Normaler than normal

So, Saturday I did something that I haven’t done since the pandemic days began, I did a Saturday morning breakfast in the Strip District.  Since I got off work at 6am, breakfast at 7 seemed like a good idea.  I had tried a Strip District breakfast a week or so earlier, but I chose a weekday and places weren’t opening until 8am.  I don’t mind meandering around to kill off less than an hour of down time, but once I clear the hour barrier, my desire to do something wanes considerably.

That attempt led to a breakfast at Eat N Park, which, while the food is serviceable, that early in the morning it is like being in death’s waiting room.  I say that realizing almost how true it is in my own life.  Eat N Park is a local chain with multiple locations round these parts, and as it happens, it was the last place I went out to eat with my mom.  What a sad experience that was, my mom just getting out of the hospital following a heart attack and on the trip home he decides to stop there.  She was so addled, whether it be the meds she was on or brain damaged suffered from her heart attack, couldn’t even read the menu.  It was a saddening experience, when you are witnessing a parents’ cognitive abilities just slipping away.

The last couple of trips to Eat N Park, including a week or so ago, albeit different locations than the one I was at with my mom and her husband, were equally sad simply because at 51 years of age, I was the youngest person there.  As I was eating I thought to myself, “is this it?” “Do I now go hang out with old people, as the last moments of my life just tick away?”  “Should I ask if they have a seniors discount, and do I qualify if they do?”

This past Saturday I opted for the Strip District instead.  It was an added sense of normalcy, people my age (and younger), eating in public (with some social distance spacing between tables, but public nonetheless).  The only difference was that I did feel a little rushed, what with a line of people waiting to sit as I was eating.

Still, it was nice to do something almost post-pandemic-y.  There are lots of things I have cut out of my life, weekend breakfast forays being one of them (as well as working regularly, which has changed since December, going out and having a few drinks which I still haven’t done, and random shopping trips to the mall, which I am only doing if I need something).  Not that I am afraid of COVID or anything, not really concerned one way or the other if I die or not, I’ve had a good run after all, but don’t want to get sick and get someone else sick in the process.