Yesterday I was accused by my daughter of becoming more cranky and less tolerant about certain things as I have gotten older. This statement was made following the specific incident below, in which I actually was a bit cranky and less tolerant….
This is my birthday week, which I have been celebrating in a variety of ways, mostly food-related. Essentially, I have been eating my way through the week via a delightful combination of delectable fare at some lovely venues, accompanied by beloved friends and family. It has been decadent. It has been good.
Birthday Lunch yesterday found Daughter#2 and I at a restaurant known for its distinctive Northern Italian cuisine – one of those places with a wood-fired oven and a very good local reputation. Slightly after the lunch rush, the place was mostly empty. I think there were maybe two other tables occupied at the time, and those diners were clearly at the end of their meals.
The waitress led us to what was probably the least intimate and uncomfortable looking table in the place. I looked around at all the other available, cozier, more acoustically friendly spots and requested a different table. She looked at me as if this was some outrageous request that nobody had ever made before. She then accommodated us.
We ordered our meal. It was delicious, as the food at this restaurant always is. We sampled and shared off each other’s plates. I gazed lovingly at my beautiful girl across the table. I felt content and happy, and so very lucky.
When it came time for dessert, we decided we would split a Key Lime Brulee. But our waitress was busy chatting a man up front by the bar. She did not turn around to notice we were ready to move on. We waited. And waited. The wait was sort of breaking our momentum. I kept looking towards her direction, sending her psychic “turn around” messages through her back, hoping she would pick up the signal, catch my eye, notice us. I did not call out or say anything, I just looked in her direction, willing the waitress to return to our table.
“Mom!” hissed Daughter#2, much the very same way she used to at age eleven, when every word I said, every action I ever took was surely designed only to embarrass and mortify her. Except she’s in her twenties now. Do they ever outgrow their impatience and frustration with their mothers, or are we destined to forever be a potential embarrassment?
Eventually the waitress returned. We ordered the Key Lime Brulee to split between us. Our waitress then went back to chatting with the guy up at the front of the restaurant. We waited. And waited. And waited. We wondered how long it could possibly take to torch the top of a Brulee.
I saw the plate come out of the kitchen and go out on the serving counter. The waitress still kept conversing up front and did not turn around. I bored few more holes into her back with my laser beam eyes. “Mom! It’s OK! What’s the rush?” said my daughter again……as if my impatience was inappropriate; as if I was ridiculous to think it is not OK to sit there waiting while your dessert sits on the counter and the waitress is having a social moment.
Finally our waitress must have felt the smoking holes boring into the back of her skull and took our dessert to the table. We looked at it. Then Daughter#2 and I looked at each other. It was not a Key Lime Brulee. “This isn’t the Key Lime Brulee”, I said to the waitress. “Yes it is, this is the Brulee!” the waitress insisted, and started to walk away.
I checked again with some skepticism. I had never seen a brulee that looked like this in my life. It was a cake-like pile of stuff with a little scoop of ice cream on the side. Daughter#2 and I discussed the dessert with puzzlement. We figured then it must be some new kind of creation this nouveau restaurant decided to call “Brulee”, perhaps some signature Northern Italian Brulee we had never heard of, a custard-less, cake-like Brulee? I suppose anything was possible. The waitress hadn’t brought us any utensils to eat it with either, so we had to ask her for spoons before she vanished again. I was starting to feel more than a little annoyed at the turn of events, but I figured I would just go with it.
We dug into the “Brulee”, and damn if it didn’t taste like bread pudding to me.
Does this look like a Key Lime Brulee?
I don’t care for bread pudding, I really don’t. “This is bread pudding,” I said to Daughter#2. “MOM”, she hissed again. “The waitress said it’s Brulee, so it’s Brulee! Stop it!”
That’s my kid, not wanting to make any waves, even if it means calling a Blueberry Bread Pudding a Key Lime Brulee. She might accept that. However, I can be a wave-maker when the occasion calls for it and I sort of felt this did. I had been looking forward to a nice, light brulee, not a heavy bread pudding. It was my birthday, after all.
