TGIAPAF ( Thank God It's Another Post About Friday )

OK, you know the drill by now. This post is a continuation of the last three posts.

So, Michael and I left the restaurant and took a little walk. I figured that he was probably getting hungry, so I started looking for a place where he I could get him something to eat. Clearly, all the Chinese restaurants were out of the question, but I figured he might like to have a yummy pastry from a Chinese bakery. Unfortunately, I didn't see a Chinese bakery anywhere nearby. I found this a little bit hard to believe, but after walking around for a few blocks I realized that my eyes were not deceiving me. So, I settled on a rather pretentious-looking tea/coffee shop. It was the kind of the place that seemed to be more about the atmosphere and the fancy decor than the food/drinks, but I didn't really have a lot of options, and I really wanted to get Michael a snack. I was hoping there would at least be some brightly-colored, super-sweet, rice-based Chinese desserts in the place, but all they had were rather drab looking danishes, apple turnovers, bear claws, and scones. They actually did seem rather yummy to me, but none of them really excited Michael. He wound up passing on all the pastries and asked for a bottle of flavored water ( which they charged 3 bucks for ). All the fancy seats in the place were taken, so Michael and I headed outside to walk some more. Just about then my cellphone started to vibrate ( BTW, I'm a really simple fella - my phone is always on vibrate. This may not be too exciting, but I like the fact that I never have to bother to remember to put my phone on vibrate when I go into a place like a movie theater. ). It was Ruth. Apparently, Peter had been asking "Where's Daddy?" ever since I had left ( It was kinda nice to know that he missed me, even though I had just carried him to the restaurant against his will. :) ). Ruth told me she was leaving the restaurant to bring Peter to me. I was only about a block away from the restaurant, so we met on the corner closest to the restaurant. Ruth told me that there was absolutely nothing on the restaurant's menu that Peter would be willing to eat. We both decided it would be best if I took the boys to a kid-friendly place to eat ( I really wanted Ruth to be able to eat with her family ), but there were not any kid-friendly restaurants as far as the eye could see. At this point, I immediately thought of Orion's iPhone. We called Debby and asked her to ask Orion to look for a fast-food place on his iPhone ( He had arrived at the restaurant by then ). He was nice enough to come downstairs to show us the route to the closest fast food place on his iPhone. The closest fast-food was a McDonald's in the business district. It was a bit of a hike, but I was sure the boys would be willing to make the trip if there were french fries at the end of the rainbow.

So, as we are walking there it occurs to me that the McDonald's will probably be rather empty. I guessed that a McDonald's in the business district would probably cater to the breakfast/lunch crowd and would probably be rather empty around dinner time. I turned out to be right about that. We pretty much had the place to ourselves, but that turned out not to be a good thing. There were almost no customers there, but there was also hardly any staff. There were just two people in front of me in line, but it took about 10 minutes for me to get to the register. There was just one guy working the register, and it looked like there was only one one person preparing the food in the back. Each time the guy at the resister took an order, he headed towards the back to help the other person prepare the food. I really had never seen anything like this at a fast food place before. About this time, Michael told me he needed to go to the bathroom. I certainly didn't want him to go to the bathroom alone in a strange place, but I also didn't want to loose my place in the super-slow line. So, I asked Michael to try to hold it until we got our food.
Eventually, we got our food and headed to our seats ( BTW, I got a salad. I had eaten 2 huge burgers at In-N-Out Burger on Thursday night, and I really didn't think I could handle another greasy meal so soon. The trip to In-N-Out was a pre-planned part of the trip, because In-N-Out burger is considered to be a California institution. If you are a fan of vanawesome, Natalie, or Hugh, you might remember that vanawesome took both Natalie and Hugh to an In-N-Out Burger place when they visited Cali ) - or rather Michael and Peter got to their seats, because despite the fact that the place was pretty much empty, there really wasn't anywhere for me to sit. You see, being a business-district McDonalds, this place had the least kid-friendly seating of any McDonalds I had ever seen. Almost all the "tables" were counters sticking out of the wall, and almost all the "chairs" were these really tall bar-stool type things that were bolted to the floor. There was no way I was going to let the kids sits on the 4-foot high stools with no backs ( especially considering how often they shove each other ). Thankfully, there was regular table with regular chairs ( The table had a "handicapped" symbol on it ), but the table only had two chairs. So, I got the boys set up and started to eat my salad standing up, occasionally crouching down to help Peter with his drink ( He can still be messy with his drinks if you don't help him. ). After about 10 minutes of eating Michael remembered that he needed to go to the bathroom. By this time he needed to go real bad, and he had to poop. As soon as Michael told me he needed to go "ka ka" ( the family word for "poop" ), Peter chimed in that he also needed to go "ka ka". So, I walked with the boys to the bathroom and discovered .....

... that both bathrooms were temporarily closed for cleaning. There was hand-made sign on each door informing us of this, and apparently, there was a third McDonald's employee busy cleaning the Ladies room. There wasn't anybody in the Men's room, but the Men's room door was locked. So, I'm standing outside the Ladies room hoping the cleaning person finishes the job soon, so she can open the Men's room door for me before one ( or BOTH! ) boys have an accident. It takes the lady a LONG time to finish, but she eventually gets out and opens the Men's room door for me. They boys rush in, takes turns taking their poops ( surprisingly, there was no fighting about this ), and both get the job done with having any accident.

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So, we got through that challenge and finished our meal. That was pretty much all the excitement for the day. Ruth eventually met us at the McDonalds, and we walked to our car and headed back to Uncle Joey's house to pack for our trip home on Saturday

You'll learn more ( and see more ) about my trips in future posts, but it's already 11:36, and that means I've got to go to bed again.

Rich