Account of a Good Day Saturday

On Saturday afternoon, faced with nothing better to do, we loaded up the Jeep and drove backroads down to Hymel's.

Although we talk about doing it a lot, it's probably been somewhere between five and ten years since we actually made the drive down there. It need not take the better part of an hour, but the drive is more interesting winding along the river. It's so far down that I thought for a minute or two that I had forgotten where it was.

But soon enough, it jumped out from a bend. A dump of a building with a sign that once stood but was split apart by years of weather. I had forgotten that they had gas pumps out front. Who would look at such a place and think it might be somewhere good to eat?

Inside hadn't changed a bit. Being late afternoon, we were the only ones there, but every table was covered in paper, and soon enough two giant fishbowls of beer appeared. This was soon followed by a platter of boiled crawfish and another platter of fried seafood. And it was freaking delicious. There's no way I'll wait years before going back.

With a change of attitude that came on suddenly this weekend, Vanya asks to go to the potty rather than just pee in his pants. So we got to visit Hymel's bathroom. To be honest, I kind of wanted to check it out.

I'm almost 100% sure that on a trip down there during or shortly after college, I went to the restroom at Hymel's, and the door on the single stall in the men's room hung where the bottom of the door was about five feet off the ground. So if you walked in while someone was baking a brownie, his identity would have be protected, but you would have seen the full glory shot of crotch on bowl.

The only restroom that I found funnier was a Mexican place in uptown New Orleans whose name is long forgotten. They had the sit-down toilet way up on a pedestal in the center of the room. If you were to use it, your feet would be at about chest or shoulder level to everyone else in the room. What made it hillarious is that there was no divider or curtain at all. You would truly have been a king on his throne if you had the nerve to use that toilet.

I was really proud of my kid Saturday. On top of keeping the pee out of his pants, he put himself into the soccer game this weekend. I can't really say that he played, but he moved at a walk behind the pack of kids who surrounded the ball. There were times where his team wouldn't have had enough kids on the field if not for his participation. There are almost always a couple who pull themselves out to pout or eat or for no real reason at all.

Then on Saturday night, he decided to puke like a horror monster. There was stinky sour puke all over our clothes and on his sheets. But get this: we're still without a washer and dryer because of our home improvements. I'm sure I'll post more on that later, but we're a month and a half into the work, and I figure we have another month to go. It is torture.