My cell phone rang, and I saw Jenny was calling. This was just before Christmas, and everyone at work knew I'd gone to Nashville to spend time with friends and family — and also to nearly freeze myself and my progeny to death in our 9° viewing of ice sculptures inspired by How The Grinch Stole Christmas.
I prepared for bad, bad news, but instead she asked the seemingly random question of whether I was still a coordinator for Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University. "Uh, yeah," I stumbled, "what's up?" She clued me in and said she wanted to give an FPU scholarship. A young couple at our church are engaged to be married soon: the bride-elect also happens to be an Alabama alumna, so I figured that would mean extra warm fuzzies for the benefactress.
The next Monday (that would be December 22 for those scoring at home), Sally gave me a blue envelope with instructions to do a good deed. The only catch was that I had to write about it on my blog. When I got home, I hoped my wife would suggest a great gift, but we had a zillion other gifts flying through our heads trying to get ready for a Christmas trip to her grandmother's. So the task went into the background.
Christmas Eve at her grandmother's is completely nuts. My wife enjoys telling the story of my first ever Christmas Eve with her family. I leaned over to her, eyes no doubt wide with fright, and whispered, "Who are all these people?"
"This is my immediate family!" she proudly declared. Neices and uncles and nephews and aunts and cousins once, twice, and thrice removed. (Being around this sprawling brood is great practice for the aspiring genealogist.) You see, growing up, we didn't have any family in town, so I was used to laid-back, quiet Christmases with my parents and two brothers. Nothing like the loud bazaar over in Florence full of shouts, screeching monkeys, and goods of all sorts.
So maybe I was conserving my mental energy and couldn't spare the cycles Sally's worthy cause deserved.
When we go to Florence, my mother-in-law is great about offering to keep the kids so Sam and I can sneak out for a quiet date. One of our favorite places do go is Dale's, same brand as Dale's sauce you can buy in stores. Wonderful, delicious, scrumptuous steak, and they do everything for you but wipe your mouth when you're done. Order ribs and they even bring you warm wet towels with lemon slices. Well worth the trip, and I detest sitting in a car!
The other is Ricatoni's, an Italian restaurant on Court Street. On the drive over, we'd talked about maybe going there for lunch or dinner but didn't make firm plans. After sufficient recovery from the Christmas Eve piranha tank, cabin fever started to set in, so off we traipsed for my bride to feed her toasted-ravioli jones.
"Let's give a big tip to our waitress," Sam suggested on the way over, and the conspirators proceeded to carry out their plan. The food was outstanding as always. I had the catch, so I forgot for a while that I was six hours inland.
On the way out, I handed our waitress, probably a student at UNA, the bill folder, wished her a merry Christmas, and walked out feeling satisfied body and soul.
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