Saturday, June 18, 2005

Dinner, and the trip home

It didn't start out that way, but we took John out for a Father's Day dinner this evening. Father's Day isn't til tomorrow, of course, we just wanted to beat the crowds.
We found out that Jonah likes scallops (as does his mother). These were big ones, locally caught, still tasting of the ocean, nearly perfectly cooked. It amazes me on these occasions: we live right here on the coast yet we rarely have fresh, local seafood (for one thing, when it's even available, it's stinkin' expensive). John had cod fish and chips (he is the most predictable eater I know), Hannah had clam chowder.
The children behaved magnificently at dinner. Drew pictures, ate well, sat fairly still. Wow. They certainly were better behaved than the obnoxious group of adults at the table behind us who, in addition to being loud, were rude to the waitresses (a large part of their conversation involved bemoaning the fact that the restaurant was out of Coors and the local microbrew stuff was not as good as Coors and for some reason, this gave them the right to be snooty and condescending to the friendly, helpful waitress; I use Coors in my garden to kill the slugs).

We stopped at the video rental store on the way home. Hannah got to pick out a movie as a reward for good behavior. We also got Kinsey because John is thinking about showing it in class.
The rest of the trip home consisted of Hannah babbling some kind of nonsense while Jonah yelled at her to BE QUIET! SHUSH UP! BE QUIET! BE QUIET! SHUT UP! SHHHH! I don't know, sometimes we just let them have at it. There's only so much damage they can do to eachother when they are strapped in their carseats. And we've become largely numb to the din, I guess. We did tell Jonah that he might be more effective if he asked Hannah calmy and in a quiet voice if she would please be quiet. She wasn't even being very loud--though she did get louder as she saw how much it was bugging her brother, by then we were home.
It made me very suddenly and very fiercely miss my brothers and being young with them. All that crap about he's looking at me! she's breathing my air!, all that button-pushing, all the bickering, all the jealousy, all the resentment. All that hideous stuff mixed in with being constant playmates, best friends, partners in mischief. I didn't know I'd get to revisit it so keenly through my own kids.

1 comment:

heels said...

I'm confused. I thought Father's day was in June. Or are you talking about John's birthday?

I'm so confused.

(So what else is new?)

It sounds like dinner was lovely, though, no matter what the occasion.

(Now I want fish and chips.)