Eating out.

Say those words to me and I will likely just *blink” and give you a look of, “Whaaaaaa?” We didn’t eat out much once Braden was born. A few times, we took him with us, snuggled into his carseat/carrier. But most of the time, we stayed at home, and this was due to the fact that we couldn’t afford restaurant food. If we could, we’d have done it constantly, because, Hello? Cooking on zero hours of sleep? Uh, how about no? And besides, we’re practically Professional Quality Gluttons. Facehole Cramming is our Xtreme Sport of choice, you could say.

As Braden got older, money wasn’t the only thing stopping us from taking him out. Even once he got past his colic (a period I like to call “OH HOLY EFF”), I was nervous about how he would act. See, I was once that young and stupid (childless) asshole who got really pissed off when there was a screaming baby in the restaurant. So now, I intuit that perspective – I imagine all the people in the room who are going to be pissed off at me and my kid. And I translate that into how many people I’m going to have to admit, in front of judge and jury, to killing with my bare hands in a homicidal rage. You know, if they say anything. Or even make a face I interpret as displeasure aimed in our general direction. Killing so many and going to prison would be quite unfortunate.  I would not make a good prison bitch.  I’m too mouthy.

When Braden was about 6.5 months old, at the beginning of April 2007, we were living in an apartment, (*coughDUMPcough*) and our craptastic upstairs neighbors (including the Spawn of Mr. Ed, who I’ve mentioned here) moved out, and left the washer hookup faucet turned on, flooding their apartment and ours. The fix was to pull up our carpet, exposing all the dust, dirt, and fleek (a word I just made up for ‘unidentified disgusting crud’) lying beneath it, and direct a mega-powered-fan under the wet parts to dry them out. The result was that the air in our entire apartment got peppered with all the dirt that had ever settled into the carpet. Yummmmmm. So we got out of there and went out to dinner.

Braden was quite lovely, actually. The most eventful thing he did was try to eat the table.

And then barf on it.

Not long after that he continued to morph into a more mobile version of Hell Child, and once again, we avoided eating out.  All he wanted to do was get.all.ovah.evah-thang.  We held out. Until October.

That is when “The Long Horn Incident” occurred. We try not to remember The Incident. It is not spoken of around here. When it is clear that we are both thinking about it, we just exchange a look and shudder. And we hope that anyone at that Long Horn restaurant will try to forgive us, and that their nightmares are not recurring. THAT dinner became take-out as quickly as possible.

So, you might have thought us rather crazy when we decided to give it a go again on Tuesday night. But with John home for only 3 days, and me just really wanting to have a little fun… we decided to take a chance. And out we went for dinner.

Ruby Tuesdays was the target, er, eatery we chose. Close to our home in case we needed to get the hell out of dodge and home with hot food in a hurry.  We entered with our Smiley Faces on and pretended like we thought it was going to be GREAT!

We got seated. Braden lunged for the salt and pepper, but I quickly distracted him with a toy truck. (Damn, I’m goooood.)  That worked for about 2 seconds. So did the book, and the crayons, and the toy camera.  So, if you do quick math, you will realize that he was good for all of 8 seconds into the event.

Then the screaming started.  The Open Mouthed Red Faced Screaming Of Death To All.

And the thrashing.  And gnashing of teeth.

Oh, and Braden was also causing a scene.

After a brief jaunt outside with him, John and Braden returned.  There was one more screaming episode, which I somehow dampened with words like, “Oh my goodness, you’re loud, look at these beautiful crayons!” (And dude, I acted like they were THE most BEAUTIFUL crayons you have EVAH SEEN.  He must have fallen for it.)

Then he was good.  For the whole rest of the meal!  Astonished were we!  We couldn’t even say it out loud, though we almost did several times.  Then we’d stop cold, laugh, and knock on the table.

People, it was magnificent.  I ate a whole meal at a restaurant, it was delicious, and my son wasn’t such a turdface that we had to leave.

Shit, I might not need therapy after all!

Oh yeah, I posted a video of myself pulling my pants down on The Internet yesterday.

Nevermind.