When the stress level in the house reached 11 this morning, Doug and I needed either time alone or time apart. Since time alone never happens, I packed up Amy, picked up Granny and headed down to MagPies for the June tasting. We sipped our free milk and ate free mini-cupcakes that were described as:
Strawberry Basket - Vanilla butter cake swirled with strawberry-orange puree, topped with a light orange buttercream
Ginger Peach - Gingery cake studded with crystallized ginger topped with peach frosting
Devils Food - Moist chocolate cake filled with creamy vanilla goo topped with a smear of ganache

Everyone in Knoxville should have made the time to be there today. It was delicious. My favorite was the ‘Strawberry Basket’ which was like dipping a fresh strawberry in orange cream. The ‘Ginger Peach’ was good, but my least favorite of the three. Amy thought the ‘Devil’s Food’ was “really good brown cake with icing on top AND in the middle.” I would describe it as a Ding Dong for grown-ups. MagPies will have another tasting in July. The flavors are going to be: Lemon Blueberry, Black Forest and Banana Split. Who wants to meet me there?

We have found one place that is perfect for small children in downtown Knoxville. The lovely Summer at Vs suggested we take our crowd to the Knoxville Pearl to satisfy the “I’m hungry” gamers. I suspect the target audience is college students who think jammies are real clothes, but my children thought it was “awesome.” Sarah created odd blends of different cereals while Amy ate only the cereals that I never buy. I am chocolate’s number one fan, but I will not buy “chocolate” cereal. Evan just made himself at home. The 60’s modern furnishings, the groovy murals and the console television playing cartoons made even the geezers in our group feel like it was Saturday morning again. Just don’t go to the Pearl on Saturday mornings. They open around the time when college students start their day and stay open for anyone who wants to get a head start on breakfast after they leave the downtown pubs.

I like to tease Doug when he insists on calling a business to ask questions about inventory. My theory is that when retail employees say “hold on” they stand in place, chat with a co-worker, pick the phone back up and say “we’re out.” Retail employees don’t care if you waste a trip or if you don’t visit their store. Today, I tried to find out the hours for the Marble Slab on Market Square that has Twitter on a sugar buzz. The Marble Slab website doesn’t acknowledge the store exists. The Marble Slab at Turkey Creek politely told me the phone number for Market Square’s store. I knew I had the right number when I called, because they answered the phone with “Market Square.” Not Marble Slab or hello or anything useful. After making sure that I wasn’t talking to a pay phone in the middle of the street, I asked the store hours. “Um, uh, well . . . I know we open at 11 and we close at 11. Or 10. Or maybe 9. I don’t know when we close.” I asked to speak to someone who does know. Employee number two got on the phone. “Well, we really don’t have posted hours. We just close.” Dude. What are they putting in the ice cream over there? I thought the Wests were long gone. Maybe they need to invest in an answering machine so they don’t have to deal with confusing phone calls asking when they close.

I used to be addicted to the health department inspection reports. I couldn’t remember the name of the streets I took to work, but I knew which restaurants to avoid. I’ve had food poisoning. I was too sick to go to the hospital. It was horrible and left a lasting impression. One year, the restaurant at the zoo failed their inspection. This was just before the event which I coordinated every year. I made a mental note not to eat or drink anything at the zoo. That same year, there was disharmony between the zoo and the people who rented us the very large tent for our event. Both sides were appeased by my offer to stay at the zoo the entire day before the event and monitor the tent installation. Sit on a boulder and watch a tent raising? Easy. I didn’t think ahead enough to consider that I needed to stay hydrated on that unseasonably hot southern day. Doug called me on the phone several times during the day to check on me and try to convince me to get something to drink at the zoo. I insisted everything was fine. Doug knew before I did that I had a problem. By the time he arrived at the zoo to rescue the damsel of stupidity, I was throwing up and disoriented. I got to spend an hour on a cot in the zoo’s very clean medical station, drinking their water. Doug drove me home and then returned to spend almost the entire night at the zoo setting up for the next day’s event. Doug would never tell, but he is very good at rescuing me when I do something stupid.

