“I have an idea,” said Calfgrit3, “let’s go to IHOP.”

He often calls out “I have an idea” when he wants to suggest we go to a restaurant. This time, we all agreed an IHOP breakfast would be great. We got dressed, loaded up, and went to the restaurant.

It was early enough in the morning to beat the heavy crowd (before 9:00), but we could see a few people standing around in the foyer waiting. I parked the mini van and we went inside to put our name on the list. When I stepped up to the host/hostess stand, there were a couple of couples just finishing a conversation about the wait time. One of the groups sitting on the foyer bench asked, “Another twenty minutes?” “Yes,” was the answer. One couple told the host they were leaving and he could remove their names from the list.

The newly arrived couple just in front of me added their name to the wait list. They told the host their names, and the host had them write their names on the list themselves. That’s odd, I thought. When they finished and stepped away, I asked the host what the wait time was, and he said, “Twenty minutes.”

I don’t know what the problem was that I heard the end of as I walked up, but twenty minutes was not too long for us to wait that morning. I told the host my name, and he had me write my name on the list. Ooookay. I don’t think my drawl is that bad, but maybe it’s just easier for him — he was obviously Mexican, with a heavy Spanish accent.

I left Cowgrit and the Calfgrits in the foyer to wait while I went across the street to put gas in the van. When I came back, less than ten minutes later, Cowgrit informed me that they hadn’t called any names yet. She and the boys were sitting in the outer foyer, an area separated by doors from the main foyer, where the host stood, and the outside. I went to the inside foyer and stood off to the side for a minute.

The host called out a name that I couldn’t really understand. He called it out again. There were only four groups in the inside foyer, and none of them answered to the name he called. When no one answered, the host called out the next name. There was a mic for the external loudspeaker right beside him, but he didn’t pick it up. That would explain why Cowgrit hadn’t heard any names called. If this guy was only calling out the names to the small crowd in front of him, he was missing the other two-thirds of the waiting customers — including us.

I stepped up to the host and suggested he call the name over the loudspeaker. He said, “Yes,” and did so. I looked down at the wait list in front of him and noticed how badly he was mangling the name he was calling. His Spanish accent was so thick, the people he was calling probably wouldn’t recognize hearing their own name. I didn’t understand him, and I was standing there looking at the written name.

When those people still didn’t answer (no surprise), he called our name. Actually, he called out some strange word that I couldn’t understand. The only way I knew he was calling my name was because I was standing right beside him looking at the wait list. He had his finger pointed at our name as he called it.

“That’s us,” I said.

“OK,” he said. As he started gathering the menus and napkin-wrapped silverware, I stepped into the other foyer to tell Cowgrit.

The host handed his stuff to another host, and this second guy lead us to our table. As we took our seats, I mentioned to the second host, “No one can understand what that host up there is saying. He’s garbling all the names he calls out.”

“Sorry,” he said, “he doesn’t usually do that up there.” Then he left our table.

Cowgrit mentioned, and I realized it too, we got our table before a few groups who were there before us. We figure he called their names and either mangled their names beyond their recognition, or didn’t call them on the loudspeaker so they didn’t hear him at all. Had I not been standing right there beside him, seeing his finger pointing to our name on the sheet, I wouldn’t have known he was calling our name. And we wouldn’t have heard him through the door since he didn’t use the loudspeaker.

Fortunately for us, we only waited ten minutes, but there were many groups back out there who were probably in for a very frustrating wait, indefinitely.

The table service and the breakfast food was good, so our experience was fine. But we were lucky to even get a seat, apparently.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

Calfgrit7 was sick last night. He threw up a couple times, and Cowgrit put him to bed in our bed — don’t want him vomiting from atop his upper bunk bed. By 8:30, he’d gone about an hour and a half without problem so we were hoping it was probably over.