“I don’t taste a hint of Key Lime in this Brulee thing” I continued, just not letting it go. “Well, I taste the lime!” Daughter#2 said. But that was wishful thinking on her part. There was no lime in this imposter dessert. There was no way I was going to get psyched by anybody into believing this was a Key Lime Brulee.
The waitress came by again and I reiterated, ” Excuse me – but this is not Key Lime Brulee”.
“Yes, it IS!” she said again, with the emphatic insistence. “It’s just more like a bread pudding”, she said, and walked away again.
Because it was my birthday and we had apparently ordered this Not Brulee that we didn’t like much, I finished it, although I did not enjoy it.
Then there was more waiting for the check. By the way, we were the only ones in the restaurant at this point, and there she is talking with some guy up front at the bar again. I grabbed a menu to check and see what it was she had actually given us.
“Mom! What are you doing? Why do you have to look at the menu? Just leave it alone! Mom! MOM!”
Well, sure enough, bread pudding was on the dessert menu, along with the Key Lime Brulee, and that is what she had brought us – bread pudding. You know, it’s one thing to make a mistake and bring the wrong dessert, really, no big deal there. But don’t be telling me I don’t know what I am eating. When she returned with our check I told her I had looked at the menu again, and that indeed she had given us the wrong dessert. What she should have done then was offered to take it off the bill. Instead, she just shrugged her shoulders.
At the point of the shoulder shrugging, which really pushed a few of my buttons, I should have put the ball back in her court and insisted she take it off the bill. But my daughter had become so impatient with me over the whole thing and my potential for wave-making, that I said nothing more……at least not then.
Daughter#2, who graciously insisted on paying the birthday bill (despite being under- employed at the moment, which made her gift at lunch even more generous), left a twenty percent tip, too. I said nothing. We left. Once back in the car, because I was a little more than annoyed, I emphatically pronounced, “That waitress was an idiot”.
“MOM! What’s the big deal? So we got the wrong dessert! We had a nice time! It’s your birthday! You know, you are getting cranky and intolerant about stuff as you get older!”
Intolerant. Well. In the scheme of life, the wrong dessert is a non-issue. As a matter of fact, as I write this I admit I have actually stopped between sentences to laugh aloud at how ridiculous the whole scenario was.
Question: When is a brulee not a brulee? Answer: When it’s a bread pudding!
I am sure we will laugh about this story again some time down the road. What I didn’t like was being told what I knew to be right as wrong, and treated like some fool that didn’t know what she was eating…and paying for it too. It was not about the bread pudding, or the cost of the bread pudding. It was about respecting the customer. It was about not accepting what you don’t want when you don’t have to. What bothered me most of all was that my daughter could not understand why I was making my point. It bothered me that she wasn’t demanding that same quality – not for me, but for herself as well.
So this is something I have learned “As I Get Older”, and if it comes off as cranky or impatient or less tolerant…well, too bad. If I pay for something, I expect it to be what I pay for, whether it is a product, a meal, an experience, or decent service. I’ve worked hard for my money. If it is not up to that standard, then I might let it ride, but I just might have a say about it too, depending on how I feel, which is OK. And I certainly don’t need anybody, especially some stranger, telling me something is not what it clearly is.
The finale to this story is that after sleeping on it, this morning I decided to send off an email to the restaurant, letting them know what happened and how I felt about it, because it wasn’t OK with me. I didn’t really want to get the girl in trouble, but it wasn’t acceptable to me.
I immediately received an apology from the General Manager for the actions of the waitress, who was fairly new and green. This is exactly what a venue with any class and reputation should do. In addition, he offered to send a gift card as a token of appreciation for our business and for the dessert that we did not receive. I thanked him for his generous offer ….and gave him my daughter’s address. I want her to know that although sometimes it’s OK to let things go, there is also nothing wrong with standing up for yourself either. There is no reason to sit in an uncomfortable seat in the restaurant, nothing wrong with asking to be moved away from a blowing air vent, or the bathroom. There is nothing wrong with asking for the dessert you ordered.
