Twelve Wonderful Years

Today (yesterday, by the time this is posted) is Old Dog's and my 12th anniversary.

Although not without its share of difficult times, our marriage has been singularly blessed. We talked about celebrating by going out to dinner, but wound up hitting a National Chain That Shall Remain Nameless for breakfast instead.

This NCTSRN is divided up into sections, all of which belly up to a food buffet. The sections are divided by walls inset with cute little windows. Through one of these windows, I saw that the section next to us, the last one at our end of the restaurant, had emptied out and a waitress was cleaning.

Armed with a rag, a bucket and a blue aerosol can, she was wiping down walls. She'd set the bucket and the can on each table, climb onto a chair, and then scrub the wall abover her head. When she was done, she'd pull out the blue can and spray a some kind of mist, with the same abandon that was once employed by women cementing a beehive hairdo into permanence with FinalNet. The mist fell, like a low-hanging cloud, onto everything below.

Figuring it was some generic brand of disinfectant, I waited for her to turn the label my way. About 5,000 cc's of mystery mist later, she finally did, and I discovered it wasn't, in fact, a generic item, it was a brand name:

Raid.

Old Dog and I were about the only people in our section, but the fresh fruit and salad bars just happened to be at our end of the restaurant, too.

Of course I chatted with the manager. What I really wanted was my money back, but I accepted a business card comping us for two future meals. (Cause you never know when Hell might freeze over.) Then the manager headed off to confiscate Clara Clean-up's blue can.

As for Old Dog and me, we did what anyone would do after being doused with Raid.

We bugged out.