Supperworks, Granny and the sick truck.

My cousin is a Auto Mechanic in Winchester. We use him when our car or truck gets sick. Speaking of sick, my Granny is in the hospital in Winchester with some unusual symptoms, but they've ruled a lot of the more dangerous causes out so I hope she'll be fine soon. Her being in the hospital coincides with our truck being sick so we sent it up to Winchester to get some work done on it. We have an ingenious method of getting it up there without actually making the trip. We switch cars with my other cousin who works in Ottawa, but lives up there. So today my wife met my cousin, took him for pizza lunch at Louie's Pizza, switched cars and he drove ours up to Winchester, borrowing some other car to get the rest of the way home ( they're always borrowing each other's cars in the country, that's why they never lock them and leave the keys up in the sun-visor).

So that afternoon I got a call from my wife. She had forgot to put the summer tires in the back of the truck ( more like forgot to ask me to put them in) and my cousin needs them so he can actually put them on. So she is going to drive up to Winchester, visit Granny in the hospital, and drop off the tires.

So she leaves our place with kid #2 as I'm feeding kid #1. We are going to stay home and do fun things like doing homework and taking out the garbage! I suddenly get a phone call from a Friend of my wife's. My wife has a Supperworks appointment with her and everyone completely forgot! Her Friend was calling from home at the other end of the city and she wasn't going to come out here in Orleans where Supper works is because it's too far. Can my wife make up her order?

"She's not here." I told her.

If you don't go make up your order there is some penalty charge, because they prepare it all ready to combine into meals. Plus it could go to waste. Plus you don't have it to eat! I made a few phone calls. I can fix this! I thought. How hard can this Supperworks thing be for a guy who makes bullwhips and guitars and Bigfoot movies?

I herded my kid out to my cousin's car in our driveway. I looked in the sun visor. WHAT! No keys! Oh yeah, my wife was driving.. Crap. I phone her. As I'm doing this my kid finds $15 in my cousin's car and asks me if I want it. I decline and tell her to stop that and put it back.

A few minutes later, after confirmation that keys to my cousin's car are indeed my wife's purse and currently on the way to Winchester I call my parental units and get my Mother on the phone. Dad is out and Mom is sick (she must have been sick, the phone call only lasted about 45 seconds). She ain't going nowhere, but if I can get myself there I can use their truck.

I Open the garage, out comes the bike (thank crap the tires have air) , with the come-along rider for kid #2. This is a mini bike that attaches onto a full sized bike so you can pull your kid. I like it because I can bike at Warp factor 10 and not have to wait for my kid because she is attached to the back(she likes it too!). I sling a pack with her Nintendo DS in it to my back and off we go! It takes me a few minutes to try and close the garage door to the new place without going back into the house because it has sensor beams that open it back up if you walk in front of them while trying to duck under the closing door. You have to press the wall button and do a "Raiders of the Lost Ark" boulder dash before the door closes performing a jump and duck at the same time to clear the ground beam and the closing door. It must have looked pretty weird.

We got to my parent's place in about 20 minutes, passing one "professional biker" on the road on our way over. You know the kind, Oakley sun glasses, all decked out in space-age bike clothing with water bottles attached every where on a racer you can pick up with your little finger. I think the post and bike seat were even attached to the butt of her pants, I didn't get a good look, I had places to be. I stashed the bike, got the keys and drove to Supperworks!

I installed my kid in the front café of the place with her electronic babysitter Nintendo DS and headed to the front where they immediately asked me if I wanted any wine to drink (did I look that stressed out?). Turns out this is a perk of the place. Sweet! I got a diet Coke instead. I got a list of meals and a demo of what to do at each station by some young girl who wasn't old enough to serve me wine if I had ordered it (grin) and it was off to the races. You hit each named station as it corresponds to the meals you've ordered on your sheet and follow the instructions - A teaspoon of this, a tablespoon of that, bla bla.. Then you pop it all in ziplock bags and slap a recipe sticker on it that tells you how to cook it when you get home.

My daughter helped me out after 30 minutes and got a kick out of it as well. It wasn't too hard. I felt like that Rat in the Computer Animated film Ratatouille, except I wasn't pulling anyone's hair. I was the only guy there in a sea of married women, except for one other guy who was preparing the meals with his wife.

I got out of there an hour later with the meals and a new appreciation of the place (I highly recommend it) and trucked it to Dairy Queen to fulfil a promise to my daughter that she could get a Blizzard if she behaved in there and let me get this over with. There's a Dairy Queen right across the street from the Orleans Supperworks but that one doesn't believe in Interac and make you use their RIP OFF EXPRESS bank machine( which they probably also own) It's the kind that charges you $2 to take money out and charges your bank $1.50 which of course they pass back right on to you for a $3.50 hit on $20. No thanks! Out to 10th line where they have no fee Interac! At this point my daughter said "You should have taken the $15 in uncle Mathew's car!"..
"That's not our money, we can't take that." I told her, to which she replied
"He's not doing anything with it!"

Can't argue with that logic. We mentioned this to my cousin in the exchange of vehicles the next day and he didn't even know he had money in there "Oh yeah! Where?!".

Doh!

So Supperworks = Good!
Going there on your bike = Bad
Letting your wife leave you with no mode of transportation for emergencies = Also Bad
Dairy Queens who try to bilk money out of "never carry cash" people like me = Very bad!
Kids who don't yet understand that it's not ok to take other people's money= Not a problem at the moment but could be troubling in the future if it turns out to be my money

And Granny's doing well!