Random Thursday

1. The Wonder Hub and I celebrated our anniversary this week.  He brought me flowers and a card.  The card was sweet, and thoughtful.  And Mahogany.

2. School is officially out tomorrow.  For the last month or so, I have been having nightmare-ish dreams in which the boys appear to be zombies.  In every dream they are chasing me in that dream sequence slo-mo, and it's terrifying.  They march towards me, arms straight out in front as they keep repeating a single word.

Foooooood.

They won't stop chasing me and I'm in a total panic because I can't find enough food to keep them fed.  The fridge is bare.  I keep chucking empty pasta boxes in their general direction as I flee.  Whipping granola bars at their creepy zombie heads only slows them down for seconds.  In the dream I'm sure that I will be their short-lived feast if they ever catch me!

Did I mention that school is out tomorrow?

3. Out of the blue yesterday Bubba mentioned the restaurant Buca di Beppo.  He was hungry (see above).  He likes the sound of Buca di Beppo as it rolls off his tongue.  He was hungry.  He only vaguely remembers the restaurant, but asked me to tell him the story of the first (and only) time we dined there.  It's a gggrreat story.

It was one of the (or possibly the) first official dates the Wonder Hub and I shared.  We took the children, as single parents sometimes do, and headed to this family-style Italian restaurant.  Things were going swimmingly until the moment the food arrived and one of the children (who will remain nameless as he is now a teenager) crawled under the large booth-style table and gloriously filled his diaper.  So glorious was this filling that even in the full, darkened, Italian-scented restaurant, we knew exactly what had transpired.  So glorious was this filling that we knew even before he crawled up on the seat with his satisfied grin and his business smeared up the back of his shirt and down the length of his chubby legs.

I was horrified. 

The Wonder Date didn't flinch, flagged a waitress and asked her to wrap our food. 
"I'll meet you in the car," he said, which was all I needed to grab the stinker and make a run for it.

And did I ever run for it.  With malodorous child grasped firmly under his arms and held at the furthest distance possible, with the entire grossed-out population of restaurant staring me down, with dreams of a second date dashed all to heck, I ran right out the door at the back of the large, open dining room...and set off the unbelievably effective alarm system.

4. We haven't eaten at Buca di Beppo since.  I can't speak for the WH, but I have zero desire to do so.  Come to think of it, I actually have zero desire to eat at any Italian restaurant.  I have always chalked this up to my preference for spicy food--Mexican, Indian, Thai--but it's quite possible that the blame rests solely on that (nameless) child.

5. The child who took these photos did it again.  Why am I never in the room when the pizza is done?  I don't recall a fire or smoke alarm this time, but these things tend to all come together in my brain in one loud and smoky blur.

He took this picture, which I like because you can see the remaining dough in the bowl next to the pizza.

Then he took this picture, after eating his initial out of the pie.  "Just in case," he said, "you wondered who did it."

As if.

5. I realized at 8:55 last night that the title of yesterday's blog post is grammatically ambiguous.  It makes it look as though I have a theory on both recipes and on Charlotte's Chicken Salad (although, I guess then it should have read My Theories...).  I hate it when I do that.  It really should read, My Theory On Recipes...and Charlotte's Chicken Salad.

6. I hated that I did it, but I was thankful I discovered it before bed, which prevented me from waking in the night to kick myself over and over when I should have been getting my beauty sleep.

No beauty sleep = cranky Karen.

7. Have you ever heard of Dave Ramsey?  He's the Wonder Hub's BFF.  Sigh.  If Carey responds to this post with a comment that says, "Yes! Tell the Dave Ramsey story!" I will tell you the Dave Ramsey story.

Sigh.