Had dinner with my folks last night in celebration of my Dad's 65th birthday. I think it was sort of a downer of a day for him. Nothing went like he wanted it to. He and Mom were going to go out and hit the antique shops, but they kept getting interrupted by unexpected visitors, including my dad's brother, who has cancer and talks of nothing else. Not exactly light birthday fare. Then Mom went out to a "tea" (what ever) with friends, and when she came back she mixed herself a cocktail.
My mom can not drink.
Not that she's a lush. Not by any means. Quite the opposite. She's an extreme lightweight. But she hadn't eaten much of anything all afternoon, and the one cocktail made her completely loopy. As a consequence, when they got to my apartment shortly after 6 p.m., the first thing my dad said as he walked in the door was "your mother needs something to eat."
She came in and started eating crackers and talking a mile a minute. She told me the same bits of news at least three times during the course of the evening, and my dad kept rolling his eyes at me and shushing her.
On top of that, our waiter was a complete disaster. At one point he actually came over to our table, sat down uninvited next to my mother, leaned against her shoulder, and told us he was almost ready to cry. He was unbelievably slow to wait on us, reliably forgot everything we told him, and finally brought us our tab in a crumpled wad. Not sure if he was just having a bad night or was incompetent. I'm pretty sure he's no longer employed, however.
I will have to take my dad out for drinks after the first of April to make up for it.
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