"Nobody puts baby The Mrs. in a corner." - Johnny Castle, Dirty Dancing

The Brandenburg Motel. Not in Germany. Not in Prussia. Not even in Brandenburg. I assume it really is a motel but the pictures of the snow-capped alpine mountains (in Oklahoma, no less) were the second clue that you cannot trust the motel owners under any circumstances.

In Houston you can find some of the best food and tastiest food on the planet, served by bright, intelligent waiters and waitresses that probably have degrees from Harvard (in economics, probably, but that’s okay – they can do less damage there than they would at the Federal Reserve Bank). In The Mrs.’ home town? Not so much.

The Mrs. went with her mother, The Boy, and Pugsley to go pick up some food at a restaurant that rhymes with “Raco Smell.” It was 11:43 AM. Apparently Raco Smell doesn’t open during this time. Lunch break?

Anyway, The Mrs. then went to a restaurant that has a name that rhymes with “Scarby’s.” The Mrs. and her entourage waited in line while the two employees and the manager were in some sort of heated discussion about the proper way to carve roast beef, or perhaps it was about economics. Whatever. They ignored The Mrs. for about five minutes while a line of customers formed behind them.

The Mrs. generally doesn’t rant, preferring to vote with her (our) dollars and not reward incompetence, poor ethics, or body odor. The Mrs. rarely complains. Often she give me a funny look when I complain.

This time was different. She let loose a tirade worthy of historical preservation. In about four years (lightspeed time) this tirade will hit Alpha Centari, and then the aliens there will cower in fear. Here is what she said when the employee at the register asked the person behind her in line, “Can I help you?”

“Listen you nosepicking freak with the IQ of a houseplant, I’ve been waiting here while you and your manager gab for five minutes about how darn hard it is to figure out how to use car keys or remember a five digit ATM code. How dare you ignore us while you embark on a journey of discovery and find out that a spork is not a phone receiver. If you don’t want people to treat you like a group of inbred mouth-breathers, don’t keep acting like a group of slack-jawed inbred mouth-breathers! You slack-jawed inbred mouth-breathers!”

Okay, I wasn’t there, and I made a bunch of the stuff above up, but The Mrs. did really call the counter employees “mouth-breathers.” I think they were rather slack-jawed at her outburst. We’re still waiting on the DNA test to see if they were really inbred.

The downside? The Mrs.’ mother lives in that town, and will never be able to order a roast beef sandwich again, unless she goes through the drive through, although it may be the case that the employees have the memory span of goldfish, and forgot the incident completely five seconds after it happened.

On Easter Saturday (happens every fourteenth year, according to the Wilderian Calendar) The Boy and Pugsley were out when the “Easter Bunny” arrived and left baskets (from Easter Wal-Mart®). The Boy pronounced it an Easter Miracle, since the baskets were left when only Grandpa was home. Somehow the fact that The Mrs. and I were also there eluded him completely, but, this was proof that the Easter Bunny does exist. He and Al Gore should get together, since they have a lot to talk about.

The Wal-Mart© toys were, well, Wal-Mart™ toys. I kept wondering how much lead was leaching into Pugsley’s system as he gummed the racing stripes on the plastic car he got. I figure he was pretty smart to start with, so getting a bit of lead into his system will just even the odds for the other kids at school.

On Easter Sunday we undertook the long drive back. The Mrs. got amusement from several signs: “Fruits for Sale Truckers Welcome” in the event that truckers felt that they were under some obligation to eat only biscuits and gravy, these people were helpful enough to let them know they could have regular roughage in their diets. Another one (this was Easter Sunday) read “He is risen, and we are closed.” I asked The Mrs. what business it was on, and she said she didn’t see that part. I was hoping it wasn’t the hospital. Maybe we were lucky and it was Scarby’s.