Then, as Cowgrit and I were shutting the house down for the night — she to sleep in our bed with the sick CG, and me to write my post and then to sleep in the guest room — we heard Calfgrit7 heaving. He was so much asleep that he didn’t wake up, and we got into the bedroom just in time to see a volcano of vomit bubble up from his mouth and run down his face. Yes, it’s as nasty as it sounds.

We spent the next half-hour cleaning the boy and the bed. You have to have children to really learn just how far into disgusting you can go. In my case last night, I was literally up to my elbows in it. After the initial eruption, I held him up so he could lean over a small trash can.

I noted the mess and asked Cowgrit, “Why would he have red in his vomit?”

“Um,” Cowgrit thought for a moment, “strawberries. They had some strawberries tonight.”

“Good.” Bringing up strawberries is much better than the first thought that ran through my mind.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

I was driving the car, and Calfgrit7 was in the back seat, when all of a sudden I hear, “Fwup. Aayy!” I looked in my rearview mirror and saw this:

It had rained a couple days before this, so I had an umbrella on the floor behind the passenger seat. Calfgrit7 had reached down and picked it up to look at. He apparently pushed the button, and it burst open. The open umbrella filled the whole area behind the front seats, and even when I turned around, I couldn’t see him at all.

The opening startled him, but he got over it quickly. “How do I close it?” he asked. At the next stop light, I tried to help him. With the umbrella open, he couldn’t turn it around and I couldn’t reach around to get at the handle. “We’ll just have to wait till I can get somewhere to park,” I said, chuckling.

Within a minute, before I could get to a parking lot, he had figured out how to close it. But he couldn’t get it to latch and stay shut — it popped open again. We stopped at another traffic light, he closed it again, and I was able to reach back and help him latch it securely.

“Can I open it again?” he asked.

“No,” I said, chuckling again, “not in the car.”

He dropped the umbrella back to the floor and the incident was over. Just one of those little sitcom moments that life with children is full of.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

The boys have been asking to get some pet fish for a few weeks now, and we’ve been promising to let them. We eventually checked out tanks and fish, and this past weekend, we got the equipment and fish. We’re starting out with a very small set up, to see how it all works out.

The tank is just 2 gallons, and it sits nicely on the shelf between the den and kitchen. It has an air pump and filter, white rocks on the bottom, and a treasure chest (picked out by Calfgrit7) with gold spilling out. If the boys continue to show interest, and the fish survive, we’ll get something bigger.

A few years ago, when our oldest was only 3 years old, before we even had the youngest, we had a similar set up with two goldfish. Calfgrit-then-3 named the fish Spot and Oranger. We went through two Spots and three Orangers within a few months. The poor things kept dying.

Having researched fish a little better, I now think the fish were just too big for the small tank (or the tank was too small for the fish). This time we got two guppies — much smaller than the goldfish. Both boys picked out a “Fancy Guppy” — Calfgrit7 picked out one with an orange tail fin with black spots, and Calfgrit3 picked out one with a yellow tail fin with black spots. They’re named “Max” and “Calfgrit3 Fish” [no apostrophe s] respectively.

Young kids can pick some interesting names, or lame names, depending on your perspective. I’ll tell you about their stuffed animals’ names in another post.

There was a tiny, tiny little baby guppy with them, unknowingly scooped up with them, but I think I lost him when I poured out some of the water down a sink to put the fish in their new tank. I didn’t realize anyone would miss the near-microscopic baby, but I learned after the incident that Cowgrit and the Calfgrits had been talking about watching the tyke grow up. I explained that it probably would have been eaten anyway, or otherwise just not survived, but that didn’t make anyone happy. Fortunately, I think the baby has been forgotten by now.

So far, the FAGs have survived two days in their new home. I presume the “FAG” written on the bag stands for “Fancy Guppies.” The pet store worker wrote it on the bag for me to take to the check out. (I originally titled this post “A Couple of FAGs” because I thought it funny, but I changed the title after thinking that some folks might not appreciate the humor.)

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com