The Ramble

We went to the zoo in Gulf Breeze, Fl with the whole crew (12 of us). The number of animals there is impressive despite the diminutive size of the facility, and the tiny, dirt parking lot. The best way to see most of the animals, there is to take the small train through the park and goes through several of the large herbivore pens.

Afterwards, we had planned to go eat at a restaurant called “Lulu’s”. When we got to the restaurant, we checked in with the hostess like is required at most restaurants these days. The wait, there was TWO HOURS! I have waited as long as 45 minutes, at the extreme edge of my patience to eat at a restaurant before, but there is no way that I will wait 2 hours to eat anywhere. As Larry Jess said, I don’t care if it costs two grand per plate and it is worth it, I’m not waiting two hours when I have two screaming babies and four hungry boys, to eat anywhere.

After leaving Lulu’s we decided to go eat at a restaurant called Ruby Tuesday’s across the street from our condo. It’s apparently a big chain of restaurants like Applebee’s or Chili’s. When we got there after a 20 minute drive, they told us it was going to be a twenty minute wait to be seated for a party of our size. We unloaded all the kids and waited in the foyer to be seated. After a few minutes, the manager approached us and said that the grill was broken. We wouldn’t be able to get steaks or hamburgers. Guess what, about the only thing that our kids will eat at a place like that is stinking hamburgers! ARRRRGGGH! Restaurant number two just bit the dust.

After a few minutes of “I don’t care” debate we finally decided to go to Foley to find the Ruby Tuesday’s there, because, you see, LT and I had been freaking out to go to RT’s ever since we smelled the food cooking from across the street Tuesday morning.

We never found the Ruby Tuesday’s, but we settled for a Cracker Barrel instead because “our stomach’s were all off up in our backs” by this time. We were sat by the hostess after some minor wailing and gnashing of teeth about our party size being too large (people need to have more kids these days, everyone is getting too soft). Management assigned two hosts to our table to handle our mass of starved, sweaty humanity. Foley is twenty-five minutes way, so after leaving the zoo at 5:30, we were finally ready to eat at 9:20…. (about two hours after leaving Lulu’s grrrrr)

The male host (Jim) came immediately and took his half of the table’s drink orders. The female hostess (Rebecca) never came. After Jim returned with their drinks, he noticed we hadn’t been waited on and took ours too. Rebecca finally showed up and started asking us what we wanted to drink and we had to tell her that Jim had already gotten it. Jim took half the orders and Rebecca the other half. Jim spent the next twenty minutes taking care of the entire table by himself, and he did a great job of it. When our food came out, nothing Rebecca wrote down for us was correct. I was missing one of the sides that I had ordered and Christa had ordered smothered chicken. She had already an incident with Rebecca when the orders were being taken where Rebecca thought she was ordering grilled chicken. Christa was, by this time, furious and asked Jim to take the chicken back to the kitchen and fix it. Five minutes later, it came back with the same chicken, only slightly colder with two pieces of unmelted American cheese placed on top of it.

Christa, who usually doesn’t complain, immediately got up, found the manager, and complained about the service we had been provided by Rebecca and the kitchen. The manager fixed her order from scratch and took half off of our ticket (which we didn’t ask for). Needless to say, it could have been a very crappy night.

The reason I posted all of the above is this: We could have been pissed off and griped and complained… but we couldn’t stop laughing about it. We took some pretty crappy circumstances, and made the best of it. I was very proud of my family that night.