7/13/2013
From what I could guess
from the Schultzian description, Talbot County is a bunch of cozy, but slightly
posh towns just across the Chesapeake Bay on the western side of the Delmarva
Peninsula – the mitten-like blob containing an isolated chunk of Maryland, a
spot of Virginia, and all of Delaware… DELaware+MARyland+VirginiA. Get it?
Patricia calls Easton the
unofficial “capital of the county”, so we set up base here, but instead of
staying in one of Ms. Schultz’s swanky B+Bs, we booked a room at the Days Inn.
Classy, huh? We checked in and since it wasn’t too late, decided to do the town
right away.
The small town was
pleasant to stroll through, especially in the evening cool after the blistering
afternoon. Laura checked out the realty office to check out house prices. They
didn’t even list them. [I was totally thinking we
could get a summer home there. *grin*]
Eventually, we decided to
drop into a random restaurant. Well, Laura did. You should see the spreadsheets
I make planning these trips. I think they’re pretty amazing. Some of them
belong in the Visionary Art Museum. Laura thinks I should chill out a little
and be spontaneous sometimes. So… ok… How about this Italian place, Scotta’s? [I don’t know if I would use the word “amazing” but
okay, and they don’t deserve to be in a
museum. Just to be clear, he picked
Scotta, not me!]
We were a little worried
bringing the little guys in here, but the staff was very accommodating, if
nervous. Kathleen picked up her knife, and a passing waitress grabbed it out of
her hand. Kathleen was quite indignant. [Actually
Kathleen can be quite unpredictable while holding knives, so it was a great
idea to take it away from her.]
The waitress came and told
us the specials. I asked how much they were. Laura was embarrassed. [Yeah, because he kept SHOUTING it in the quiet
restaurant.] One does not simply
walk into a fancy restaurant and ask how much things are. Ok. Be spontaneous. I
can do that. I ordered the special – veal with truffles. Yeah. Spontaneous
enough? I felt like Frasier Crane ordering that. [I’m
not sure how many people will get that reference, dear.]
Uh oh. Something smells
bad. No, not the truffles. Kathleen needed a change and we had forgotten the
stuff in the van. No problem. We hadn’t parked far, so I brought Kathleen back
down the street to the van. It was then I noticed something really weird. Here
it was, Saturday night, and this town was completely quiet. Oh, people were
walking around, and cars were driving by, but everything was quiet. Then,
Kathleen and I needed to cross the street at a crosswalk. Two cars were zooming
down the road, one driven by a teenager. We stopped to wait, but something
unthinkable happened. The cars stopped for us and waited for us to cross. Even
the teenager. What a crazy town.
Finally, success!
We returned to the restaurant
and ate our fancy food. While we were there 3 separate people came up to us and
told us how well-behaved our kids are. Are they? At another table a 10-year old
girl was complaining that she didn’t want to go to Africa because she’d have to
get shots. Her father gave in and said they’d only go to South Africa, since
they don’t require so many vaccinations. [I WANT TO GO TO SOUTH AFRICA!!!!]
The bill came. Laura
wouldn’t let me see it. That’s probably for the best. [It
is for the best.]
Thoroughly full and tired
we headed back to the hotel for bed (or cot). Laura woke up early in a great
deal of pain. She had been having trouble before the trip (she went to the
doctor before we left), but it had become obvious that morning things had
gotten worse, not better. So, we got to experience a side of Talbot County
Patricia probably never did: the Easton emergency room.
I dropped Laura off and
tried to keep the kids happy and alive in the hotel room. The hotel clerk was
very accommodating and allowed me to stay with the kids in the room for an
extra hour after checkout. She did give me some advice too. “I’ve lived here
all my life. Get your wife out of that hospital. They’ll kill her!”
They didn’t kill Laura. In
fact, they let her out around noon with a clean bill of health, plenty of
pills, and away we went.
[It was
actually not a bad experience as most ER experiences go. It was a small town, and it was how I
expected it to be. I was the only one
there at the time, so I did not have to wait long. They got me in, ran the
tests, and got me out again, within about 4 hours. For an ER, that is pretty good timing. I wouldn’t recommend stopping at ERs while on
vacation, but the experience wasn’t that terrible.]
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