Erma on Dining Out

Today’s Erma-ism: “The age of your children is a key factor in how quickly you are served in a restaurant. We once had a waiter in Canada who said, ‘Could I get you your check?’ and we answered, ‘How about the menu first?’”

I think she’s got something there, but I’d take it a step further. The quality of any dining out experience is directly proportional to the rambunctious tendencies of your children. At least in our case.

Exhibit A: The Mexican Restaurant.

Monkey Boy uses a wheelchair due to his autism. It’s not that he can’t walk, it’s that he needs it for safety. Without it, he’s been known to run into the street, jump into bodies of water, or climb in inappropriate places. It’s been part of his ongoing therapy to try to get him to the point where he doesn’t need to use the wheelchair in public places anymore.

Well, on this particular occasion, the family took Monkey Boy to the Mexican restaurant without his wheelchair, just to see how he would handle it. It didn’t go well. He wriggled and squirmed right out of his chair, with one of us always in pursuit. At one point, Monkey Boy got away from us and darted right into the kitchen of the restaurant!

Exhibit B: The Exploding Chicken Incident.

We were on a medical trip for Monkey Boy and we had stopped at a modest sit-down restaurant. That was our first mistake. The four of us were seated around a small round table. As we waited for our meal, Monkey Boy impatiently thrashed around, bumping the table and sloshing water from our glasses. He doesn’t do waiting well.

The meal finally came and Monkey Boy got even more rowdy. He evidently had some sort of personal vendetta against the contents of his dinner, because things went flying. It looked like there had been an unfortunate meeting between a chicken platter and a homemade explosive device, for there, scattered all across the dining room, were chunks of meat from Monkey Boy’s plate. Waiters dodged and diners ducked. We should have brought them flak jackets.

Had the servers at either of these restaurants known what was descending on them as we walked in the door, we probably would have been handed a check before a menu, too.

We’ve become proficient apologizers and big tippers. We’ve also learned to eat take-out in the car.

Read more...

Timber!

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas...at least outside! After 14 years of marriage, The Man and I actually have put up exterior Christmas lights! Man, was I stoked. I love Christmas lights. The soft glow is beautiful, festive, calming. Well, usually it’s calming. I had to tone our lights down. The blinking pattern was so spastic I felt like I was looking into a strobe light. Add to this the fact that Monkey Boy can have seizures induced by flickering lights, and changing the pattern to a slow fade was a no-brainer.

I put the Christmas tree up that day, too. More lights! We turned off the ceiling light in the living room and watched TV by the glow of the tree. OK, not exactly a Norman Rockwell moment, but it worked for us.

The next day, I put the tree up again. And again. And again.

Monkey Boy had discovered how to topple a tree, no axe required. You’d have thought he was a lumberjack, he felled it so easily.

Thankfully, none of the ornaments were on the tree yet, so the damage was minimal. I just packed that sucker up and took it back to the garage. So much for trimming the tree photos for the scrapbook this year.

I’m thinking maybe I’ll make a tree out of green butcher paper and tape it to the ceiling. If I stick it in the center of the ceiling, it’ll take Monkey Boy a bit longer to figure out how to get it down. He does climb doorjambs, but as of yet he hasn’t sprouted suction cups from his feet, so I think the makeshift tree will be safe in the middle of the ceiling—at least for awhile. I’m hoping it’ll last until December 26th, anyway.

On second thought, maybe I’d be better off just draping some tinsel from the ceiling fan. Less work. Added bonus—on New Year’s Eve, I can just turn the fan on and voila! Instant confetti.

Read more...

Movers and Shakers

A couple days ago we had a 4.4 magnitude earthquake. Can’t say I felt it. I was in a building with the fortitude of a 1950’s bomb shelter, evidently. Didn’t feel a thing.

A 4.4 is a pretty minor temblor for these parts. We get a little shaken, but not stirred. Nope. Stirred would be the 6.5 magnitude rumbler we had back in January. That was one to remember.

