Yesterday, my husband and I were kidnapped and taken to a Sunday Brunch at the Hilton. I am unable to disclose which Hilton property in the United States we were taken to, in order to protect the identities of those innocent bystanders who work there. In a future post, I promise to thoroughly review the actual hotel restaurant, which deserves to be seperated from the event as much as possible.
If you can guess which particular location it was, then wow me and I might just give you a special gold star of that you can brag about on your report card. Maybe you will shock me so much, that I will give you other special prizes. Who knows. Since this is a kidnapping story, detectives, private investigators and crime psychics are not excluded from participation.
Just as we were about to walk out the door, where our friends were waiting in the driveway to pick us up for church, Aunt-in-Law called, asking us about Sunday Brunch. Even though technically the brunch could occur at a moment that was after the service was finished, Aunt-in-Law has no concept of Space and Time. If church usually got out about 11:30, 11:45, and we weren’t going to rush out the door (we would inevitable stay and chitchat with different people and wouldn’t dream of rushing the friends that drove us), a time machine would have still been needed to make a noon brunch. It took fifteen minutes to get home from church, plus it was another 45 minutes from home to the brunch location.
I almost left out the fact that at 9:30, Aunt-in-Law had not made any motions to walk out the door or probably still had rollers in her hair. She was also more than 100 miles away from us.
Instead of saying “NO,” my husband said:
“We are going to church. Sorry, we aren’t going to be out until at least 11:30. You can call us later if you want, but we won’t be able to make something that if it is at twelve.”
Most common sensical people would have taken that as us giving our regrets, but just being polite as heck about a scheduling conflict that we much rather attend.
No, no dear readers, Aunt-in-Law interprets such things as a glimmer of hope. She is a “figure of speech fundamentalist.” ”Call me later” does not mean: “You are welcome to phone us later and tell us how it went.” Rather, it is an appointment or an insistence to be called later. The secondary meaning is: Call when you are on your way to pick us up because we technically would be finished with what we are doing by then.
My husband did not think anything of it, and we made our way home from church at our very leisure. We stopped one place and our friends dropped us off.
We got in the door of the house, and I no sooner took one of my shoes off and was about to kick off the other when the phone rang. I could sense the disturbance in the force, so I went to where my husband was on the phone.
It was Sister-in-Law screaming:”They are at the corner and will be there any minute so go outside now and you better be ready and we’re driving ahead of them so we can get a table and they won’t wait for you because we are on a time schedule and if we don’t make it there by one o’clock they will give our table away and brunch is only until two and we’re all going.”
“Who is ‘all of us’,” my husband innocently asked. (I would have said, “Who are THEY?”)
“You, me, mummy, Aunt-in-Law….WHO DO YOU THINK?” SIL barked off the laundry list. She never thinks the request for a body count indicates that my husband is calculating how many/which vehicles need procurment, but rather takes it as a sign that he doesn’t want to go if someone specific is going. There would be six of us in all.
“Okay, okay, stop yelling at me!”
I will confess that I was tempted to bail and let my husband go by himself, but since he was still recovering form being in the hospital I didn’t want him to be vulnerable. Nice that Sister-in-Law wasn’t even involved in the “plans” at first. They added her on, and, as usual “took over.”
So two seconds later, a horn honks and the OTHER Sister-in-Law is there, and I barely have time to even go to the bathroom, and certainly had no time to change. The dogs are all discombobulated that we acted like we were “home” and then walked right back out. By this time it was 12:52 and they had changed their reservations to 1:00 P.M. We knew by the time we got there the last of the cream cheese would’ve been scraped off the cut glass serving plate and it would’ve been called a day.
Aunt-in-Law decided that it would be “fun” to at least “go and see the restaurant” even if we were there and only had five minutes to eat. We could just “look” and go somewhere else if they wouldn’t let us eat. She said this as if we had been invited to see the President’s Private Residence, or were allowed to look through any scrolls never seen by the public that was saved from the library of Alexandria before the Romans and others destroyed it before the Dark Ages. One would still have gone and seen one of those even if one only had 5-15 minutes. In fact, you would have something to talk about for the rest of your life.
We had a pleasant enough ride. Part of it, of course, was an argument about the stupidity of driving 45 minutes to go to something we wouldn’t be able to make, nor did we have to, and then the rest of the conversation was quite pleasant.
My husband had an ephiphany:
“Why don’t we eat somewhere else?”
Yeah! Let’s do that. Even Cracker Barrel with the high ceiling that magnifies the voices of screaming children, and the prospect of good desserts but “eh” food sounds like a utopia by this time.
Aunt-in-Law quickly vetoed that, “Sister-In-Law and Mummy will be waiting for us.”
(By the way, she really referred to Sister-In-Law by her given name, but she referred to her sister as “Mummy,” much like my Grandfather would call my Gramdmother “Grandma,” in front of me and my cousins when many of us were in the 2-5 year old range. Aunt-in-Law’s two nieces and one nephew in their mid 40s or early 50s – plus me, her niece-in-law in her early 30s were all definitely past the 1-3 year old identity issue age where they don’t understand mom has a first name).
No sooner was it mentioned that we should just go to Olive Garden, no matter if there was little on the menu someone with salt restrictions could have, the phone rang. Of course it was Sister-in-Law who always seems to know when someone is trying to thwart her. Sister-in-Law #2 handed Aunt-in-Law the phone seeing who it was because she didn’t want to talk to her.
“We’re IN. We’re SITTING DOWN. WHERE ARE YOU?”
