"Welcome to Uncle Moe's. Aw, look at the cute little minors."

Abbie is now getting very insistent about walking. No longer content to just be carried everywhere, she can kick up quite a fuss when she wants to use her newfound abilities to toddle across open spaces. We can only hope that she’ll be this excited over potty training.

We went out to eat for lunch yesterday, and the service was embarrassingly slow. In the interest of fairness to the restaurant since I’m sure a majority of patrons, possibly as high as 60%, enjoy better service than we did, I’ll refer to the restaurant by an anagram of its actual name, the Iowa Endemic Hash. We waited about ten minutes for Hostess #1 to tell us where to go for a table, and that’s a perfectly reasonable wait since we were on the tail end of the post-church crowd. Abbie spent this time happily toddling up and down the cobblestone walkway outside the Iowa Endemic Hash entertaining some patrons while being in the way of other patrons.

After Hostess #1 directed us to another area, we stood in line for about five minutes while Hostess #2 found tables for us and the groups ahead of us. This should’ve been my first clue that maybe the various factions of the Iowa Endemic Hash were communicating with each other about as well as Russell Crowe communicates his displeasure with the hotel staff. Abbie spent this time marching back and forth and acting none too pleased that she was confined to the three-foot area I had carved out between groups.

Keep in mind that no one, including Abbie who doesn’t like waiting for anything, had eaten lunch yet. When Hostess #2 sat us at our table, I assumed the hard part of entertaining a hungry toddler was finished since I could give her some milk, and by the time she finished that we’d have some actual food to give her, or at least bread. Unfortunately Hostess #2 sat us in the Forgotten Section, which got its name from the fact that no one else sat near us until we were almost ready to leave, so I’m pretty sure the wait staff forgot we even existed. That’s rough, but at least we weren’t in the Insect Section, or even the Searing Gas Pain Section. Abbie finished her milk in about two minutes flat, and we spent the next 15 minutes reading and rationing Tasteeos until Ellie tracked down someone to say no one had even stopped by to say hello yet. A couple minutes later an exasperated manager-looking person stopped by to take our drink order, and seemed genuinely surprised that, gosh, everyone knew what entrée they wanted to order.

The food arrived quickly enough, and they even comped our appetizer. After finishing the meal, though, we waited another 15 minutes before tracking down a bus boy to say we needed our check. By this time, Abbie had thoroughly gorged herself, so we passed the time by strutting about the mostly empty dining area. Abbie had a whee of time walking to one end, then letting me turn her around so she could walk to the other end. We repeated this several times while hopefully minimally annoying the few surrounding diners, until we paid the check and probably left too much of a tip. I lifted Abbie to carry her to the car, and she complained vociferously. So I let her walk until she came to a curb, the bane of Abbie’s adventures. Abbie doesn’t climb, so she let me carry her the rest of the way. As we drove away, I wondered, “Isn’t the Iowa Endemic Hash the place that spilled red wine on me once?” Oh, yeah.