I’m not one to complain about food that is delivered to my table in a restaurant. I can count on one hand the number of times that I’ve had to send back a food item: once when I found a Band-Aid in my meal, and once when I found a tissue in my salad. I don’t remember any others, but I will concede that there have probably been more times that I’ve felt the need to complain. Heaven only knows how much hair I’ve eaten in my 67 years on earth. I just don’t look very hard. If you eat out, you take a risk.

The other night, Bill and I went to a neighborhood Italian restaurant. Bill ordered a sausage cannoli and I ordered linguine with clam sauce. Our server was a young woman whom I hadn’t seen before. She was new to the restaurant, but who isn’t in these days when workers are more and more difficult to find? Perhaps she had been a manicurist prior to this job.

Anyway, a short time later, she came to our table and proudly set this in front of me…..

“Here’s your linguine with clams,” she said proudly, kind of like she had discovered a vaccine for cancer.

I looked at my plate of food for a moment, trying to take in just what it was that she had set before me. It looked very good, but it didn’t look like linguine with clam sauce. The fact that it was covered in shrimp with nary a clam to be seen was my first clue. I’m like a detective. A food detective.

“This isn’t linguine with clam sauce,” I said politely. “I ordered linguine with clam sauce.”

She seemed stunned. But she quickly recovered.

“Yes it is,” she answered cheerfully. “That’s how they serve it at this restaurant.”

I once again looked down at my plate. Maybe there were clams hidden underneath the pasta, and the shrimp were just an added bonus. But no. Sadly, I couldn’t spot a single clam. I suspected this was, in fact, NOT how they serve it in this restaurant. In fact, I was positive, since I have ordered it many times in this very restaurant. Plus, there were no clams.

“Seriously,” I said. “This really isn’t linguine with clam sauce. In fact, it’s not even linguine; it’s spaghetti.”

Deer in the headlights.

“Let me go back to the kitchen and check,” she said, leaving the plate of spaghetti with shrimp at my table.

She came back a few minutes later with the surprising news that it wasn’t linguine with clam sauce.

“I don’t know how that happened,” she said. Neither did I, but I suspected there was another customer nearby looking sadly at what should have been her plate of spaghetti with shrimp, knowing full well she was going to have to wait a while more while the dish was prepared once again, this time for her.

A minute or so later, the waitress appeared once again, this time with this plate…..

Ahhh. A lovely plate of linguine covered with delicious chopped clams and garlic and white wine and olive oil. The smell wafted up to my nose, and I was happy. Happier than the diner who wished she could have her shrimp and spaghetti.

Bill, by the way, got his sausage cannoli without a single hiccup. Always order a sandwich would be his motto.

My two sisters traveled to Nebraska this past week to visit with relatives and check out our old stomping grounds. In one of the restaurants they visited, this sign was on the bathroom wall…..

Ain’t that some good advice?

Have a great weekend.

The Real Deal
I texted Adelaide on Monday, which was her first day of college. How did your day go? I asked her. It was pretty difficult, but I’m glad to get started was her response. I remember those first days of school. I went to a high school that was considerably smaller than Addie’s school. Suddenly I was thrust into classrooms that were 300 students in a giant auditorium. I don’t remember being nonplussed, however. I only remember being excited to finally be a college student. However, while I don’t remember what my first college class of 1972 was, I do know that it wasn’t Honors Chemistry, which Addie faced as her first class. She’ll do fine, and pretty soon it will be second nature.

Hit the Ball
I got a text from Jll early on Tuesday morning, which was Alastair, Dagny, and Maggie Faith’s first day of school. Dagny has a volleyball game at 5, and it’s at TJ, was the gist of the text. The real point was that this might be the only opportunity to see Dagny play volleyball without having to drive across town. Since Bec was spending the final few days of her Colorado adventure at our house, she, too, attended the volleyball game. Thomas Jefferson won handily, and Dagny played well. I learned that I like volleyball, and understand it more than I do soccer. It’s fun when they win, but I will continue to love Dagny when they lose!

Birthday Doings
We celebrated the final of our August birthday marathon last Sunday, as Kaiya celebrated her 13th birthday. Her mother says Kaiya has been a teenager since she was 2, but I know it was considerably earlier than that. Bill and I used to babysit a bit when she was a baby, and she showed up bright and early at our house at not even a year old carrying a Hello Kitty purse. She already had the teenager attitude. Being a teenager in 2021 is a lot more difficult and scary than being a teenager in 1970, so I pray for all of my grandkids every single day…..

Drive Safely
By the time you read this post, Bec will be on her way home to Chandler, AZ. She said she had a wonderful trip, which included time in Nebraska with Jen. They had the opportunity to connect with many cousins, some whom they hadn’t seen for 30 years or more. Mom did a good job of keeping all of us connected to her many siblings and their many children, something for which we are all very grateful. I was sorry not to be able to accompany them. However, next summer is my 50th high school reunion (and I don’t know how THAT happened), so Bill and I will certainly be making a trip to my home town at that point.

