Date Night...

Sophia's sleep test is tonight so Corrin and Sophia are spending the night in the hospital. So for some 1-on-1 time I took Isabella to Olive Garden for a date night.

We had a great time. We got there and there was a 35 minute wait (on a Wednesday). The weather was nice so we waited outside. In the waiting area there was a large puddle filled with stones. It kind of looked like a puddle but not quite. I couldn't think of what purpose it served until I heard a 'plunk'... Isabella had tossed a rock into it. Then, 'plunk plunk'... A little boy was tossing rocks into the water too. They quickly made friends.

 

We were seated and got our breadsticks and salad. Isabella's first comment was "the green of the salad matches the color of money..." Again, we've either done something very, very right or very, very wrong. Either way, she loved the breadsticks...

We had no sooner been seated and placed our order than My little sweetie informed me that she really had to go potty... She flat out refused my offer to take up my offer to take her to the men's room. She also refused the waiter's offer to find someone to take her to the ladies room. That meant we had to leave... Quickly...

We got our food to go and jumped into the car. In all fairness we had been there for approximately 1.5 hours before we got into the car. It's a mark against Olive Garden that we were there that long before getting our food, not against little puddin'... Again, it was a Wednesday night.

Once home the disaster was averted and we got ready to eat. Isabella had filled up on breadsticks and my Caesar salad was missing any dressing and had only three slices of chicken. I had been looking forward to my food so wasn't all that happy. Isabella could have cared less. Again, she loved the breadsticks...

On another note, I've been reading Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain's) autobiography and one of the passages struck especially close to home... Clemens' daughter passed away while he and his wife and other children were overseas. She was in her mid-20's, but still had her whole life ahead of her. Anyway, Clemens' thoughts on it are below...

 

"It is one of the mysteries of our nature that a man all unprepared can receive a thunderstroke like that and live. There is but one reasonable explanation of it. The intellect is stunned by the shock but gropingly gathers the meaning of the words. The power to realize the full import is mercifly wanting. The mind has a dumb sense of vast loss. That is all, it will take mind and memory months and possibly years to gather together the details and thus learn the whole extent of the loss. A man's house burns down. The smoking wreckage represents only a ruined home that was dear through years of use and pleasant associations. By-and-by as the days and weeks go on, first he misses this, then that, then the other thing and when he casts about for it he finds that it was in that house. Always it was essential. There was but one of a kind that cannot be replaced. It was in that house. It is irrevocably lost. He did not realize that it was essential when he had it. He only discovers now when he finds himselve bogged, hampered by its absense. It will be years before the tale of lost essentials is complete and not till then can he know the magnitude of his disaster." (Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain, autobiography)