My palate is decidedly lowbrow. Keep your bisque, banache and Frenchy/Italian-ey suffixes. I’ll take a fat pile of baked mac and cheese, pizza, Famous Star or condiment-loaded ballpark hot dog and wash it all down with a warm chocolate chip cookie chaser.

It’s not that I don’t know any better. I’m not afraid of the fancy stuff and enjoy eating dead plants and animals whipped and sculpted into savory dishes I’ll never remember the name of. But when it comes to preference my tastebuds are happiest when they’re slumming it in the warm, fat-loaded embrace mass-appeal chain concepts pack into every calorie-busting bite.

Like I said: lowbrow palate.

It’s this same palate that gets me all anxious and prone to stupid-idiotness any time I whiff potential defeat for a go-to comfort food establishment. Case in point: the local Bajio.

Excuse me while I get all prosey: Bajio’s sweet rice and tangy lime chicken– spiked with fresh tomatoes and tempered with a dallop of sour cream– has me by the gastronomical sweet spot. Sadly, their service makes the word “slow” clock in like a greased Michael Phelps. And while the importance of my in-line wait time before I luxuriate in someone else preparing my food ranks evenly on the scale of importance with “some Kardashian chick was in a bikini today”, we all have our vices.

So, in the interest of continually indulging mine, I wrote an email that went something like this:

LOGAN BAJIO NEEDS SOME RAPIDO

Greetings!

I love Bajio. And even though we’re not officially an item, I did do awkward cartwheels when the Bajio franchise opened doors here in Logan, Utah.

[Blah, blah, blah, concerned about slow service, blah, blah.]

In short, I complain because I love. The thought of a Bajio-less Logan Utah makes me sad.

Thanks for listening.

Best-

Dan Vinton

Despite my best intentions, I reread the email and felt like the keyboard equivalent to the whiney douchepot who storms into a business and conspicuously/emotionally complains while the other patrons feign indifference. Of course,while pretending they aren’t annoyed, “everyone else” is imagining the cathartic justice of picking up the half-eaten burrito on their plate and slapping Mr./Mrs. Douchepot in the face with it.

Sigh.

Little Dude’s a nuclear clock. Put him to bed at 7:30 pm, he’s awake at 8 AM. Put him to bed at 11 PM, he’s awake at 8 AM. Apparently, all that consistency caught up with him Thursday morning.

“Hey, Mama. My mind didn’t work very well when I woke up so I had to smack it! And my jaw, so I had to open it up and smack my jaw up.”

We eat at this Mexican joint: Cafe Rio. A lot. Little Dude’s usually a quesadilla kind of guy, but after the third visit in a week, he wanted something beefier. We got him a sweet pork taco. After one bite, he put it down. “Why would they make this so nice kids can’t eat it because it’s too spicy? That’s RUDE.”

Drinking milk, Little Dude began to explain what it was and where it came from. I tried to point out that it came from cow boob, but he wasn’t having it. “Milk goes through cows veins. It’s sanitizer.”

The Poo fight continues. After seeing the sure sign of a kid in distress, I ordered Little Dude to the toilet. Knowing there was a limited window of opportunity before he, by sheer will power, forced his poop back up with nothing to show for it but a sad skid, I shuttled him to the toilet.  As I lifted him, I saw my “Poop-dar” needed a tune up.

“Sigh. Did you poop your pants again?”

Pause.

“Sadly… yes.”

The other night we went out to eat. We called ahead to let them know we’d need a table for two adults and two “obnoxious kids”. I was only half joking– Little Sis was trying to break out of her car seat while screaming in the background and Little Dude was yelling at her to be quiet. When we arrived, they punished us with the farthest corner of the restaurant near the wait stations, kitchen and ignominy.  Little Dude was not impressed.

“I’m just gonna have some bread sticks. Then I’m takin’ off.”

Little Dude was wondering what all the “Amen”-ing was at the end of prayer.

“Why do we even say Amen?”

“It means you agree.”

Naturally, the next prayer got a dose of modern English:

“…In the name of Jesus Christ, I agree.”