(no subject)
too many words about dinner
It was of great importance to my mom that her small TV upstairs work, as well as the one downstairs that is connected to a satellite dish. If I watch an hour of TV a night that is a lot, since I generally regard it as a way to sleep through your life. This of course invites the question: well what is so damned important that you are doing with your life rather than watch TV? I am gardening, I am making a new necklace for my mom, I am writing this, I am reading a book, I am wincing about the election in Iran that I read about on the internet.
Anyway, the upstairs TV is tremendously important to mom, and so it becomes important to me. She got the box and Xavier set it up, and all looked like it was well until they actually did the change over, and even though the box is connected,she got virtually no channels.
THis meant we ended up at Target, which is about the last place on earth I want to be on a Saturday, or really any day of the week, and we were looking at DTV antennas. There was no way we could know which antenna to get, and the sales people were not helpful. We guessed.
Since Sizzler was in the same parking lot, we went there for dinner. Given that I no longer eat mammals, Sizzler was going to have limited choices for me. But I held the door open for mom and in we went. Mom got steak and shrimp. I got shrimp and shrimp and shrimp. I suggested to the cashier that I could get the steak and shrimp but switch out the steak for salmon. She looked at me as if the very idea was distasteful and that I was crazy and informed me that that would not be possible.
We sat down in a booth and I started checking out my fellow restaurant goers. Everyone in there looked like they had seen hard times quite recently. They looked tired, and worn out. Even the kids looked surly. There was a man at a table behind us who might have been sitting there for five years. He had finished the food on his plate before we arrived and he was still sitting there when we left- staring out into space. One of the waiters asked him if he was alright. I don't think he answered.
Pop rock blasted over the stereo system, and asserted itself over the loud, dull drone of many conversations. it was syrupy and it was earnest. It sounded as if every singer had spent a long time trying his or her best to sound like Bruce Springstein. The restaurant smelled like seared dead cows.
In other words, flame broiled steaks.
It's all the same thing.
I decided to cut through the crust of one of my shrimp to see if they had deveined them. The answer was no. It was obviously the chef's intention that I would be eating a fair amount of shrimp fecal matter. This caused me to wonder what shrimp eat and also to cut open every single breaded shrimp before I ate it and devein it myself.
The only thing that was good about this dinner to me was that I was sitting across the table from my mother, who had recently been in the emergency room and the ICU and was now sitting across from me in Sizzler's eating steak.
I'll take every single moment I can get with her, thank you very much.
It was at dinner that I thought about how I had not told her something she probably would want to know. A childhood friend I had known from the time I was about one until I was in my teens contacted me on Facebook yesterday. Her mother had been great friends with my mother. She told me that her mother died last March and asked how my mother was doing. I didn't tell my mother Eve died, and that there were pictures of her just shortly before she died on Marsha's Facebook page. I didn't tell her because I think that finding out that my younger cousin is dying of cancer is very much related to why her blood pressure spiked and she ended up in the emergency room. She isn't as close to Eve, but I still decided not to tell her.
I think if she ever asks about Eve maybe I will tell her then.
We left the restaurant and mom said what a great time she had there and how good the food was. I thought the food and restaurant sucked, but I didn't say anything. I opened the door for her and we went out into the late afternoon Saturday sunlight. A car waited for her to cross the street and she hobbled across, quite bent over with her cane in her hand.
I wanted to be able to perform miracles and cure her, so she could stand up straight and not use a cane. So she would feel better and live forever. I walked by her side, ready to repel any cars that thought of being impatient with her or getting in her way.
It was of great importance to my mom that her small TV upstairs work, as well as the one downstairs that is connected to a satellite dish. If I watch an hour of TV a night that is a lot, since I generally regard it as a way to sleep through your life. This of course invites the question: well what is so damned important that you are doing with your life rather than watch TV? I am gardening, I am making a new necklace for my mom, I am writing this, I am reading a book, I am wincing about the election in Iran that I read about on the internet.
Anyway, the upstairs TV is tremendously important to mom, and so it becomes important to me. She got the box and Xavier set it up, and all looked like it was well until they actually did the change over, and even though the box is connected,she got virtually no channels.
THis meant we ended up at Target, which is about the last place on earth I want to be on a Saturday, or really any day of the week, and we were looking at DTV antennas. There was no way we could know which antenna to get, and the sales people were not helpful. We guessed.
Since Sizzler was in the same parking lot, we went there for dinner. Given that I no longer eat mammals, Sizzler was going to have limited choices for me. But I held the door open for mom and in we went. Mom got steak and shrimp. I got shrimp and shrimp and shrimp. I suggested to the cashier that I could get the steak and shrimp but switch out the steak for salmon. She looked at me as if the very idea was distasteful and that I was crazy and informed me that that would not be possible.
We sat down in a booth and I started checking out my fellow restaurant goers. Everyone in there looked like they had seen hard times quite recently. They looked tired, and worn out. Even the kids looked surly. There was a man at a table behind us who might have been sitting there for five years. He had finished the food on his plate before we arrived and he was still sitting there when we left- staring out into space. One of the waiters asked him if he was alright. I don't think he answered.
Pop rock blasted over the stereo system, and asserted itself over the loud, dull drone of many conversations. it was syrupy and it was earnest. It sounded as if every singer had spent a long time trying his or her best to sound like Bruce Springstein. The restaurant smelled like seared dead cows.
In other words, flame broiled steaks.
It's all the same thing.
I decided to cut through the crust of one of my shrimp to see if they had deveined them. The answer was no. It was obviously the chef's intention that I would be eating a fair amount of shrimp fecal matter. This caused me to wonder what shrimp eat and also to cut open every single breaded shrimp before I ate it and devein it myself.
The only thing that was good about this dinner to me was that I was sitting across the table from my mother, who had recently been in the emergency room and the ICU and was now sitting across from me in Sizzler's eating steak.
I'll take every single moment I can get with her, thank you very much.
It was at dinner that I thought about how I had not told her something she probably would want to know. A childhood friend I had known from the time I was about one until I was in my teens contacted me on Facebook yesterday. Her mother had been great friends with my mother. She told me that her mother died last March and asked how my mother was doing. I didn't tell my mother Eve died, and that there were pictures of her just shortly before she died on Marsha's Facebook page. I didn't tell her because I think that finding out that my younger cousin is dying of cancer is very much related to why her blood pressure spiked and she ended up in the emergency room. She isn't as close to Eve, but I still decided not to tell her.
I think if she ever asks about Eve maybe I will tell her then.
We left the restaurant and mom said what a great time she had there and how good the food was. I thought the food and restaurant sucked, but I didn't say anything. I opened the door for her and we went out into the late afternoon Saturday sunlight. A car waited for her to cross the street and she hobbled across, quite bent over with her cane in her hand.
I wanted to be able to perform miracles and cure her, so she could stand up straight and not use a cane. So she would feel better and live forever. I walked by her side, ready to repel any cars that thought of being impatient with her or getting in her way.