Esteban and I went to brunch after our lovely stay in the lovely inn with a fireplace, jacuzzi, and a view of the water. We went to Country Kitchen simply because Esteban’s butt hurt from riding in the car more than ten minutes and Country Kitchen wasn’t overly packed.
Little beknownst to us, Country Kitchen is where divorced dads take their kids to eat breakfast. I counted no less than four sets of fathers with unruly pissed off children eating questionably nutritious things. Directly next to us sat a man with his twelve-year-old pissed off son (Nigel was his name) and his two identical twin one-year-old boys, Collin and Cole, identically dressed in lime green, navy blue, and yellow striped jumpers. Yes, they were dressed as putridly as it sounds. This is why I think he was divorced or separated. Besides the contempt eminating from the 12-year-old and the way that the dad had no clue how to handle the twin toddlers, I cannot see a dad letting his two boys be dressed that way if he had a choice about it. Maybe this is sexist of me. Maybe not. Sometimes women, when left to their own devices, come up with some horribly tacky ideas of what is “cute” and inflict them upon children if they are allowed. But then, maybe the garrish outfits allow for immediate spotting of errant children in crowds. I’m not a parent, so I really shouldn’t make these judgements, I guess.
Anyway, they had finished eating and the father proceeded to take one twin, let’s say his name was Cole for sake of argument, to the bathroom to clean off his hands (having eaten his entire pancake with syrup with his little fingers, he might as well have been bathed in boysenberry syrup). Nigel was supposed to be watching Collin, but instead decided to go up to the buffet and make himself an itty bitty bagel. Luckily for Nigel, Collin was flirting quite heavily with me. I have a baby flirt face, I don’t know what it is. Any children under the age of three who find themselves temporarily motherless gravitate toward me. One time a father had to grab his little girl who was following me to our car and then she cried because she wanted to go with me. Hey, thank your lucky stars that I was given this “Catnip for Babies” face, because what would happen if a child molester got it? Huh?
So anyway, Collin was humming Barry White, trying to seduce me to approach his table and possibly tickle him until he urped, when finally, the Dad came back from the restroom and swapped Cole for Collin, and he yelled at Nigel for not watching Collin. Cole proceeded to eat a menu and Dad returned with Collin.
He turned to take the menu away from Cole when Collin immediately dunked his hands into a plate of syrup. The dad sighed heavily. He looked at his sullen son, then his menu-eating son, and then finally his sticky son. One could almost read his thoughts at that moment. I just washed his hands, he couldn’t be too sticky already. His hands were only in the syrup for a second. That’s under the five second rule.
Then he did something I cannot ever imagine a woman doing (and this is not necessarily a bad thing, mind you).
He stuck Collin’s hand entirely in his own mouth and tried to lick the syrup off. Collin was agog. This was all new. The dad then gave his son’s hand a few more licks and then sighed. He hefted his son again and made another trip to the bathroom. Three trips, two kids.
If I never stick a child’s sticky hand in my mouth, people, it will be too soon.
Incidentally, it just so happens that the actual room that we stayed in (room 104) is available for 360 touring on the above web page… it’s the deck suite. You can’t see the snazzy bathroom, though… it was almost again the size of the room. It is a very cool inn… it was a mill that they converted/revamped. A little tributary of the Fox River actually runs underneath the inn and came out under the deck of our room (as you can see in the virtual tour). Ducks woke me up on Saturday morning. I suppose it’s better than a cat.