Ciao!

Shortly before our granddaughter Adelaide left for college, she and I were in the car together. She was driving. She stopped at a four-way stop. The person to her right was there before Addie, but waved at Addie to go. With a sigh, Addie began to drive.

“Nana,” she said. “I really hate it when people have the right-of-way but wave me to go. It seems unsafe, and it’s not following the driving rules.”

I was stunned. I thought I was the only person alive whose pet peeve was that very action.

“I KNOW!” I said. “I hate that too.”

I’ve always considered that to action be one of my major ridiculous pet peeves. I say ridiculous, because it really is just a matter of people trying to be kind. When I complain about such an action, Bill always comes to the defense of the other driver.

“They just don’t want to take a chance that you’re going to go at the same time that they move out into the intersection. And they’re just trying to be nice.”

“Then why have any driving regulations?” I always respond. “Why don’t we just drive any way we feel like it, like we would if we were flying in the air in hover cars? Just follow the rules People!”

Here’s an example of kindness nearly leading to a catastrophe: Bill — who is about the most courteous driver around — once stopped in the middle of a busy street because there were two or three children on a bicycle wanting to cross the street. His kindness would have been fine except that the person behind us got impatient and roared around our car, nearly hitting the children. The kids stopped in time, but I might have said something to Bill about following the rules of the road and how his action almost led to disaster. Maybe I just thought it and didn’t say it out loud. (As if that could happen.)

I’m pretty sure the last time I took a written drivers’ test was in 1969, when I got my first drivers’ license. I think I have managed to avoid any subsequent written tests. Nevertheless, I think I still know most of the rules.

• When a red light is flashing, you treat the intersection as a four-way stop.
• At a four-way stop, the car reaching the intersection first has the right-of-way
• If two cars reach the intersection at the same time, the right-of-way goes to the person on your right.

And so on. But don’t test me. Or at least grade on the curve.

Perhaps the best thing about that whole experience with Adelaide is the opportunity to see how the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Of course, since Addie is my step-grandchild, the tree in question might be a linden tree. Still, one learns by example, and it’s good to see my Crabby Appleton example is running through her veins somehow.

Or is it just that she’s first-born?

Much to my surprise, I learned from a local news station that there is a upside to the recent and ongoing increase in the number of COVID-19 cases. Apparently, for economic reasons that I can’t quite understand (hey, don’t laugh at my lack of knowledge about the economy because I can diagram a sentence flawlessly), the increase in cases is causing gasoline prices to go down.

Apparently, the COVID surge is causing U.S. businesses to tell their employees to stop packing up their home desks because they’re staying home for a while longer. They can continue to hold staff meetings in their tighty whities as long as they are wearing a nice shirt. The lack of demand for gasoline (since workers are now only driving as far as the grocery store), coupled with the end of summer traveling, results in an increase in gas supplies and a decrease in price.

Don’t get your hopes up. The price drop is pretty minimal. It’s going from $telling-Jr.-he-can’t-go-to-college-because-the-Suburban-needs-a-fill-up all the way down to $putting-off-the-kitchen-remodel-even-though-the-appliances-are-white-and-electric so they can top off the Ford 150’s tank. The price only dropped a penny-and-a-half per gallon.

It seems like we have been concerned about gas prices for most of my adult life. There have been dips, of course, and they have been appreciated. The theory is, however, that low gas prices lead to people driving more. I can’t support my opinion with facts (heck! the media does that all the time), but I don’t think gas prices have that much to do with the amount of driving people do. The United States is spread out. Entire European countries are smaller than many of our states. Rail travel is unavailable because it is too expensive to build railroad tracks that accommodate only passenger trains like they have in Europe. So our passenger trains have to stop often to let the trains-that-keep-America-in-food-and-air-fryers running. Mass transit is available in many larger cities, but it is clumsy and time-consuming. Just like when I commuted to work every day until I retired, when I look at cars during rush hour, they are mostly empty except for the driver.

Americans drive.

Baby Boomers are old enough to remember the gas shortages of the 70s. Lines at gas pumps. Ridiculous interstate speed limits of 55 mph. But people — including me — sat in the gas lines and drove the interstate highways anyway. What else could we do?

When I turned 16 in 1969, I could fill up my parents’ car at about 35 cents a gallon. I remember “riding the mains” in my small town one weekend night with my best friend in her parents’ car. She wanted to replace the gas she used, but she only had a dime. We went to the gas pump at the bottom of the viaduct that went over the railroad tracks, and she put in a dime’s worth of gas. Don’t get me wrong. Even in 1969, a dime didn’t buy you much gas. But nowadays, it would be next to impossible to even be able to stop the gas pump at a dime. At least she had enough gas to get home.

It is my most fervent hope that there is a time soon when gas is once again below three bucks a gallon and COVID-19 cases are few and far between.