Mom's Birthday

Today is my Mom's 84th birthday and each year I appreciate having her around more.  She's pretty darn easy to please.  I thought and thought about her gift this year and I went completely practical, thanks to Costco.  She got a new runner for her laundry room (to replace the one that fell apart when there was a water heater flood), a new giant puzzle book that should last her about, hmm, one week, and finally.....an electric tea kettle.  I was worried about the one she was using on the stove top.  The handle was too close to the body of the kettle and she kept burning herself.  Not what you want when you make a lot of hot tea.  I showed her how to use the new kettle and I think it will work out well for her.  Might even get one for myself!  

We met for dinner with my sister Denise at the Rochester Chop House ~~

Don't I look smashing in my brand-new 2.00 readers??  And yes, those are alcohol free beverages in our hands!

The food was wonderful, as always.  Denise and I had the sea scallops ~~

and Mom ordered the usual -- the pile of perch ~~

Going back to yesterday's post about trying new things -- believe it or not, I've never ordered sea scallops in a restaurant before - ever.  Not sure why not.  I thoroughly enjoyed them, though, and had enough left over for lunch tomorrow.  Won't my team at work be envious -- I'll bet no one else has sea scallops for their lunch.  Mom took home some of her perch plus half the creme brulee that she had for dessert.  

Mom had dinner at my sister Carol's yesterday and apparently Carol thinks that spaghetti sauce needs Tabasco sauce.  RIGHT!!! -- not something someone with a duodenal ulcer should be consuming.  So today she had to see her doctor for her bowel upset and got a couple of antibiotics to help with that.  Sounded odd to me but Denise went with her so it must be on the up and up.

I told Mom that she has to let Carol know what she cannot eat any longer so that this doesn't keep happening.  The last time she went there for dinner it was barbecued ribs and four days later she ended up in the hospital, down two pints of blood from a previously undiagnosed bleeding ulcer.  Carol's in her own little world but it's time she join the real world.