“We’re Five minutes away.”
We were more like ten I thought, but I didn’t say anything.
In the meantime, my husband’s customer called and invited us all to a pool party, and because he is not a rude man, invited all who we were with to come too. Under my breath I said to my husband,”We’ll see,” because I could just imagine what would unfold and wanted to assess whether everyone could handle that (if he could handle them and vice versa). Aunt-in-Law sounded delighted.
We made our way into the restaurant, and the hostess told us that we only had twenty minutes.
If this was Panera, or another similar place, I would have said that twenty minutes was plenty of time to get our food and eat. Not at a leisurely Sunday brunch.
Since we didn’t see Aunt-in-Law very often, my husband replied, “We can do a lot of damage in twenty minutes, that’s fine,” to avoid any arguments.
So, down we sat. I got my salad, a plate of entrees and sides, dessert, and another plate. We looked like gluttons because we tried to get everything we thought we would eat and just pick it up all at once.
Among the dishes I sampled:
Pasta with Clams. Penne with a creamy clam sauce. The bits of clam were not just all cartilage!
Chocolate Cake (of course)
Cream Cheese and Lox on Rye (I was thrilled – you just can’t find that around here.). Capers were sprinkled across the Lox. I skipped them. I just decided I hated capers.
Steamed Veggies – Summer Squash and Green Beans. Summer squash is a very underrated vegetable.
Mimosa was included, but I was surprised I wasn’t carded. Oh well, end of an era. Unless they just were sick of is. Normally, I pass on alcohol, but I like mimosas, the champagne ratio is low and with the present company, I sure needed it.
I was pretty quiet during the meal, especially since we were sort of on a mission to eat enough before they put the food away. Meanwhile, Mother-in-Law (for more lowdown on her, here’s another article,) who is an insulin dependent diabetic and shouldn’t be drinking excess amounts of orange juice and liquor got skunk drink. There is not a lot of alcohol in a mimosa, but too many is too many. The immediate, unpleasant side effect was that she blurted out at the waiter, “Come here and clean the table now!” My husband did an almost Tex Avery double take.
“It’s okay, nobody heard me.” she said. When you are drunk, you have no concept of sound amplification.
Later, she started talking a bit incoherently in the lobby. My husband facetiously said to her, “Drink more!” Despite the health concerns, it was an improvement, because normally she dished out the guilt trips and the crocodille tears at the drop of a hat.
I excused myself to go the bathroom, and when I returned, half the table was standing up and in a defensive position. The moment I had left, all heck broke loose. Sister-in-Law was yelling at my husband about me and how I talked or didn’t talk enough during the meal and what was my problem. Like I wasn’t methodically eating like everyone else was. Should I talk with my mouth full now? She also brought up that two weeks ago my husband didn’t answer the phone when she called. Everyone in the restaurant probably would have said that he had good reason to not want to.
Abuse? Salt Bloat? My husband would have take salty Olive Garden food anyday.
When the invite to the pool party was mentioned, Sister-in-Law barked at my Mother-in-Law that nobody was allowed to go there, as she had to go to Lowes and everyone had to help her or tell her what she should do when she bought a shower curtain. Maybe its just me, but I thought she had much bigger problems, as she decided to tear apart and renovate both bathrooms at once. Maybe that is why she was such a tool today. She had nowhere to “go.” So i guess she decided that we shouldn’t have anywhere to go either.
So, Sister-in-Law carted Mother-in-Law out and my husband and I had a wonderful hour or two, totally abandoned at the hotel with nowhere to go.
Oh, I forgot to tell you that I can’t drive. Also, my husband can’t drive for another 5 months to medical reasons. That would have been a crucial element earlier on in the story, to create more of an element of tension.
We took a walk to a nearby horse farm and fed the horses apples and oat biscuits. The only other things we had on us was a church bulletin, eyeshadow, a Halloween pen with an eyeball that moved around on it, gum and $21.72. MacGyver would have had us flown to Hawaii and back on that bounty of supplies. But MacGyver was off that day.
That’s the story that we will embellish over the years about how we had been kidnapped and were held at the Hilton. Not at any sort of gunpoint, but there had definitely been a standoff.
(for more stories of the characters herein if you are a total glutton for punishment:)
Mother-In-Law:
Burnt Offerings
Eww. Who Drinks Pepper Water?
Mom recently had knee surgery. Dad had the same surgery and was up and around within three days. Mom, on the other hand, is taking a bit longer as hers was more involved. She was going to be off of work for a week, and now she is home for over seventeen glorious days. Ah, do you detect sarcasm?
Gather around and I’ll tell you the story about the very famous Cowboy who had Cashew for a head. According to the tag that he came with, “Mom” bought him in Miami Beach back in 1940s. Well, actually, I am reading into it. Mom “brought” him from Florida. We don’t know if the person’s Mom just found him and felt sorry for him and let him hitch a ride or what. At any rate, someone had the strange idea that they should make a cowboy doll, since when tourists think of Miami, cowboys are the very first thing they think about.
The Emperor Nero didn’t venture outside of the house unless his astrologer said it was okay, and we all know what happened when the Andrea Gail*** crew ignored concerns about The Perfect Storm. As for me, I just go with my gut, even if the Magic 8 ball says that things are “doubtful.” Of course, I do pay attention to the warnings that you have to adjust your cooking time depending on your current elevation. I lived at or near sea level before, but never lived on top of a mountain, so it hasn’t affected my life all that much.
