Moms say the darndest things

I broke my consecutive-days-blogged string last night at a mere five days. Thanks to playing basketball until after 10 p.m., I was just too beat down to collect my thoughts. Maybe I'll drop two on today.

One topic came to me this morning while I was talking to my mom. Sheila seems to have the gift of understatement when it comes to food. It hasn't been that long ago that my mom told me she and my dad had been eating healthier. Apparently, they'd been eating more fish. "Great," I said. "What kind of fish?" My mom said with a completely straight face, "Oh, I don't know. Whatever kind they have at Long John Silver's."

A few months later she and my dad came to visit us and when they do we typically go out for a meal at least one of the nights of their two-night visits. My dad likes Red Robin, probably because he can really get down with bottomless steak fries. He loves restaurants that serve things in unlimited quantities. I know that's why he loves Golden Corral and the Olive Garden. I suspect that if a mosque sprang up next to my parents' house that offered all-you-can-eat tacos on Tuesday, my dad would immediately convert to Islam. Anyway, I digress. So we went to Red Robin and my mom spent 10 minutes scouring the menu, you know, because they offer a lot of exotic burgers. After saying she wasn't that hungry, she settled on the Monster Burger, which is described in the menu thusly:

– AKA – the Open Wide Burger. Two huge beef patties, melted American cheese, fresh ripe tomatoes, crisp lettuce, pickles, onions, mayo & Red’s pickle relish.

When the burger arrived, she seemed oddly disappointed it was so large. She ended up removing one of the patties. I think I saw my dad have a mini-stroke since the wasting of an entire beef patty more than compensated for all the "free" fries.

Anyway, so there's a pattern here with my mom. This morning she was complaining of having had some lingering stomach pain over the weekend. In fact, she's had stomach pain for six months, which has caused her to change up her diet a little. The discomfort was still with her yesterday morning when she and my dad went to Denny's. My mom says, "You know, with my stomach, I just haven't had much of an appetite. I didn't want much so I ordered the Grand Slam." Nice.

By the by, I went to wikipedia to see if it listed what's included in Grand Slam since I couldn't find it on the Denny's menu. What I found instead were some crazy news tidbits about Denny's. Apparently Denny's hates minorities.