Yes, when you get older you learn what things to let go and what’s important. You learn to accept the things you cannot change, but also to change the things you can…….if you want to. Even if it is only a dish of Key Lime Brulee.
high-powered assault weapons, with the possibility or intent to slaughter innocent populations at whim. It seems the meaning of our Second Amendment has become grossly distorted.
point in standing there like a queen while the poor checker is running through a large order and then has to stop so she can turn around to pack bags, resulting in holding up the entire line. When I see one of those entitled “princess” customers standing there doing nothing and making everyone wait while expecting the checker to stop and pack, it really annoys me. Unless you are aged or infirm or injured, there really is no reason for that. Bagging is something I will gladly participate in. I want to do this. I actually like doing this. It insures that the cold items are packed together, that the powdered sink cleanser is not put next to something like an open bag of damp produce, that the bags are not so over-packed that I cannot lift them, that the meat is put into a plastic bag so it does not drip all over the cereal box, and that all items make it into the bag and nothing is left behind on the counter.
e conveyor belt who grab your stuff and just shove it into bags at random. They really don’t care. Where is the QA in these supermarkets?
this gift, I collected up all the mementos I had saved at the time and put them in that box. Over the years I have added to it periodically, although it is now so full that it barely will close. It is an assortment of varied and poignant articles, mostly from childhood but not totally. Tonight I was putting some things away and found something I wanted to add to the box, so I dug it out, and of course, got lost in those memories once again.
t is contained within:
cetown, back in the days when P-Town was a hippie haven. The vendor swore, subject to suspicion, that it was “mastodon ivory.” We camped out on the beach, got bitten by sand fleas, had the most delicious fish soup with friends.
recognition of the situation.
printed African cloth within. Lifting that drum carefully out, she proceeded to untie this fabric case. Removing her djembe from that revealed that it had a protective quilted cloth hat on top of the drum head. Removing that, there was a colorful second cloth beneath, which lay across the top surface of the drum. The grand finale to this drum strip-tease revealed a very beautiful carved djembe. She did not look to her left where we were sitting, but did engage with the woman on her right, who we figured must have been a friend.
got the feeling of a somewhat spiritual and basically good person. It had all come full circle and that circle was now complete. I haven’t run into her drumming lately though. I haven’t even seen her post since June.
Finally got rid of them, only to realize that the chaff from the hollyhocks is making me itch – very much. That’s a first. Next thing I know, my arms above my gardening gloves, my neck and my collar area are covered with an itchy rash. I don’t even remember touching my neck!
Some of my past relationships might have diligently come up with a gift, others would not. A core of good girlfriends and sisters usually could be counted on to acknowledge it in some way. There would be precious hand-made cards from the kids. But essentially it was just another day. The justification for this was that birthdays are for children, and it seems maybe sometimes for other people. I struggled with almost feeling it was too much of an ego thing to make much over a birthday. Sometimes in the past I might have even felt just the tiniest bit blue about this.
he time, they were dubbed Hudah Moths. A campaign to eradicate them was begun in earnest.
door, right where the firemen had to be entering. With visions of them dragging hoses and axes across and through my vehicle, I turned to go back in and retrieve my keys, only to realize this would be foolish and impossible. Within a minute the building had filled with thick smoke. There was no going back inside.
back, away from everyone else. I guess they felt it wasn’t good PR to have him sitting out in the waiting room.
You know, I do believe there is probably other life out there. How could there not be? The odds are too great that there must be. I don’t know that I could be convinced about strange space craft landing and taking people away in their mother ships, but I think we are not the only ones out in the universe. Or necessarily the only ones here, if you want to get into talking about dimensions. But that is another subject.
