Rob turned 43 today. He isn't much into birthday celebrations (his own, at least) so he didn't even take work off. That to me is crazy talk, because I can't remember ever working on my birthday, except by force when I was in the Navy. At any rate, we indulged in his favorite things: eating. We ate at Five Guys (if you don't have one around you, it's a crime!) for lunch, then I made him a cake FROM SCRATCH! once we returned home. I should have taken pictures, because I think I used every pot, bowl, and stirring implement in our house. After the mighty cake admiring we marched southward to a restaurant that is renowned for it's fried seafood. A place that has on the menu an appetizer offering of port wine cheese spread for .95 cents. It is a little family place, and is about as redneck as you can get up in these parts. In fact, the restaurant is an old house, and smells like what I remember one of my grandmother's houses smelled like: old people, dying old people with lineament on them. But these people fry up some damn tasty shrimp, scallops, crab, whatever pokes around in water.
I took my chances and bragged the other day how great Cam is in restaurants, much like I bragged about how great she sleeps. Well, the universe paid me back. For ONCE in her brief life Cam was completely uninterested in food. A basket of crackers on the table? Nope. Bread? Nope. FRIED shrimp? Nope. Her favorite vegetable, broccoli...cooked PERFECTLY, and in BUTTER? Hell no, and at that one she cleared the table with a swipe of her arm. We subdued her with two orange slices (she ate the rind too, makes me pucker just thinking about it), so we could inhale our dinners, and hastily throw down money so the waitress could bring us the check.Even the mighty cookie couldn't dissuade our Campbell from a full own whine-a-thon. My anxiety was full-blown by the time we hit the parking lot. Cam 1, her harried parents: 0
On the way home as Cam clucked away to herself about her victory, rob and I talked about how different life has been since I quit drinking. How for his birthday, instead of a bell-busting fried food extravaganza, we would have been at Ruth's Chris helping the economy recover. That instead of throwing down an unseemly amount of money for a meal we would be too drunk to taste, we were much more sated and happy after tonight's meal. Okay, maybe not completely sated, we hadn't eaten any of that cake yet.
After I got Cam down, we ordered up a movie on cable and ate obscenely large pieces of chocolate cake. Life is good.
glad you had fun :) even with the harried meal.
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