Yesterday

Yesterday was nice. A group of us went out to lunch, seeing as with this and that we'd somehow missed celebrating a few birthdays and such. I hardly ever eat steak, but one of the birthday boys is quite fond of the stuff, so we all headed to Texas Land & Cattle Steakhouse.

I had never been to this place before. We arrived a bit early and stood off to the side for a bit looking over the menu. Being the first couple there, we should have put our names on the list or whatever, but then I didn't know what to do. I didn't know if they had made reservations or what, and then I didn't know if I should say that we would be a party of six or a party of seven.

I totally forgot to ask if they were bringing the baby.

As I have mentioned in a previous post, I'm pretty clueless about babies. I don't know at what age the new parents start taking the babies out to public places like that, and I don't at what age the babies are big enough to sit in highchairs, and if they are not big enough to sit in a highchair do you ask for an extra seat so that you have a place to put the baby carrier, etc....

So the new parents and baby showed up, soon to be followed by the other couple. The new daddy asked for "table for six and a sling." A sling. This I had never heard of before. But it's rather like a little foldout mesh hammock, and then you sit the baby carrier on the mesh and that puts the baby at a height where everybody at the table can see him.

This was only my third time to see the baby. Everybody is saying how much he's grown, etc.... He looks about the same to me.

When they first got to the restaurant, the baby had this look on his face, like why the hell are we here? Later, at the table, he seemed to discover his feet. It was like he had never seen them before. He'd raise his feet and look at one of them, and then he'd look over to the other side and there was another one. Wow, two feet. He spent a long time doing that, and then he went to sleep.

After lunch we all said our goodbyes and wondered if we'd all get together again before Thanksgiving. That seems so far away, but considering that was the first time we had all gotten together like that since before the baby was born, maybe it wasn't such a silly question. Then the husband did not want to go straight home, and we ended up at the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens.

It was hot, but not so unbearably hot as it had been. We walked to parts of the park that we don't normally go to. We even wandered over to the building with the conservatory, though we decided not to go in and look at the plants. We did go in just long enough to get some water and have a look at the fish tank. I hadn't realized what a nice tank it was. It has about half the cast of Finding Nemo, minus the sharks and sea turtles.

Anyway, I can finally go in the place and not be upset about Dad. I can't imagine ever going to the place and not thinking about Dad, but I didn't get sad over it. Dad's astronomy club used to meet there, and I went with him a couple of times right before he died.

We wandered around the park some more and maybe got a bit lost. And then we headed for home, but stopped for a Slurpee first. It isn't as hot as it had been, but it was still August in Texas.