Crying over spilt milk

I took Jonah to the orthodontist this week and had this panoramic x-ray taken. The glasses cracked us up. You can see all the teeth vying for space, so he will follow his mother's path of having teeth pulled and then wearing braces. There are worse things.

There are a few things I keep meaning to write about but keep forgetting. We got home from our trip Friday nite and when we entered our bedroom, both Dave and I were hit by a wall of stench. Let me brag for a moment and say I inherited my mother's acute olfactory system. So if meat is within 12 hours of going bad, I can smell it. If a mouse dies in the wall, I smell it (even when nobody else does for days). When Dave was camping/consulting and came home complaining that his tent had turned moldy, I took one whiff and knew that a feral cat had sprayed it. So I was going crazy in our room, knowing that that something organic was rotting but not knowing what or more importantly, WHERE.

For 3 days, Dave and I hunted all over for a rogue diaper, a rotten hunk of food, a mildewing item. You may be wondering how something so vile can go undiscovered in a bedroom. In our defense, I have to say that the since Dave's sister and kids have been staying with us, Georgia & Millie are sharing our room and there are baskets with their clothes, sleeping bags and blankets, Barbies and ponies and giant box-forts all over, making it really hard to search. But then I moved the swingball set (our room is the same size as the two car garage it's over) and there was a crunchy patch under it. As I leaned down towards it, I swear the vapors singed my eyebrows. Clearly a huge glass of milk was spilled and left to fester and rot. Almost a week later I am still working on this patch but it's getting better.

The highlight of the week was Tuesday nite when Stephanie, Carolyn & I painted my kitchen a lovely lovely green (Dried Parsley to be exact). We started right after America Idol and finished by 1:30. It looks so good. Now I need to do the cabinets. I'm sure they also get done late at night when the kids are asleep. Bea is obviously the hardest one to paint around, but Georgia & Millie are a close second with their, "Please can't I help paint!" and "You're right mom, it's not dry yet..."

Another item I wanted to mention was a follow up to us getting kicked out of a restaurant last month. When 3 of Dave's sisters, Suzie, Stephanie & Sarah, came out for Georgia's baptism, we went out in a big group to celebrate Suzie's birthday. Lindy made reservations for 11 at this nice place in the North End for Saturday nite. Then they call Lindy to confirm, which she does. And then they call again to confirm, and Lindy was a little annoyed, having to play phone tag about a reservation that was never in question. So was testy on the phone. Whatever. We show up that night, 10 minutes late because the place no longer provides valet and we had to hunt for parking. The chef storms up to Lindy, pointing violently at his watch, and lights into her for being late, for giving the hostess "attitude" on the phone, blah blah blah. Basically, he makes such a fuss that we have to leave. Jeff was awesome though. As we are walking past the open kitchen within earshot of the chef and sous chefs, he makes some comment about getting on to "Chow Hounds" which is a website for reviewing restaurants. Every one of their heads popped up and they had such anxious faces... Ever resourceful, Lindy found another place around the corner that could seat us immediately and was really good (though Lindy hated their olive oil--as she was telling this to the waiter I was so panicky, afraid we'd have to leave a second restaurant in one night). In high school I was kicked out of Denny's, and 5 years ago Jen T. & I were kicked out of McDonalds. I guess I'm moving up in the world.

Fast forward to this week. Lindy finds the name of the owner of Monica's, George something, and calls to chat with him about "the incident." She launches in, telling him about the multiple resersvation confirmation stuff, being late due to change in valet service, the "maniac chef," etc. etc. It takes about 10 minutes, and George listens patiently before saying, "You know, I'm not just the owner. I am the 'maniac chef' too." He apologized and told her to come back in and ask for him to get special service. I'd be scared he'd hawk a loogie in my linguini, but that's just me.