“Can’t we sit outside?” I asked our hostess as she led us to an indoor window table. I added, “I requested an outdoor table by the creek.”
Our hostess, a young twenty-something with long flowing hair like Rapunzel-in-the-making, gave me a pouty, glum look and shook her head slowly, “Not tonight, it’s raining.”
“It’s not raining,” I said, although I knew we had arrived in Sedona to celebrate our fortieth wedding anniversary in the heart of the monsoon season. It had rained earlier in the day.
Oh, I’m so outraged. No noodles in the soup. Take it back.
“Um, excuse me,” I said to our young server who had the looks and style of a Kardashian. “My chicken noodle soup doesn’t have any noodles.”
Kim, I’ll call her Kim just for the sake of not knowing her real name, stopped and inspected my soup. She leaned over for a better look.
I glanced at her, waiting for her immediate reaction, such as, “Whada’ya know! No noodles,” and whisk my soup away for a fast exchange of soup with noodles.
But Kim didn’t say anything and gave me a perplexed expression, her eyeliner and jewelry flashing dazzling sparkles in the dimmed lighting.
Kathy, Julie, me, reflective pond
“Anyone celebrating a special occasion?” our tour guide, John, asked.
Kathy, Julie, and I~ along with seven others (people we didn’t know) ~huddled together at the entry to the Japanese Friendship Garden in Phoenix.
After a long silence, one of the ladies in our tour group of ten said, “It’s a good day to be alive.”
“That’s a good reason to celebrate,” Kathy said.
“Every day I wake up and I’m alive, I celebrate,” said the lady, who we later learned goes by the name of Georgia and is 80 years old.
“Put that phone down, Mama. Your food is getting cold. What are you? Twelve-years-old?”
I glanced up from my phone and noticed our server holding a coffee pot and flashing a rosy-cheeked smile. Apparently, she had just called me out on my phone usage while dining in her café.
I gave her one of my taken aback “I-can’t-believe-you-just-said-that” looks.
First off, I have never had anyone call me ‘Mama’ other than the person who is supposed to call me Mama and he calls me Mom.
Once our server caught on that she might have offended me, she said, “Oh, I say that all the time to my best friends. I just don’t want your food to get cold.”
After a fabulous Thanksgiving dinner with our sister-in-law, her husband and our niece and nephew as well as their family friends, Jerry and I left their home around 7 p.m.
Jerry agreed to stop at Kohl’s (which opened its doors at 6 p.m.) so I could do some early Black Friday shopping. After all, it was on our way home. “I’ll run in and run out,” I told Jerry. Before saying good-bye to our very special and dear sister-in-law Julie, she cautioned, “Kohl’s will be very crowded.”