At Moe's

When mom calls and wants to know where we want to meet for dinner, she runs through a list of options, "Do you want Olive Garden? Uno's? Mariachi's? Um, one of those other places in Lansdowne? Uh...Mimi's?"
I answer that I'm tired of eating out and I'm not really into any of those places but want to know which are the other places she's describing in Lansdowne, but she doesn't know. Mom says she'll call Matt and Lisa and find out what they want.
A few minutes later she calls back to report that Matt and Lisa won't be joining us and she has gotten no further on the dinner location decision. "How about this," she says, "How about MIMI's?!" with extra emphasis. I tell mom that I don't want to eat there and she's the only one who likes that place.
"Oh, I'm the only one who likes Mimi's?" she repeats, but as if she was verifying that information with herself.
We end up picking Moe's, which mom hates, but the rest of us like enough because it is Mexican and you don't have to wait for someone to serve you so you can get in and out fairly quick. Mom orders the Triple Lindy burrito, but complains that it is too spicy when she sits down to eat it at the table. She asks my dad a couple times if there's something spicy in her burrito to which he answers, "I don't know, you ordered it."
Later we are talking about a television news program that featured the prototype for a car that can drive itself. Mom, infamous for her highway travels, professes that she cannot wait for the robot car. She then relates that she imagines the driver will be that salsa cyborg from those Chi-Chi's commercials, repeatedly saying "I want chicken and chi-chi's."

At Sweetwater Tavern, again

With nearly everyone's day off or vacation making them available for lunch, my parents, my aunt Sylvia, my brother, and I all met up at Sweetwater Tavern. Matt arrived late so there was lots of time for mom to review the menu to decide what she wanted, which was to copy my aunt's order. Mom had the Monterey Salad with Spiced Pecans but, like aunt Sylvia, she wanted grilled chicken, not fried. Additionally, mom wanted her chicken, "BLACKENED" which she said with a little gesture of her hand that I don't know meant anything. She also had coffee, but only wanted it if it was fresh.
Though mom had been responsible for picking the restaurant location, she was unhappy with building's construction (the warehouse style ceiling does not help absorb sound), nor the choice to blast psychedelic 60's rock over the restaurant's sound system where we had to keep asking each other to repeat what was said over "Free Bird."

At IHOP

Both my parents were off today, as was I, so when they invited me to a late lunch around 2pm I figured, "why not?" As one of the only non-senior citizens in the place, I was disappointed to see that the menu had changed a lot since the last time I had been, which was probably awhile ago. Mom had the menu and all the assorted add on menus scattered in front of her, but was staring off into space.
"You know what you want?" dad asked her, bringing her back to Earth, and panic-stricken, she shuffled them about and wanted to know what we were eating.
Of course she ordered last, but proceeded to order the exact thing my dad ordered (blueberry pancakes, hash browns, eggs over easy, bacon, and a side order of grits(except for turkey bacon, she wanted it real, yet later claimed she did not know they had turkey bacon)) but in a completely different way so that she confused our easily confused waiter. Although mom drinks coffee anytime of the day and never needs a coffee partner, she actually ordered a glass of tomato juice instead and she heard my dad was not having coffee.
After our orders arrived, my parents argued about where grits come from. They were both right, grits come from grain as well as hominy.
Later, the waiter brought us a random bottle of ketchup after the check had already come and none of us had requested it.

At Aunt Barb's

We go to my aunt Barbara's house for dinner and to celebrate my dad's birthday. For dinner there is an assortment of different chili dishes (for the picky/non-meat eaters (aka me)), salad, chips, yada, yada, yada. When I ask my mom what she ate because I wasn't paying attention to her plate she answers, "Chili and cake!" which is half right. She also had the salad and bread and, yes, wine. During the dinner discussion, mom wants to know where my uncle's son is living in Alaska because she thinks she knows someone who knows someone from there and they might know each other because Alaska is totally small! Mom also takes a poll on how many people from our family are left handed because, as we all know, lefties are her peeps and she needs to keep a running total on her clan. Dad passed around his digital camera which had a picture of him and Kevin Bacon in it, taken when the Bacon brothers were at his work. The photo may have been accidentally erased while we were sitting there.
When the cake comes out my dad spoils the birthday fun for everyone by blowing out the candles as soon as they are lit, before anyone can sing or take photographs. It was like all the air had gone out of the room: everyone did that intake of breath to start singing and went "Ha-OHHH!" My aunt Peggy wanted to relight the candles but instead dad agrees to make a pretend blowing-out-candles-face over the cake for a photo op. Mom enjoys cake and ice cream for dessert and double fists the rest of her wine and coffee.