May 16 2007
Salsa, anyone?
Gentle Readers, today I’m off to house-hunt. All day long. Aren’t you jealous?
It means that I won’t be around to read, comment, or post much. Instead, I’m bringing you something from my archives.
WAIT!! Don’t GO!!!
This was one of my first stories about life with my kiddos. It was back before anyone (besides Butrfly and Kateastrophe–hi girls!) was actually reading this blog.
It has been slightly reworked…
AND THEN SHE FOUND A ROCK AND HID UNDER IT FOR THE REST OF ETERNITY…
My darling hubsters called me on his way home from work yesterday to announce that I didn’t need to make dinner because he was taking us all OUT to dinner. In that moment, I really should have called the local mental institution and had him locked up because he was clearly going BATTY. Didn’t he remember how hard it is to go anywhere?
Well, maybe just this once, it would be an exception. And I was actually really excited to not have to cook and serve and clean. And positively in love with Hubby for thinking of me.
So, I got all the kids ready to go and even put on my new sassy jeans. I know. Big stuff.
Well, as it turned out, Hubbadubba was taking us to dinner because he’d been given a gift certificate. Even better! I didn’t need to feel guilty about the unnecessary money-spending that going out usually entails!
The gift certificate was to a Mexican restaurant in Orem, about half an hour away. There are, of course, approximately a billion Mexican restaurants in Utah, so we didn’t think anything of the fact that we’d never HEARD of this particular one. And we’re all big Mexican food lovers, so this was perfect.
We pulled up to the “restaurant” which was a little hole in the wall of a strip mall where everything was in Spanish. Everything.
As we were getting out of the car, Bubba peed his pants. With some pants, you can’t really see the wet spot. Bubba was not in those pants. He was in the pants that reward a little pee with a great big “hi, I just had an accident and now I’m going to sit on your chair” wet spot. I wasn’t sure what to do, but I really had no other option than to take him in to the restaurant, wet spot and all.
We walk into the “restaurant” which had about 6 small tables, 4 of which were fully occupied by very burly, drunk, Hispanic men.
Let me pause here to say that by now you know that I’m am impervious to racial and cultural differences. This is even more the case when it comes to the Latin culture. I have many, many hispanic friends. I’m fluent in Spanish, remember? I have an Argentine sister-in-law. And I lived in South America for a couple of years. Not a big deal.
However, in this situation, my little family of six felt pretty little, very young, and COPIOUSLY white. I expect that my abnormal discomfort came mostly because, of course, we had all eyes glued on us from the moment we walked in the door. Burly drunk men with jaws dropped, gawking at the white people–the white people with magical procreation skills.
The menus? All in Spanish. I had to translate for Hubby and the kiddos. A waiter, who remarkably spoke pretty good English, came over to us and we ordered. It took forever, because Hubby needed to go through all his options (”can I get guacamole instead of rice and then beans with cheese but no red sauce and do the pig’s feet come with mango sauce? I don’t really want them, I’m just curious…”), but eventually our order was in.
(I sound like I’m mocking him. I’m not trying to. He’s such a darling. But see, being a vegetarian and all, my food options are rather limited and I’m pretty dang boring anyway. I scan the menu, see the bean burrito, and go with it. Hubby is much more adventurous than I, and therefore has a lot of questions that need answers.)
In the meantime, the kids were gorging themselves on the free chips and salsa. Scooby was in a high chair with no straps to keep him in.
People. If my child needs a high chair, my child also needs straps. Why is it that the straps are always broken??? For the preservation of your restaurant, and our mutual sanity, FIX THE STUPID STRAPS!!!
Anyway, needless to say, he was climbing all over the table and throwing menus on the floor, etc. I was working so hard to keep everyone and everything under control. I didn’t want to be one of “those moms” who goes to a nice restaurant and sits back while the kids turn it into a disaster area.
Fortunately, this WASN’T a nice restaurant.
Still, I was determined to keep the kids under control. Then the baby started screaming. Hubby picked him up and discovered a total diaper blow out. Again, I had no handy change of clothes, so now I had one pee-soaked child and one screaming poop-soaked baby. And then Scooby, climbing out of his high chair once again, grabbed the salsa and guzzled it. What do you suppose he did next? Well, he screamed his brains out, of course, because the salsa was HOT.
And the burly drunk men stared on at the little smelly excrement-covered white people who were all screaming.
Our waiter walked by, and Hubby decided to ask what he should have asked in the first place, which was, do they take this gift certificate. The waiter looks at it and said, “No.”
WHAT???
They don’t take gift certificates anymore because of gift certificate fraud. Too many copies. (You’ve got to be freaking kidding me. People are making bogus gift certificates to this place? People want to EAT IN THIS PLACE???) Hubby points out all the reasons why this is absolutely a legitimate gift certificate–it had watermarks, security seals, important signatures, etc. The waiter was unimpressed.
“No, we do not take any gift certificates.”
“Well, then we won’t be eating here,” Hubby announces.
The waiter shrugs and says, “okay!”
I nearly died. Really. I think my poor, pathetic life began flashing before my eyes.
So we loaded up the screaming, poopy baby in his carseat, grabbed the screaming Scooby out of his high chair and told Bubba and Fluffy to head to the door. “NO!!!” they yelled, almost (but not quite) in unison.
(I suspect my face was completely purple by now. Not a good look on me…)
“Excuse me?”
And now, in all-out tantrum mode: “NO!!! WE’RE NOT LEAVING!!!! WE’RE SO HUNGRY!!!”
We grabbed them by the hand and yanked them out the door, leaving our blurry-eyed Mexican friends to stare at each other in awe and say, “what in the Giminy Christmas was THAT???”
Indeed. What WAS that?
So, we went through the drive-thru at Taco Bell, where we didn’t look like freaks at all, and ate our tacos in the van as we drove home.
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