How does she get on?
One evening I was making dinner, and my household was in full throttle chaos mode. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed something flickering. My oven was on fire. I actually said out loud, “Don’t nobody got time for this,” and I threw a little glass full of water inside the oven real quick and went back to chopping veggies and refereeing children's conflicts. Stuck the pizzas in the oven where they belonged. Figured the fire was probably almost out and would add some depth to the flavor. Hoped five sevenths of my family would be pleased. I think that might have been the same day broken glass flew everywhere just as we were trying to leave the house.
The Wall Street Journal writer said, “I want to set my own pace: I don’t like to be rushed along by the staff, and I especially dislike it when a waiter takes hold of my bottle and dumps the contents into my glass without asking.”
Girlfriend I’m just happy if there’s a staff.
My husband and I ate at a restaurant in Atlanta recently, just the two of us, on a rare big people night. The waiter’s helper, a young newbie, accidentally slung my salad down all over the table in front of me and all over my lap, most of it hitting the napkin waiting there obediently. The poor fellow was mortified and the main waiter said quietly, partly joking, “You could get him fired, you know.” My husband and I laughed. It was funny. And I was sincerely grateful that I didn’t have to clean it up. We told them both several times please don’t worry. We left a nice tip. After all, they had just done the one thing that could make us feel the most at home.
I begin to feel sorry for The Wall Street Journal writer, who told how she had gotten out-snobbed at a party by another picky red wine drinker who snickered at her for putting ice cubes in her glass and then kept his distance from her the rest of the evening. She got the last word writing about him in the newspaper.
Is this seriously how some people are spending their free time?
This is not my own story on pet peeves. I do not write in order to criticize anyone else's pettiness. No, I write about this for one reason only: to applaud hard working mothers. I applaud mothers because we are walking around the same restaurants, the same parks, the same shopping centers, the same movie theaters as everyone else. But when something insignificant goes wrong, we are comparatively in a beautiful state of humility and gratitude. We are content and joyful. We are genuinely thankful just to get to eat.