I try to avoid the health department reports now. I’m pretty sure that there is something I don’t want to know about all restaurants. Since I get to eat out somewhere between seldom and rarely, I would prefer to just enjoy the luxury of not having to wash the dishes afterwards.

Although, I did watch someone pour beer over rice krispies once. At work. In the workshop with the power tools and blowtorches. Just before making computer cabinets from sheet metal. With his young child a few feet away.

After we voted, we went to Ben & Jerry’s to taste the four new flavors. I think we’ll go out for ice cream after every election day. They don’t have “Coconut 7-Layer Bar” in the store yet. I don’t like coconut, so I wasn’t disappointed. I’m sure coconut people will like it though. It’s coconut ice cream with coconut flakes, chocolate chips, walnuts and swirls of butterscotch and graham crackers. “Imagine Whirled Peace” got thumbs up from everyone in the family. I’m not a big cookie dough fan, but mixed with caramel ice cream, sweet cream ice cream and swirled with fudge peace signs, the toffee cookie dough didn’t cause me any paranoid raw egg fears. “Cheesecake Brownie” was surprisingly subtle and I liked it better than Tommy the cheesecake lover did. It is cheesecake ice cream with cheesecake brownie chunks. Maybe the brownie should have been chocolate instead of cheesecake. “Cake Batter” was everyone’s favorite. It was old fashioned yellow cake batter ice cream with chocolate frosting swirl delicious. Now, if I could only figure out why nobody is eating their dinner tonight.

I added a PayPal button to my sidebar way back when “everybody was doing it” even though I know there won’t be any celebrities wandering by here looking for something to do with all that money that they can’t possibly spend. A button that would make sense would be a “cup of coffee” button. If bloggers were as close together physically as we feel psychologically, we would certainly take a break and share a cup of coffee together in the real world. Starbucks has gift cards that you can personally design. Why don’t they allow people to add a credit to each others’ cards? The technology is already available. Other companies do it. Maybe if enough of us asked, they would.

My father took Doug, Evan and I out for lunch one day last week. It was a restaurant without a drive-thru and the name of the place refers to the salad that every customer is served. I don’t know why they include this in their name, since there are only 2 in the large salad bowl. Are you picturing the restaurant now? It doesn’t matter if you haven’t figured out the restaurant. The point is that although it is not fancy, you do expect a certain standard of cleanliness there. Well, I do anyway. The adults at our table kept the wild child safely contained in our corner of the room, but that didn’t stop him from attempting escape. He crawled under our table and seemed so content in his hiding place that we made no efforts to get him back into his assigned chair. When he finally reappeared and happily resumed his child’s menu decorating, the adults continued their conversation about politics and sons who would soon be able to cancel out their father’s votes. I’ve been busy canceling out the other brother’s votes, so this levels the family playing field considerably. Doug got a strange look on his face and asked what was in Evan’s mouth that suddenly made his toddler cheek resemble a chipmunk. Evan spat out a large green grape that slowly rolled across the table as we all sat, slack-jawed and horrified. The slow motion grape roll clicked the gears in our brains that were weak from not yet having been served any food. Our shocked faces simultaneously transformed to disgusted and we made sound effects to accompany them. “Ew.” “Yuck.” “Gross.” Evan found this funnier than the food treasure that was quickly removed from his sight. The waiter appeared with our salad and we all sat silently. Except Evan. Evan giggled and asked for “More!”

After one week in a hotel, our 2-year-old now screams “fry-fry” whenever he sees a giant yellow “M” or a drive-thru window. Coming home to an empty fridge today was depressing. Not having to cook is fun, but not when your choices are limited to fast food. We did get one tasty meal in a sit down restaurant on Saturday night, but the rest of the week just felt like a greasy, fried blur. I am not joking when I tell the children that as soon as they can drive, I will never, ever eat at the golden arches again. Of course I’m not talking bad about you, Chic-Fil-A. We’re BFF.

Evan has learned what happens when you stomp on your gogurt and he likes it. Note to self: Do not give Evan ketchup packets. Ever.