Robin; "for your assignment, I would like you to describe a happy memory from your childhood. If possible, include pictures with your reminiscing. Perhaps, for some us remembering the past may bring back some unhappy times too. But, for today, let us remember the good times", I was immediately on board. I mean, how hard can it be to remember something happy, nice, warm and fuzzy from your childhood? Turns out it was harder than I thought. Shorty says that it's because my whole childhood was so "nice" that it all just blurs together. Maybe. The only memories that sprang to mind were not pleasant. Funny, some of them, but not happy. After all, how happy would you be if you were gullible enough to believe your brother when he told you that you could fly if you held on to the feather, ala Dumbo? Yep, walked right off the roof of that garage.

I had an average childhood for the time. I took swimming lessons, played tennis, had a couple of really close friends that I spent every day, all day with - bicycling, skateboarding, playing Barbies, etc. But I was also very fortunate. My parents had the foresight to build their house just 4 houses down from Deer Park. There was a long and winding road, a few picnic tables, a little creek, and a grade school (kindergarten through 6th). I went to kindergarten there but then went to the local Catholic school for the rest of my education.

But - on long and lazy weekends and on a whole lot of summer afternoons- my friends and I would gather up a couple of pillows, a few tons of comic books (raiding my girlfriend's brother's stash), some food and drink (raiding our parents' pantries) and go to the "park". We would ride our bikes up past the school and past the playing fields to where the trails started. This was delineated by a chain link fence. Next to the fence were trees, tons of glorious trees, all protected by poison ivy. We would climb up the fence to our favorite branch on our favorite tree, an old oak. We would haul the loot up and then stash our bikes out of sight.

We would spend the day there, nestled in the crotch of that hundreds of years old tree, reading and eating apples and sharing comic books and dreams and secrets. I miss that tree and my friends and the slow, lovely, easy pace of summers past.

Butt Prints

Butt Prints in the Sand

One night I had a wondrous dream,
One set of footprints there were seen.
The footprints of my precious Lord,
But mine were not along the shore.

But then some stranger’s prints appeared
And I asked the Lord, “Where have we been?
Those prints are large and round and neat
But Lord, they are too big for feet."

“My child”, He said in somber tones,
“For miles I carried you alone.
I challenged you to walk in faith,
But you refused and made Me wait.

You disobeyed, and you would not grow.
The walk of faith you would not know
And there I dropped you on your butt
Because in life there comes a time
When one must fight, and one must climb,
When one must rise and take a stand
Or leave their butt prints in the sand."

I received yet another version of "footprints" via email today and it reminded me of my very favorite version. I hope you smiled and I hope you think.

WOW music

I know I'm late jumping on the bandwagon but, oh my gosh, what a sweet contest this is! Shannon at Rocks in My Dryer is hosting this wonderful giveaway of music. She has teamed up with www.WOWonline.com to give away an amazing compilation of music.

Feel free to join before tomorrow. I hope you win!

*Update - I did not win but congrats to those who did!! and thanks again, Shannon.

PPL - Diamante

Once again, Robin has asked us to use our brains, our imaginations and, in my case, our thesauruses (or is it thesauri?) to create a poem. In this case, a diamante, using either the outdoors or emotions as our theme. Here is mine.

Love
Enduring, Eternal
Thrilling, Exhilarating, Frightening
Kind, Steadfast, Apathetic, Careless
Numbing, Freeing, Exhilarating
Stoic, Incurious
Indifference

******************************

Grief

Sadness Sorrow

Crying, Sobbing, Railing

Pointless, Ennervating, Reaffirming, Energizing

Crying, Sobbing, Thanking

Godgiven Grace

Joy

Dark of the Moon

It was the "dark of the moon, on the 6th of June" many, many years ago when my ex-husband and I parted ways. I threw his sorry butt out of my house and remember that wonderful day every time I hear this song.

Better Living Through Chemicals

I have had several people ask me questions about parvo. Here is a link that I found helpful when Julie's pups (OK, they were actually Roxi's pups) got ill.


In a nutshell, parvo is a virus that can live in the ground. It can be destroyed by spraying the yard with a diluted bleach solution. You can be assured that any yard we ever have our dogs in will be treated first.


The adult dogs (Roxi, Bo, and Bug) did not get parvo because they are all fully vaccinated. The pups were too young to have had their first shots when they got sick.


I have several friends who are anti-vaccines and do not think chemicals should be introduced into a dog's system. I have always had my dogs fully vaccinated since we travelled so much. I had thought about cutting back on the number of things I have them vaccinated for but now? Yeah, I think our new mantra is "Better Living Through Chemicals".

Wow, I need to work on this!

I saw this at Tiger Lamb Girl's and she saw it at ChrisB's and I just had to try it. Once I saw the results, I was not sure that I wanted to post the results but I decided that not to would be more evidence of pride...lol.

Greed:	Very Low
Gluttony:	Low
Wrath:	Low
Sloth:	High
Envy:	Medium
Lust:	Very Low
Pride:	Medium

Take the Seven Deadly Sins Quiz

Another Frog

Long ago and far away, actually last year, my daughter had to have her dog put down. Alex was only 4 but he was a very old, very sore 4. Alex was a Blue Merle Great Dane. When he died, we planted a crepe myrtle. Merle-myrtle. I know. It's lame.


On April Fool's Day, Julie's Roxi had 16 puppies. She squished 4 of them the first day but was a really good mom to the remaining dozen. Julie moved on May 1st and, unbeknownst to anyone, the backyard at her new house had parvo.


All 12 puppies died, one at a time, with Juls medicating them and bottle feeding them puppy pedialyte every 30 minutes. This went on for over a week. To say that it was heartbreaking doesn't even begin to cover it.


The new addition to the dead Alex tree? The dead dog frog. I thought 12 of them might be a little excessive.