The plan was for me to meet my grandmother and mother at my grandmother’s house and we all would leave from there. My mother very specifically told me that she would be leaving Grandma’s house at eight in the morning, giving us two hours to get to where we needed to go for Grandma’s appointment. Translated that means, I needed to get to Grandma’s house before eight in the morning so we could leave on time.
The night before we were to have this adventure my mother called. I assumed she was calling to remind me about our departure time.
Sometimes I live in my very own time zone, making it difficult to get to where I need to be at the time I am supposed to be there. My family realizes this fact, so they always make sure I am extremely aware about what time we will be leaving.
Not only was she calling to remind me when we would be leaving, she also was calling to let me know that after my grandmother’s appointment and before ours we would eating lunch at Gabriel’s . It is a restaurant owned and operated by Paula Dean’s Cousin.
Mom seemed very excited about the prospect that we would all be eating there. She said the lunch food was very good, however, the desserts rocked. I also got very excited, seeing as how I love good food.
The morning of all of our appointments went smoothly for me. I got up and did my usual morning stuff…coffee, computer breakfast, computer, shower, computer…you get the picture. My daughter is a little difficult to get up in the mornings, so I told her she could have coke for breakfast if she would just get up without arguing. She actually posted on facebook that she was having coke for breakfast.
All this computer time, led to us leaving the house a little late. I was not concerned, I figured I could make up our late departure on the dirt road that I take to get to my grandmother’s house. Unfortunately, not only do I live in my own time zone, I am also not the most organized person. I knew it was cold outside, but it did not even occur to me to warm the truck up before we left.
When we walked out the door to get into the truck, I began to wish I had taken the time to warm it up. There was a layer off ice all over the wind shield. I started the truck and was actually going to drive it to Grandma’s house, icy wind shield and all, but I quickly realized that I could not see anything. Anna was very nice and let me use her Subway Restaurant gift card to scrape a small section of ice away so I could drive.
Dealing with the icy truck cost me some more time, so we we were definitely running late by that point. I had already decided that I would blame our lateness on the icy truck and just leave out the part where we kept getting on our computers.
At one minute past eight, my mother calls us on my cell phone. Anna answered it and the gist of it was that it was after eight and where were we. We happened to be at the end of the long drive way that goes to my grandmother’s house, so we were not going to be super late. When we pulled into Grandma’s yard, I saw that not only had my mother been more organized than me, by heating up her car before it was time to go, but she also had it turned around, pointing toward the end of the driveway. I got my late excuse ready.
I never had a chance to use my carefully thought out, “The ice made me late” excuse. My mother held up her fancy phone and said she knew we had been on the computer, because she had seen that we had been posting stuff on facebook. The only thing I could say after that was “Anna, we got busted”. I had to laugh and say to myself, “You have to be careful of what you put on facebook”
It was a rather long ride to Grandma’s appointment, but everyone was in a good mood and chatting so the time seemed to go by quickly. It was not until we had been on the road for a while that we ran into our first bit of traffic.
Despite my tardiness earlier in the morning, we were running ahead of schedule. Which was good when we encountered the traffic, because no one got stressed out about being late for anything.
I have this strange habit of collecting bits of miscellaneous information in my head. Once my brother told me I would make a good librarian because of it. That very morning, way early in the morning, I happened to watch a show on Animal Planet that was about mysteries in nature. One segment in particular caught my attention. I decided that this car ride would be a great time to share the information I learned. I do not think the other people in the car agreed with me.
The first segment of this television show was about some birds on an island in Scotland. I cannot remember the name of the birds, but they make their nests in holes in the ground. Near the time the babies are able to fly, they start coming out of the nests and wandering around some. On many mornings, people would find lots of those baby birds, dead with no apparent injuries, except that they would be missing their heads. Researchers discovered that the deer on this island were eating the heads off of the young birds. Carnivorous deer! See, that is interesting.
You can read about these meat eating deer here
Because we were doing so good on our time management that morning, obviously someone else was in charge of the schedule, we arrived at the office for Grandma’s appointment pretty early. We decided to go ahead and park, and go inside, hoping that maybe Grandma would be seen early for her test.
A cool thing about going anywhere with my mother and grandmother is that they have those handicap signs that are hung on the rear view mirror. So there are no long walks from the very back of the parking lot.
We went to the waiting room that Grandma needed to be in. She filled out her paper work and we made ourselves comfortable in case it turned out to be a long wait.
I am not really a baseball fan, but even I was impressed with some of the baseball memorabilia that the founder of the practice had placed in the waiting room.
We decided to spend those ten minutes looking at all our dessert options. You can never put too much time in deciding what dessert you want, it is an important decision.
When we were able to order our lunches, I got a blackened shrimp po’boy, my mother got a roasted garden vegetable sandwich, my grandmother got a plate full of their lunch vegetables and Anna got a ham and cheese sandwich (boring!)
I got a very big thrill when I went to get mine and my grandmother’s tea. There was this boss looking lady who was near the ice machine, talking to one of the staff members. She sounded just like Paula Dean! I am convinced that she was Paula Dean’s cousin. I wanted to just reach out and touch her so I could say I had touched greatness, but then I thought I might freak her out in a weird kind of stalker way.
Our lunch food was very, very good. I shared some of my blacked shrimp po’boy with mom and she shared some of her roasted garden vegetable sandwich with me.
After we ate all that wonderful food, it was time for dessert. Yes, I did have dessert.&nb
sp; I had to adjust my insulin amounts to account for it, but those desserts looked too good to pass up. Anna had a strawberry chantilly, my mother had a slice of fudge pie, and I had a small canolli. That was good stuff!
Anna must have really enjoyed her dessert, because while she was eating it she was absolutely silent and this is all she left on her plate.
Grandma-Chris Ingram Mom-Regena Shell Me-Melissa Mashburn Daughter – Anna
