This n' that

Chad is coming on Sunday, staying overnight on a layover from a job in Mississippi. We’re both happy that he’s coming for a visit and Miss Cathy is very excited to see him again. She met him for the first time back in May when he drove from Kansas City with me so that I could be with her through the knee replacement surgery and month’s stay in rehab. He was here for just a few days but he “had her at hello” when I brought her home from rehab and she saw that he had decorated the balcony with palms, ferns and pots and pots of brightly colored flowering plants. She’s talked about him nonstop ever since.

I think I’ll suggest she make her tilapia and greens for dinner on Sunday. I don’t think he’s ever had one of her meals. Planning and cooking the dinner will give her a “project” for the next couple of days.

Chad had suggested taking us both out for a meal. I’m all for it but I know how she feel about restaurants so I didn’t say much in response. It’s a strange position to be put in, here someone is suggesting something nice that they’d like to do for your mother but I know that she doesn’t like going to “sit down” restaurants, so what do I say? Believe me she’s only been to a few and none of them have been Lutece or “Le Fancy-smancy” but she has this thing about tipping-she doesn’t like to do it (not that she’s ever had too).

Years ago, after I moved away from home as a teenager and discovered that the world of fine dining did not consist of sitting in a pre-fabbed plastic booth, eating burgers and fries off of trays with plastic utensils I thought I’d bring some of my sophisticated new world back to Miss Cathy but that didn't go over so well. I don’t know if she thought I was “putting on airs” (well, I did go through a pretentious self centered phase) or if she was just uncomfortable in the circles and settings I tried to expose her too but she was very vocal about what she did and did not like and one of them was eating in restaurants.

“Why do I have to leave money for them?” she’d say, talking about the waiters. “Because that’s the way it works,” I always respond, “they live off the tips that they earn, that’s how they make a living.”

“Well, I just don’t like it.” “Besides”, she continue, “ I don’t like to go out to those places because sometimes you don’t know if they’ll have food that you want to eat.” “And, I don’t know that they keep themselves clean enough or if they clean the food good enough.” (Please, someone get me a rock so I can beat myself to death and get it over with right now!)

The irony about the tipping issue is that I’ve never seen her so much as reach for a check. She’s not the one putting down the 18% so what's she got her panties in a wad about? I don’t know, I just don’t get it-same thing with her hate of the self check out in grocery stores. She swears she’ll never use them because they “take jobs away from real people (as apposed to fake people?)” and “they should be paying her if she has to ring up her own purchases in a store”.

Like I said-I just don’t get it, its Miss Cathy logic-works for her, perplexes the shit out of me.

When I told her about Chad’s offer she said what she always says-as if I’d never heard it before and I needed to be enlightened by her logic. I tried to remind her that this was someone trying to do something nice for her so “stop being all poopy about it and just go if he suggests it.”

Maybe I’m being selfish, maybe for once I don’t want to run out to buy her a meal from some fast food joint or eat dinner off a tray in the apartment, maybe I’m the one that wants to go sit in a restaurant and have somebody bring things to them.

We’ll see, when I reluctantly told Chad about her "restaurant views” (just to prepare him) he started to back off the idea so who knows what will happen.