NotHardUp1
What? Me? Really?
My neighbor across the street was headed out to walk on Friday morning when we stopped to chat for a moment as I headed out to run an errand in the car. She and her husband and I sometimes eat out or in together, so I made a pitch to go this weekend somewhere, anywhere.
Her face lit up to the idea and she named some place in a nearby town that was a restaurant built in the mouth of a cave, a burger place of some sort. So, I thought, what could possibly not be great about mixing bat guano and cuisine? We left it with her to find out from her husband when would work for them.
A day and a half passes and I get a text that they are doing projects and that she's planning on successive migraines as the weather rolls in, so they're not going to be able to make it this weekend. I text back an underwhelmed "ok."
Four hours later she called and is in the mood again to go, but scaled down now, and it's just a Chinese buffet south of here that I have avoided due to it looking on the front like a test lab for food poisoning set in an old Pizza Hut buidling. But, being the good neighbor I am, I agree. Let people have their fun, I think. Go along. After all, she rescheduled her migraines for this.
Four o'clock, we roll and head to a retail bargain store nearby for her to look for a rug. Her husband and she bicker about every 10 mins., as is their habit. It's a 2nd marriage for both, so I have to assume they chose this relationshiip. It reminds me why I moved this far from family.
Assorted cornbread pancake mixes in the cart and other sundries later, we check out and are ready to go to an early dinner. Neither wants to eat Chinese after all, which isn't a gift horse I looked into the mouth to challenge, so they settle on Cracker Barrel. In fairness, they did ask me if I had any place I preferred, but we were near the airport so I told them I'd pass on a $10 hotdog in Terminal 3.
We arrived and there were only six cars in the parking lot, but 4:30 on a Saturday afternoon isn't their boom time, if they still have one, so no surprise.
The Bickers muddle through the maze of hokum and pseudo-handicrafts arrayed between the front door and the hostess station, just. There was some "fiber optic glitter angel" adaptation of a snow-globe up a Victorian see-through skirt, which was shiny, so distracted the engineer, Mr. Bicker. But, he couldn't get the missus to come over to see it, so he's not getting that for Christmas. Pity.
We are seated at a table near the center. Fans and air conditioning are set so high that we consider finding another table, but don't. Bleak and chilly it is then. Right.
A waitress passes three, four, five times, without acknowledging we exist. At some point, she has no choice, so ten minutes later, she takes drink orders.
The food comes and is mundane with more table service neglect and empty drinks for ages, standard fare for this place apparently, and we finish and leave again through the Minotaur's lair, and now the couple spots another couple browsing the bazarre and suddenly, they zone in on a virtue signal the other male is wearing on a ball cap. I hear Mr. Bicker say, "I LIKE your hat!"
From my hidden location behind the glitter-breasted Karen tee shirts, I look up and see the image of an AK-47 above "Come and Take It!" My first reaction is to open fire with "From your 'cold dead fingers,' I hope?" (I don't usually quote Moses, but there's a time for everything.)
My lips are in motion, but then my brain stepped in and said something about not wanting to walk home 10 miles. He then contemplated asking "you'll still feel that way when your kid is shot in the middle school pep rally?" But, I was pissed at the brain for blocking the first timely zinger, so I stopped listening.
Mr. Bicker and Mr. Killer were busy making some veiled political messages back and forth about "them" which I didn't fully comprehend since I don't watch Fox and don't know Brandon.
We spent another 10 minutes milling about, not buying things, which is their habit, but it was an outing, right?
Home again, home again, jiggety-jig.
I so will not miss Alabama when I leave in a couple of months. As gay a man as I am, living in the ass of the nation is just not as hot as porn portrays it.
Today, I run to Nashville to have brunch with my cousin the pharmacist and his wife, and then to a hospital to visit another neighbor who just had cancer surgery there. She'll be lucky to live till I leave.
How about your weekend? Any good tales?
Oh, and a thousand dollars sez no one under the age of 50 at Cracker Barrel actually knows what it is named after.
Her face lit up to the idea and she named some place in a nearby town that was a restaurant built in the mouth of a cave, a burger place of some sort. So, I thought, what could possibly not be great about mixing bat guano and cuisine? We left it with her to find out from her husband when would work for them.
A day and a half passes and I get a text that they are doing projects and that she's planning on successive migraines as the weather rolls in, so they're not going to be able to make it this weekend. I text back an underwhelmed "ok."
Four hours later she called and is in the mood again to go, but scaled down now, and it's just a Chinese buffet south of here that I have avoided due to it looking on the front like a test lab for food poisoning set in an old Pizza Hut buidling. But, being the good neighbor I am, I agree. Let people have their fun, I think. Go along. After all, she rescheduled her migraines for this.
Four o'clock, we roll and head to a retail bargain store nearby for her to look for a rug. Her husband and she bicker about every 10 mins., as is their habit. It's a 2nd marriage for both, so I have to assume they chose this relationshiip. It reminds me why I moved this far from family.
Assorted cornbread pancake mixes in the cart and other sundries later, we check out and are ready to go to an early dinner. Neither wants to eat Chinese after all, which isn't a gift horse I looked into the mouth to challenge, so they settle on Cracker Barrel. In fairness, they did ask me if I had any place I preferred, but we were near the airport so I told them I'd pass on a $10 hotdog in Terminal 3.
We arrived and there were only six cars in the parking lot, but 4:30 on a Saturday afternoon isn't their boom time, if they still have one, so no surprise.
The Bickers muddle through the maze of hokum and pseudo-handicrafts arrayed between the front door and the hostess station, just. There was some "fiber optic glitter angel" adaptation of a snow-globe up a Victorian see-through skirt, which was shiny, so distracted the engineer, Mr. Bicker. But, he couldn't get the missus to come over to see it, so he's not getting that for Christmas. Pity.
We are seated at a table near the center. Fans and air conditioning are set so high that we consider finding another table, but don't. Bleak and chilly it is then. Right.
A waitress passes three, four, five times, without acknowledging we exist. At some point, she has no choice, so ten minutes later, she takes drink orders.
The food comes and is mundane with more table service neglect and empty drinks for ages, standard fare for this place apparently, and we finish and leave again through the Minotaur's lair, and now the couple spots another couple browsing the bazarre and suddenly, they zone in on a virtue signal the other male is wearing on a ball cap. I hear Mr. Bicker say, "I LIKE your hat!"
From my hidden location behind the glitter-breasted Karen tee shirts, I look up and see the image of an AK-47 above "Come and Take It!" My first reaction is to open fire with "From your 'cold dead fingers,' I hope?" (I don't usually quote Moses, but there's a time for everything.)
My lips are in motion, but then my brain stepped in and said something about not wanting to walk home 10 miles. He then contemplated asking "you'll still feel that way when your kid is shot in the middle school pep rally?" But, I was pissed at the brain for blocking the first timely zinger, so I stopped listening.
Mr. Bicker and Mr. Killer were busy making some veiled political messages back and forth about "them" which I didn't fully comprehend since I don't watch Fox and don't know Brandon.
We spent another 10 minutes milling about, not buying things, which is their habit, but it was an outing, right?
Home again, home again, jiggety-jig.
I so will not miss Alabama when I leave in a couple of months. As gay a man as I am, living in the ass of the nation is just not as hot as porn portrays it.
Today, I run to Nashville to have brunch with my cousin the pharmacist and his wife, and then to a hospital to visit another neighbor who just had cancer surgery there. She'll be lucky to live till I leave.
How about your weekend? Any good tales?
Oh, and a thousand dollars sez no one under the age of 50 at Cracker Barrel actually knows what it is named after.
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