It's a Starbucks Morning...
06/12/2011
The place: Starbucks, Broad Street, Richmond, Virginia. The hour: 6:44am. The sun is lifting over the horizon in a baby blue, cloudless sky. The temperature: A manageable 78 degrees. It is going to be The Best Sunday Ever!
First on the daily menu this morning is breakfast with Vivienne and Henry at the Silver Diner. Typically, we order chocolate chip pancakes and chocolate milk for each of us. Today I may have something a little more substantial. There are already some strange rumblings emanating from my abdomen and pancakes are just not going to soothe the beast that is my hunger, but it will be at least two hours before I quell it.
It seems as though all I have done since I arrived here Friday afternoon is stuff my face. It began Friday evening when I picked up Vivienne, soon to be eight, and Henry, a precocious four-year old, and had a delightful meal, just those two and me, at Jason’s Deli (it was all about the ice cream dessert). Saturday morning I picked up “Chatty Kathy” and Henry adorned with his Panama hat and sunglasses, for a sumptuous breakfast at Daylight Donuts – a Bismarck for Vivienne, a chocolate donut with multi-colored sprinkles for Henry, and two crullers for me, with white milk for the three of us. I was the only one to drink the milk, Vivienne said it tasted funny and Henry voted with her, so no more milk was consumed by either of them. I was floating when we finished – I wasn’t about to throw the milk in the trash.
The three of us killed some time riding around Richmond. The Nancy was to have arrived at Richmond International on a flight from Charlotte a little before noon. The flight was delayed an hour, so the kids and I took a nostalgia tour of Richmond. I enjoyed it, the kids tolerated it. I showed them the houses their mother grew up in, and the elementary school she attended. We visited the Chesterfield County Airport where I took flying lessons so Henry could see some o f the smaller airplanes take off and land, and kill a little more time.
I just knew at some point restlessness would build with the two little ones so I quelled the beast in them with a Wild Cherry Slurpee at 7-11. It worked until the Slurpees were gone. After a visit to a Pet Smart where we peered into the cages housing kittens and the various aquariums with fish, frogs, snakes and lizards, we stopped at a Qdoba for a quick lunch as time was approaching to meet The Nancy’s flight.
I asked the kids what they wanted to eat. Quesadilla was the choice – with “just cheese on it, nothing else.” A side was offered with the kids’ meals – chips, beans or applesauce. The kids indicated chips as their choice. As we sat down to enjoy our repast, Henry says, “I really wanted applesauce.” Sorry, kiddo, you told me chips. About this same time Vivienne tells me she really doesn’t like quesadillas. I ate mine while they played with theirs, but notweithstanding the wasted food ($) I still had a great time.
We ended our eating frenzy last night with a visit to a sushi bar. Not really my cup of tea, I don’t do fish, but the rest of our group enjoyed it $135.00 worth.
This morning in just about an hour, as The Nancy remains in a near comatose sleep mode in our hotel, I will pick up the two monsters for breakfast. It has become a tradition of sorts, one I enjoy as much as anything I do.
Vivienne will talk my ears off, while Henry attempts to get an occasional word into the conversation. I will try to stifle the laughter so I can appear to at least find what Vivienne is telling me as believable. She is prone to fabricating details in her stories (a nice way of getting around calling it BS), but I love them nonetheless.
Thinking about all this eating and been satisfying. I don’t think I am hungry any longer. Maybe I will just skip breakfast altogether. Not!
And that is all I have to say about that…