La Cucaracha
We took the kids with us to La Fonda for a late lunch today. We haven't been there in a few years, and I remembered why as we walked in.
La Fonda is a strange place. It has absolutely no ambiance. None. It's like a Mexican cafeteria, except there's really nothing Mexican about it. So I guess it's basically like a cafeteria. They do serve Mexican food though (hot sauce sits in a squirt bottle at every table. Yum.). Anyways, we walked in, and the first thing I notice is that the floor of the first alcove of tables in the "sunny" room is completely strewn with chips and taco shells, lettuce and tomatoes, shredded napkins and other unidentifiables. Basically like my living room floor...minus the razor-sharp toys.
But I'm consoled by the fact that I can see directly into the whole kitchen by way of a long, low serving window (cafeteria thing), and all the prep surfaces, utensils and containers look pretty clean and orderly. I'm sure it's scurrying with mice and roaches at night, but it's not like it's something I haven't endured before.
Oops...Creed is playing on VH-1 right now. I get the feeling they're trying to say something in their videos.
Anyways, we get plunked down in the dark alcove. And it's cute because they have the lights turned down really low to give it this quiet, moody ambiance, but it just comes across like they forgot to turn on the lights. So they seated us like 18 inches away from this table of loud, opinionated New Yoahkahs who are going on and on about people that have been getting on their nerves lately, and staring most openly at us whenever Giselle starts asking about which chips have salt and which don't in her perpetual outdoor voice. And it's like DUDE! There's no WAY she could be even HALF as loud as you are when you 'lower' your voice to say sh** this or d**mit that every 30 seconds. Ooga Booga!
Meanwhile, Harrison has been fidgeting next to me, and I suddenly notice that he's sticking his head under the table, so I encourage him to sit back up, but then he shoots both of his hands under the table like he's catching fish, and I new instantly: fossilized gum! So I snatch his hands out and scold him: "Eww! Yucky!" and he looks up at me: "ewwww. eeyuckee." and then sticks his left hand under and I snag it, then his right hand goes under and I snag it and this goes on several times, and I'm telling him "No. Yucky." in my displeased Dad voice, but he's totally obsessed. I wished I had a chisel to crack that stuff off of there, because he was out of his mind to fiddle with it.
There's supposedly this child-rearing theorum about using "mildy aversive deterrants" to stop "undesirable" behavior, and I'm thinking how the heck does that apply in situations like this? I'm scolding him, I'm yanking his hands out, I'm not laughing, he's not laughing, it's not a game to either of us, and I can tell he doesn't give a crap about me anyway; he is TOTALLY fixated on the control-panel of gum blobs under the table, and I'm nothing but a speedbump on his road to Gum Rapture. Back in the day, Dad would've hauled me outside and beat my hide. Can't get away with that sort of child-abuse any more, buddy. (heh, Amanda is reading over my shoulder and asking me "isn't it bad enough that you lived through this once already?")
Eventually, they served our food and that particular adventure came to an end. But it didn't take too long for the boy to finish up, and then he was whining on and on that he wanted his "Patrick" toy (SpongeBob is good TV by the way), and then Giselle starts getting gripey, at one point I think Amanda had a napkin and was wiping something unpleasant off of Giselle's outstretched tongue. Things were a blur by now. Well it kept getting worse and worse, and so any hope I had of finishing my truckstop mexi-meal was dashed to squirming, miserable pieces. Did I mention the spilled 7-Up? Right, well, I guess that goes without saying.
As I jogged out to the front area--probably holding Harrison up by one leg--one of the waitresses says that if we'd like, we could get re-seated at one of the front tables (the landfill looking place). "No lady, we're bailing." I don't know why the heck they didn't just dump us in the nuke zone in the first place.
You know what the source of the whole problem was? They didn't have crayons and kids' placemats to give us.
Yeah. That's it.
Outtings with the kids:
Like a hopeless game of chess,
Deep Blue kicks my butt.
Jeremy
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