We hit three garden nurseries in a row – one that focused on native plants, the second an unplanned stop at a large farm store that sold food in addition to gorgeous botanicals, and the last one set in a niche on a hill and just delightful. I am buzzing high blissed out from these wonderful places. (Also maybe from the orange muffin with piles of orange butter cream frosting on top that we got at the second place). In any case, I have been floating all weekend…..and a bit lighter in the wallet too.
also known as Egyptian Privet. It produces small, fragrant white flowers and bright green leaves – the leaves which are dried and crushed into powder. Henna, with a history of 5000 years, has its origins in Asia and the coasts of Africa. The use of decorative and cosmetic henna can be traced to ancient Egypt.
Return of the Sedum -
in station to get my mother a card. In memories that are filtered through the echoed chambers of childhood, I recall it was a card for Valentine’s Day, but that might be because it had hearts on it - in reality it could have been a Mother’s Day card, as I had picked it out just for her.
ails to someone I thought was a like-minded friend, only to one day get a response back from her saying she “didn’t like my edge”. I guess my edge was a little too raw. Getting this reaction was like the Valentine Card Incident sting, to a lesser extent. Needless to say, that was the end of that correspondence.
punctuated with many “Thanks!!!!!”, embellished with lots of happy, upbeat exclamation marks and further punctuated with smiley faces to insure they get it and can envision me as a perky ray of sunshine. Which I am not. I have been adding emoticons to many things I write now and I seriously hate emoticons, I really do. If this is what it takes….(I pause here to sigh for a moment)…..
od thing, so after work I dutifully stopped in at the Urgent Care place, got a check up, an x-ray and an arm sling, told I had calcium deposits and a bone spur in my shoulder, told to make an appointment with an orthopedic doc and was sent home to rest up with steroids and some pain meds. A calcium deposit? I am picturing images of vast salt mines.
was willing to listen to me, although it’s now after the fact. So she hits me where I tell her and bingo, they get the IV in.
breathing slowly and steadily….. it’s like having labor pains in your arm. I was really good at natural labor, “Good Peasant Stock” as the OB had jokingly put it back then. But with this, none of my good peasant stock is helping. I end up just crying during that last hour when the pain gets away from me. They tell me they can’t get the machine to unlock and dispense my meds any closer than every six hours without doctors orders. But the doctor is not available.
then something that says “status”. Under status, someone has drawn a Smiley Face. I am assuming that was the last patient’s status, or maybe it is wishful thinking on their part for me. I stare at that Smiley Face mocking me and wish I had a dry erase marker, because if I did I would haul myself out of bed and draw a screaming Mr. Bill Face with its hair standing up and flames coming out. Who are they trying to kid?
left the Octopus lying on the chair. It was a couple of hours after doing that when someone came rushing in my room to see if 207A was dead, as there was a flat reading on their screen. I was scolded, and they hooked it up again, despite my protests that the doctor said my heart is fine and I don’t need these things, and that it had only been half hooked up for hours before, and that, you know, theoretically the patient in 207A had died anyway…..
that decisions can be made that are not necessarily in your best interests, or beliefs, for the sake of saving time, or because “that’s how we do it”, and while going through the medical system people can be treated like sheep. While you will not be popular for questioning, it is imperative to advocate for yourself, or anyone else you care about who may be undergoing medical treatment, or admitted.
and as explained in previous posts, I’m kind of a nature geek). But since it was large and had hairy legs, I told him it might be a Wolf Spider. Actually, I cheat in this department, because the only ones I really know (and call by their nicknames mostly) are the gangly “Daddy Long-Legs”, the little black Jumping Spider, the Black and Yellow Argiope (my personal favorite!) and the distinctive Black Widow. After that, anything big and brown I call a Wolf Spider, regardless of what it really is. Nobody seems to challenge that suggestion.
coffin.
anyone who might enter the premises in a truck could hit it. And now, if we want to move it, we have to pay them to do it. Not only that, but it looks incredibly low-rent and cheesy. It seems all we really need to complete the ensemble now is to put a broken toilet in the front yard and turn it into a planter. Maybe we should add some plastic flamingos too. Needless to say, I am upset.