The January quake caused quite a bit of property damage around town. Some still hasn’t been repaired. Our house was almost unscathed compared to the damages sustained by the local merchants. Our bathroom and garage cabinets emptied all over the floor and we lost a knick knack or two.

Of course, stuff all over the floor isn’t a new concept to us. One of Monkey Boy’s favorite pastimes is chucking things all over the floor. Like my buddy Ray would say, “The floor is the biggest shelf in the house.” Let me tell you, Monkey Boy puts lots of things on that shelf. Constantly.

Yup. Monkey Boy is our own personal mover and shaker. He’s constantly on the move and he’s always shaking something up. It’s not uncommon to see dinner scattered all over his bedroom carpet, toys mixed in with the recycling, or the occasional rubber duckie tossed into my pot of boiling supper. (Don’t worry. No duckies were hurt in the making of this post. Said duckie was promptly airlifted to safety.)

Over the years, we’ve seen a lot of our stuff crash and burn at the hands of our little mister. We don’t need no stinkin’ earthquake! We make our own disasters, thank-you-very-much. In fact, we’ve tried to stop taking mental inventory of all of the possessions that have been broken. It’s all just stuff, right?

We have what’s important. Our faith, our family, our lives. Some of the folks in Haiti’s earthquake weren’t so lucky.

God had his hand over us and our little town. We have been truly blessed.

Even our material stuff—the extra stuff that isn’t life or death stuff--made it through just fine. We’ve been through multiple moves and a major earthquake, and I can still say I have my grandmother’s china set intact.  Many times I have packed and unpacked that family heirloom, trying to be oh-so-delicate as I placed the dainty teacups in their positions.

Enter Monkey Boy. He darted around the room, stopping here and there to push my buttons. He climbed up the fridge. I pulled him back down. He climbed the fridge again. I pulled him down again. He climbed some more. I pulled him down ad nauseum!

Finally I tired of his little game. Whatever. Climb the fridge. Knock yourself out.

He does this all the time anyway. Why should this instance be any different? Why do I fight against the instinctive urges of the suburban Monkey Boy in his natural habitat? He must climb. It’s what Monkey Boys do.

Monkey Boy smirked with that impish gleam in his eye and scurried up to his fridge-top lair. He watched me as I observed him from the low ground, like some scene from a National Geographic special. I could barely blink before – CRASH!

In a split second, Monkey Boy scooched over to the adjacent china cabinet, stuck his hand down through the safety-locked doors, and knocked over one of my grandmother’s precious teacups.

My china makes it cross-country in a U-Haul (twice!) and survives a natural disaster, and it’s felled by a six-year-old?!

Inhale. It’s just stuff. It’s just stuff. It’s just stuff. Exhale.

The instinctive urges of suburban Monkey Boy mamas when their natural habitats have been disturbed are…well, disturbing. It’s a good thing God made Monkey Boys cute! Their survival depends on it.

Read more...

Meet the Family

Much of my humor inspiration comes from the cast of characters in my home. Since I'll likely be referring to them often, I thought you might like to know a little more about them.

The Man - He's my other half, both in life and in slapstick. On our honeymoon, The Man picked me up to carry me over the threshold, and my head hit the doorjamb. I kid you not.

DSguy - Our oldest progeny, so named for his affinity for all things video game. DSguy will happily accompany me anywhere so long as he can play Nintendo DS all the way there. A particularly precocious young scholar, he will often surprise us with little gems of wisdom. When The Man mistakenly took something DSguy said literally, DSguy responded with, "Dad, I was using hyperbole--an obvious exaggeration."

Monkey Boy - Lest you think we are insulting our youngest son, I offer photographic proof that Monkey Boy can climb anything. It doesn't matter if he has a boost or not. If it stands still long enough, he can shimmy up it. Behold:

Yes, that's Animal from the Muppets on his shirt. We picked that out especially for him.

There they are, then. My fellas. My family. My story fodder.

Read more...