Weekend

Okay, who out there would take a 4 hour (one way!) road trip just to go to a grocery store? Not surprisingly, I see no one raising their hands. Okay, maybe Orange Wino. However, that's exactly what we did on Saturday.

The shocker is that we managed to get on the road at 7am, after having gone to my work Christmas party the night before. Didn't drink or eat too much, but it was a later night that what I thought it would be. Okay, okay, I did have about 3 glasses of white merlot. That was after the 2 glasses of wine I'd warmed up with at home (more on that later). It's usually a fun party when we can manage to go (sometimes it's on another week night). The pathologists always arrange a nice meal and open bar, and Dr. B usually has concocted an amusing slide show with pics from around the lab over the years.

And the gift exchange is fun. The most popular gifts are usually booze or some kind of gag gift. There was a lot of booze exchanged (what does that say about lab employees??). You draw numbers and then get to go up to the tree to pick a gift when your number is called. Someone else can steal it if they like it, or go up to the tree to get a new gift. A gift can only be snatched twice before it finds a permanent home. I had two gifts stolen (both alcohol *G*) before I ended up with $40 worth of restaurant gift certificates to Clarkston Union Bar & Grill. I'd never heard of the place, but Tim had heard good things through Beer Advocate. So he made me go steal those from someone else. I'd have to say Tim and I definitely made out like bandits for only bringing a bottle of wine.

We had mom spend the weekend with us. We knew she'd see no problem with an out-of-state shopping trip, in fact she'd jump at it, so she arrived Friday afternoon. I made sure she was settled with some wine and some munchies and dinner, and all the TV remotes before we left for our party. But within 30 seconds of coming in the front door, she insisted on showing me the letter she had just received from her ex-boyfriend.

I won't go into details. The rightful fate for a letter like this is a garbage can or bonfire. If we hadn't known who it was from, we would have sworn it was from a 19-year old going through his first big, bad, messy break-up at college. Or even someone younger. Not a 71-year old.

In previous lives, we've seen crap sort of like this. But not my poor mother, who is doing this whole thing backwards. We went through all the crappy, unhealthy, broken relationships first, and *then* met our spouses.

Still, after reading over 2 pages of entirely TMI and adolescent, self-contradicting hypocritical filth, I had to wash my eyes out with a bottle of wine. Me and mom popped a cork and sat for a while and talked about it. My advice was to do absolutely nothing. And to not show this letter to anyone else. It does not even begin to dignify a response, and it should receive no further air time. And to just get on with waiting until he gets over it, and this goes away.

Stuff like this makes me wish it wasn't 2005. We are as societies/human beings supposed to (but obviously don't) behave ourselves in this day and age. The climate of today makes it impossible to even make idle threats against someone without a lawyer popping out of the ground or getting a reprimand in the workplace. If this was another time, (and if I was a man) I could go take this guy and permanently dunk his head in the moat out behind the castle. Or arrange a little accident with a crossbow. Or gun him down at high noon. Or slap his face with my glove and challenge him to a duel for this effrontery.

Yes, I've had my issues with mom, and I've done plenty of bitching about her in my time. But nobody talks about yo momma like that. Nobody.

It's really sad, because he needs companionship in the worst way. He deserves a good life just like anyone else. And in the time we knew him, he really was a nice, generous guy. But he's definitely got some issues, and he is not any kind of ideal companion for mom.

We managed to drown our sorrows at Jungle Jim's in Cincinnati on Saturday. Take Ka-De-We and expand just the food floors to fit into a gigantic warehouse. That's what you're dealing with here. Wear comfortable shoes, because if you are even remotely a food geek, you will not get out of here in less than 2 hours (we ended up spending 3). I'm sure if you're a local, the thrill has worn off, and you can just go in there and buy your duck heads, chicken feet, live fish or lemongrass or horned melons or lamb testicles and get out without being blown away by the sheer cosmopolitan hugeness of it all.

'What the heck is this? I dunno, there's only Thai/Korean/Chinese on it. What fruit is this? Danged if I know, never seen it before. How do you use this? Cool! Look at that! Look at this! Oh, I thought I'd have to go overseas to find this/that/these... '

It's just way too much fun.

And after seeing once in April, you would have thought Tim and I wouldn't have needed to go into every department and down every aisle. But we did anyway. There's just something wonderful about seeing 7000 kinds of pasta or olive oil all in one place. It's a decadent cornucopia of edible wealth.

Between the three of us, we managed to *fill* a shopping cart with treasures. We got a small amount of Christmas shopping done, and I found some items I had been unable to find in our own stores. And some grocery shopping done, too. Among other things, I now have a 1 kg bag of Callebaut cocoa that I'm sure will bring much baking joy in the next few months. And Brooke, I found bulk brazil nuts. Now I really have no excuse to procrastinate making that Broccoli with Brazil Nut Pesto recipe...

We hit a few more (non-food) stores after that, but we were ravenous by this time and went onward to Montgomery Inn for a rib and barbecued meat smackdown. Their sauce is so good and tangy and spicy it's like getting your brain slapped. While it's really good in the grocery store bottles we can buy around here, it's even better when you enjoy it in the actual restaurant. We've still got take-out boxes of leftovers in the fridge to enjoy, the servings are so huge.

The coup-de-gras was when the waitress offered us Graeter's ice cream for dessert. This was something Tim and I had passed up on our trip through here in April because we were trying to save room for dinner down the road in Knoxville. Well, here was our chance to taste their famous French pot ice cream. Oh-so-good. But I haven't eaten until I was that full since I don't know when. Very unhealthy. But I swear, I'll put in the treadmill time this week to atone for my sins.

Tim and I drove in shifts to get home to allow post dinner snoozes and listening to more Christmas CD's, and made it by 930 pm. All in all, a great day.

The next day was Tim's work Christmas party, and we met with his department coworkers at Outback Steakhouse in Ann Arbor around 430 pm. We enjoyed a great steak dinner and then moved onward to Friday's, another local chain restaurant for drinks. His whole department had decided to forego the big formal party the night before and do their own thing. I think everybody was much happier doing this.

Every time I meet a new group of people like this, I am struck even more strongly at how unbelievably boring (in a good way) our lives are. We are in the middle of our first (and only!) marriage. We haven't purchased boats/expensive toys. We aren't struggling to deal with step-children and blended families. We haven't been tested by life-threatening diseases. I just sit there and listen to everyone else and marvel. And try not to feel inadequate.

Today: back to work. And back to light, sensible eating and laying off the beer and wine. For a few days anyway...