Today was one of those days.
You see, there's this restaurant I wanted to try. Someone mentioned it the other day on Facebook, I googled it, and the next thing you know I was having a white-hot affair with the online menu. It was food porn--they pretty much had me with "homemade bread," but then they went ahead and kept going with "homemade potato chips" and "special blend of cheeses." It could be a blend of Kraft singles and Velveeta, but man does it sound good.
So today, my husband, who knows that I'm more than a tad bitter about the fact that he gets to go out to lunch every day while I'm stuck at home eating cheese cubes and tortilla chips, calls and asks me if I'd like to go to lunch with him. Uhhh. . .yeah?
So off we go to the land of delicioso; my husband and I get the exact same thing--pot roast with gravy, mashed potatoes, and green beans. It's food like Emeril's momma used to make. Charlie also enjoyed liberal helpings of our pot roast and green beans and basically worked himself up into a blood sugar-induced coma complete with drooping eye lids, a bobbing head, and just a touch of drool.
The restaurant had pretty much cooled off by the time we were finished, and I noticed that one of the large tables was filled with a group of people wearing shirts and name tags from the local ARC agency. ARC is a broad-reaching organization that provides services to people with mental and physical disabilities. Like any overly-social mommy who never gets enough adult interaction (my affair with the menu not withstanding), I walked over, introduced myself, told them a little bit about Charlie and the fact that one of their OT's works with him through Early Steps--our state's Early Intervention program. Charlie took this moment to appear as disabled as humanly possible. I'm sure every child is like this--when they're well-rested, they look wonderful and alert. When they're say, stuffed to the gills with pot roast and an hour past nap time, they may look a little less stellar. Charlie? Well, Charlie looks like one of my husband's Delta Sig brothers at a mardi gras parade.
But the people were nice, one lady even came over and said hi to him. Then they told me that their agency has just opened up a Mother's Day Out program. How perfect is that? A Mother's Day Out where special needs kids are welcomed? A chance for Charlie to interact with other children? Even better is the fact that all of their programs are open to kids disabled and not, so disabled kids have a chance to interact with their typical peers. I had been thinking that he needed something like this, but didn't know where to start. Now, I have a jumping off point.
Some might call it serendipity.
