I'm Taking the Table

My older one has other plans.  But the idea was that the Mrs. the little one and I would all rendezvous over at the local Italian place for dinner. Where else?  As I’ve written to you all before, there ain’t much to choose from around here.  The Mrs. heads out early to have a drink with her friends at a spot across the street.  So I go back to posting blogs. I have months’ worth of writing that needs to be uploaded, one day, and then the next, and the next.

The little one says she wants to bring a friend and they want to eat now.  Right now.  I tell her we’ll meet there at 6:30PM.  Let’s stick to the plan.  She calls back and says she wants to sit down earlier with her friend and start eating: “we’re starving.”  I tell her to check with her mother.  She replies that her mother told her to check with me.  Right. “Fine.  Go ahead.  I’ll see you over there.”

I finish what I said I’d do and bike over to the restaurant.  My daughter and her friend are leaving just as I arrive.  “Quick” I tell her.  “Go back in and tell them I’m taking the table.  This place is always filled on a Friday.   I take my table, in the corner, and ping my wife who pings me back:  “Would you mind if . . .”  “Fine.”  I’ll dine by myself.

And I’m at the end of a week that’s involved fasting every day.  I order lasagna and a pizza and some red wine.  I’ll go solo.  Two colleagues are writing complaining about how a client visit didn’t go well.  The key person expects something unrealistic.  Who’s gonna take care of that? Who?  Oddly, appropriately,  I’m reminded of the Vallejo rapper, Mac Dre.  Andre Louis Hicks (aka Mac Dre), shot down in his prime, had a tune he called “Not My Job.”   “I can bust you a rap, but anything else, not my job."

Friday, 8/31/18