95
I had a busy weekend. I spent some time with both the youngest and oldest of the Wootton brood. I added a new toy to my chest and I had one of those days where everything does not work out quite the way you planned it.
On Friday, the wife ran off with a friend to play the slots. That left me alone with my son, something that, surprisingly, doesn’t happen very often. We had the whole night to ourselves. It barely counts that he hit the sack right after eating dinner and taking a bath. I let him play in his bath a bit. His splashing knocked every toy out of the tub. The effort later knocked him out cold.
Speaking of Friday, earlier in the day I added a brand new toy to my entertainment center. I purchased a TIVO. I’m still a little lukewarm about the service contract you have to purchase. Still, every TIVO owner I’ve spoken with swear its worth it. I’ll see. My initial impressions are very, very good. I’m going to wait a week and let it sink in. Expect a full report on it very soon.
On Saturday, the plans that the wife and I set up went astray. We expected to go to the movies. We expected to finally see Finding Nemo, a movie I’ve been desperate to see for months. We had the babysitter. We had the will. The world just didn’t cooperate.
The first bad sign was the weather. It was rainy. The clouds were grey overhead. The mall was packed; the parking lot full. The bright signs that announce the movie listings at the theater were on the fritz, forcing us to wait in line for 15 minutes to find out the movie was sold out. Sold out? The movie was released months ago. How can it be sold out? I suppose it might have something to do with the fact that it was the only movie shown between the hours 4 and 6:30 pm, a fact that left us with few choices. We couldn’t ask our sitter to stay that long and my Baltimore Ravens were playing at 8. We left the theater looking for alternative activities.
Our first choice was a nice, sit-down dinner. You know, the kind without a little baby to worry about. Some crabs would taste nice. So would a beer. The first restaurant we hit had an hour wait. There were some very sweaty looking customers waiting outside for their name to be called. The second restaurant we approached were out of crabs. I’m sorry but you should be forced to remove the seafood moniker from the sign outside when you run out of crabs in Maryland. At the very least, you should be forced to qualify it a bit. “Seafood, but…” would be a good start.
At this point, my morale had begun to fade. We hit up our favorite crab place in town, Always Best, and headed home. We’d get our crab dinner. I’d get my beer. We’d just let our gracious babysitter keep the little tike occupied for a while. We washed the whole thing down with some preseason football. It wasn’t a bad day at all.
On Sunday, it was off to Westminster to celebrate my Grandmother’s birthday. She’s now had 95 birthdays in a row. She can walk, she can talk, and she can hear. She can still drive my dad up a wall. Her eyesight isn’t what it used to be but, at 95, can you really complain? When queried about her chances for 100, she seemed nonplused. “It isn’t worth it,” she replied. I love the old lady. If God wants her around in another five years, I’m sure she’ll fight the good fight. If not, I bet she goes with just a hint of a smile on her face.
So that was my weekend. I better get used to it. The wife has a whole bunch of them scheduled for the fall.
