We ate in a pretty darn nice restaurant tonight, and the waiter brought us two glasses of water. Curious Girl was sitting on my lap, it's true, so there were only two place settings occupied at the moment, but it's not like she was wearing an outfit that matched mine so she blended in. But we're used to the invisible child phenomenon, and so we said, "there are three of us. Can you please bring another water?" The waiter looked down at us, and said, "Are you waiting for the third?" (A Holly Near song (Perfect Night?) flashed into my head, the one where the waiter says "are you alone?" and the couple say "we're together!"). I gestured to Curious Girl and said, "She's already here," and the waiter just looked confused. He did bring another water glass, but then when I ordered a salad and said we'd share it, he said, "So you'll split it between the two of you?" Clueless.
Said salad was awfully yummy: fresh tomatoes, mozerella, basil, balsalmic vinegar. I gave CG several chunks of cheese, including the last two chunks from my plate. "Mama, you rock!" she said spontaneously. I laughed. "You should be in a rock star movie!" she continued. That's me, the least hip rock star mama in the country, taking enormous pleasure, and recording in the child journal, evolving plays on words.
It was a good day, though: we had some perfect time on the beach and out on the water and got back to the house just in time to see an incredible sunset on the bay. I realized when I saw the headlines in the Times as we passed a newsstand that there are some horrible things going on in the world, things I'll need to find out more about as we start to head home on Sunday. But tonight, I'm just being my rock star self, enjoying the luxury of a calm and peaceful night--a luxury eluding far too many people in troubled spots tonight (I just peeked at Phantom's latest post and it's a good one on that theme and more.)
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4 comments:
perhaps CG had her cloaking device activated? Anyone who says, "You Rock!" to mom certainly knows how to use a cloaking device. Too cute.
That waiter--was he blind? Good grief! You ARE a rock star, Susan--and I'm so glad you're enjoying your vacation.
Strange, we've never encountered this with Muffin Man. But then, we often let him do the talking for us. We'll let him tell the person who seats us how many we are. We'll let him order for us.
Hard to ignore him or overlook him in those circumstances.
Have you tried saying to the waitrons, "We're three. And the little one calculates the tip."
Maybe servers are just more attentive where you are, Liz. We've had this problem at home and on the road (although not consistently--esp while on vacation, and thus dining out more often than we usually do, we've had lots of waitron experiences, and some of them have been just great, with people being quite attentive to Curious Girl). We encourage CG to order for herself, which she usually does, and to count the number of people in the family for seating, too (never lose an opportunity for math practice!)
Now, time to head to the beach (which means turning off Steve Martin on the Muppets).
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