mother's day meals

***disclaimer***

although there is some humor in today's blog, it is NOT going to measure up to the cock roach story. i'm sorry, but that kind of hilarity doesn't happen every day. however, that doesn't mean you won't smile once or twice...

so today . . . was mother's day. normally mother's day for me is all about a day spent shopping with my daughter. but not this year. this year all the drama revolved around food...

it started at lunch. diandra was busy until later in the day, so rollie and i had lunch at tgifriday's. although we eat out a lot, we rarely go to tgifriday's. i don't know why--i love the food there, and we go right past it on our way to rubios... but since today was mother's day, i got to choose the restaurant. this meant we were NOT eating at rubios--we were going to eat someplace where you got to actually hold a menu, and you didn't have to order standing up.

i am not averse to eating holiday meals at fast food places, but i just wanted to go someplace different today. when i got to the restaurant, rollie was already sitting at a table. yes, i said table. i looked around. there were empty booths, but for some reason they made him sit at a table... and it was noisy in that part of the restaurant--no cushy booths to soak up the sound, i guess. i sat with him for a couple of minutes and realized that if we stayed there, i was not going to hear a word he said. and more importantly, he was not going to hear a word i said!! so we asked if we could move to a booth, and were quickly moved... into the bar.

although we don't drink, i don't usually mind sitting in the bar. usually it is dark and quiet there, and you get pretty good service. i thought it might be an especially good idea today, since it was mother's day and the restaurant was probably soon going to be swarming with children and dads taking mom out to lunch. but not in the bar. in the bar, it was going to be nice and quiet and child-free...

we perused our menus and made our lunch selections. the waitress brought us our cokes with lemon wedges. and then a funny thing happened... suddenly i was surrounded by basketball players wearing purple and gold! yes, the evil lakers had invaded my mother's day lunch!!

i don't know why i hadn't noticed the giant tv screens when we sat down. (this is rollie, making an "L" with his fingers. i always thought this was the universal symbol for "loser," but he tells me it is for "lakers." today, as it turns out, it meant both...) i guess, since they were mounted high on the walls and were each showing something different, they just didn't register with my brain. but when they were all suddenly tuned to the same station, and the volume was cranked up, my brain sat up and took notice.

somebody, somewhere, who probably lives thousands of miles away from their mother, had scheduled game 4 of the second round of playoff games for mother's day, and the evil lakers were down 0-3.

just my luck! mother's day, and everyone in that restaurant was trying to get a look at that game! because this was not just another game. this was big. this was "win it now or go home" time. and we had the best seat in the house--well, the best seat if you are a laker fan. which i am not. we were surrounded by eight big screen tvs, all playing the game simultaneously. on mother's day!!!

i weighed my options. oh, i had options, all right... i could pick up my diet coke and move as far away from those tvs as i could get, but then i would be back to the noisy, child-filled part of the restaurant. i could demand that rollie totally ignore the game and focus on ME--after all, it was mother's day! but realistically there was no way he could avoid those eight giant tv screens. i could politely ask if they could turn just ONE giant screen to shopping tv :-) yeah, i'm sure they would do that...

i opted to stay where i was, eat my delicious food, and ignore the evil lakers. which i did.

shortly after we got home i got a text from diandra. she was going to be gone longer than she had thought, which was ok with me--i found i was pretty sleepy (probably from staying up too late the night before,) and a nap sounded like a great idea! which it was.

by the time diandra got home, we had decided to hang out in the family room with our computers and the tv and the big bag of snacks that she had brought home! yes, it was going to be a goooood mother's day! but after decimating the contents of the bag from 7-11 (which had a few surprises in it,) we thought maybe we should eat some real food. you know, to kind of dilute the amount of sugar we had just eaten... this meant a trip somewhere...

i wanted jack in the box. diandra didn't know what she wanted--all she knew was that she didn't want jack in the box. she finally settled on el pollo loco, and off we went. and everything was fine, until we were sitting in the drive-thru lane at el pollo loco. because the car ahead of us had a wienerschnitzel hotdog on it's antenna, and that's when diandra said, "we never think of wienerschnitzel when we are deciding where to eat!" "do you want wienerschnitzel?" i asked her. "yes, i think i do!" she said.

well, this was just great! there we were, boxed in at the drive through at el pollo loco, and neither of us wanted to eat there! i thought we might just refuse to order and then drive right on out the other side, but that seemed sort of rude. and yet, neither of us wanted their food!! so when it was my turn to order, i found myself ordering a diet coke. and that is all.

we drove back past our house to wienerschnitzel. i thought. until diandra said, "where are you going?!?!?" "to wienerschitzel! isn't that where you wanted to go?" "yes," she said, "but you are going the wrong way!!" "no i'm not! it is just up here a little further, by the gas station." "NO," she said, "it is over by target!"

ok, there is a wienerschnitzel over by target, but i had forgotten about that one. and now we were almost to the other one. but the one by target is closer to jack in the box, so we ended up turning around and going back, again, the way we had just come...

you would think gas didn't cost almost $4.50...

there was some discussion as to how we were going to get to that wienerschnitzel, but after a couple of nearly wrong turns we found ourselves in the drive-thru lane.

i've only eaten at wienerschnitzel a couple of times. i mean, i can make a chili dog at home! i don't need to go out for that. but by now we had been gone for over half an hour, and i was getting hungry! so i just decided to get my food from wienerschnitzel and save jack in the box for another day.

as diandra pulled out her debit card, she said, "you are a cheap date." i took this to mean that it wasn't expensive to feed me. "well," i said, "cheap dates get asked out again." this is my way of thinking--i would rather eat at jack in the box (or wienerschnitzel or el pollo loco or even mcdonald's) several times than at a really swanky restaurant once. so i guess i am a cheap date.

not that i don't like to eat at nice restaurants, but it is a lot of money to spend if it turns out you don't like it...

or if a whole basketball team shows up to try to ruin your mother's day lunch!!