Triage of the Bloody Foot on a Lazy Beachside Afternoon in a Very Small Town

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The Pacific Shore has a later sunrise than we experience in Vegas being farther east and in the same time zone. Sharon got up more than once during the night to check on her mom downstairs. And every new noise seemed to spawn the automatic “What was that?” How am I supposed to know what that was? After all, I was sound asleep. We went to a local diner for breakfast; but, four of its five tables were already full, and the fifth was a tiny table for two. The waitress estimated a twenty-minute wait, with no place to wait and especially nowhere for Sharon’s Mother to sit.





There was another café just around the bend; but, we were up for a coastal drive and drove a few miles south on 101. The GPS said that we were there, and indeed there was a Breakfast Café to our right, just not the one with the same name that we were heading towards. From the road, we could see a table for four, so we went on in. Again, Shirley had to leave the walker in the car because the parking lot was a gravel filled lot behind the café. We helped Shirley get to the sidewalk in front of the café and went inside. We were greeted with “Sit anywhere you like” so we sat at the only available table. This was obviously a local favorite because a group of men were holding court and nursing their coffees. I wondered if Sharon picked up on the rather bawdy banter; although, I was pretty sure Shirley at least was not being bothered by the coarse talk. Even the one “potty-mouth” seemed inclined to somewhat stifle his profanity by talking about “eff-in” this and “eff-in” that, and I wondered if that was for our benefit. The waitress asked me “Is that your Renegade?” and I acknowledged that it was the Jeep that I was renting, even though that was the first moment that I now discovered that the model was a Renegade. “Oh, I’ve been thinking about getting one. I may have to go outside and check it out.” I gathered that the group of men worked for the man they were talking about, and that he had a very well-endowed wife, and there seemed to be an awful lot of speculation about who was doing what with whom and which way the wind might be blowing.



Shirley ordered two petite waffles, and ate one. Sharon hadn’t checked to see if she could only get 1 waffle since that wasn’t on the menu and figured that she’d eat a whole one if there were two , and she did. If she’d just gotten one, she figures she’d have left half on the plate. Sharon had scrambled eggs and potatoes. I ordered the breakfast burrito. Mine was quite good; but, I hadn’t expected the potatoes in the breakfast burrito to be coated in a white gravy. I had asked for salsa to go with the burrito. I just didn’t know that it wasn’t “that kind” of a burrito. As we left, the one with the mouth was now regaling his friends with his favorite “Are you talking to me?” story, which had them in all in stitches. I later found out what Sharon took away from the conversation at the next table. She was only bemused by the fellow that joined the table shortly after us, and the waitress greeted him with “The Same?” And after the new fellow nodded, she brought him over his order, which was already for him because she brought it right over. And I missed that exchange altogether.



We stopped at Chester’s Market before returning home to get some cookies and sandwich goods. Shirley joined us inside with her walker to make sure that we got the right cookies. She went straight for the double-thick chocolate cream filled Oreos. I must ask Sharon’s sister Erin if this fanatical love of chocolate is another one of those “Casey Things”. And Shirley did seem to agree with Sharon earlier that her waffles would have been even better with chocolate chips on them. Sharon had told her of the WaffleS Café, a great little hole in the strip mall place near where we live that makes the best waffles. And best of all, you can get them with chocolate chips and whipped cream. Sharon promised to take her mom there the next time she comes for a visit. You know you’re in a very small town when you keep bumping into the same people. As we passed the deli, the man behind the counter noted, “You know, right after you guys left, the whole place cleared out.” Once back at the Carousel House we decided to get Shirley upstairs using the Acorn chair-lift to ascend the steep wooden staircase. It worked like a champ once we figured out the controls and realized what was causing the alarm to sound without stopping (and no apparent way to turn it off). I had brought it downstairs (without sitting in it, that really would be pushing its limits which I couldn’t find posted anywhere). I just hadn’t let it go all the way to the bottom (and thus the alarm: stopped while not at the top or bottom).



In the upstairs “Great Room” there were five walls of ocean facing windows (in our 13-sided vacation home). We have a view from about one hundred or so feet above the Pacific. Below us a channel separates us from a built-up breakwater that is clearly in the tsunami danger area, so we appreciate being this distance from the ocean. We decided to play Scrabble, but Shirley seemed to be more interested in working at her word puzzle books. At one point, she had gotten the letters “QVZUUIW” and while “QUIZ” would not have been a bad play, she had nowhere to play it, and she needed to get rid of some of her high-value letters to have any hope. I suggested that she play “QI” with the “I” forming a second word beneath an “A”. This gave her the opportunity to possibly make the work “QUIZ” on her next turn for a “very high” score, if she could only draw an “I” to replace the one she just played. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. Sharon suggested that we have lunch and so we started to make some sandwiches. And then some chimes echoed through the house, and Sharon and I looked at each other with that “Is that your phone” look, thinking perhaps we were hearing our Ring Chime from back in Las Vegas. But our phones weren’t making any noise and I suggested, “I think someone’s ringing our doorbell.” Sharon went down to check, and then called me to come down. Our neighbor across the street was having trouble with her lockbox, and wanted some assistance. It wasn’t the same kind as we had; but, I did manage to get it opened for her.



We passed some time channel surfing on the satellite choices which pretty much seemed to be limited to CBS, NBC and ABC; with about 150 additional channels airing info-mercials or pay-per-views. This could turn into a long weekend for me with no History Channel to watch. We planned to go out early, around 4PM, to find a burger joint for Shirley and then return and play some Mexican Trains afterwards. That was when “The Incident” happened. Sharon exclaimed something. It wasn’t anything that I’d heard that potty-mouth in the café say, so it must not have been too bad in that respect, I guess it was more of a squeal, followed by “I’m bleeding” and then “Is that broken glass?” There were already four or five quarter sized pools of blood on the linoleum imitation tile floor. I took the shard of glass and discarded it, returning with a paper towel. “A wet one (you fool),” Sharon urged. I may have just imagined the “you fool” part. “That’s too wet” she corrected when I returned a second time; but, at least it seemed to assuage the pulsing blood stream. Bandages were of course one thing neither of us brought on this cruise (so I’m guessing she’s planning on not getting any blisters as she did on our New England-Canadian cruise last Fall. (Sharon – Actually did bring some and some Neosporin but they’re in the suitcase we left at her brothers since there wasn’t room in the car). She fashioned a temporary bandage from my third perfectly soaked paper towel and stuffed her foot into a shoe. Meanwhile I spotted another smaller shard of glass and removed it from the area. We stopped at Chester’s and got some bandages and Bactine and completed the triage first-aid before dinner.



The Oar House Bar and Grille was adjacent to Chester’s Market, and the parking lot was asphalt so Shirley had no problems with her walk

er. The waitress graciously seated us at a table for six in the family area, the only normal height table in the restaurant, where most of the seating locations were setup for bar-food and much higher off the ground, something that wouldn’t have worked for Shirley; or, for Sharon now that I think about it. Sharon got the plain burger, Shirley the plain cheese burger and I got the Flamingo burger. Shirley smirked when they said they could do cheddar but not American cheese, but she ate the whole burger nonetheless and seemed to enjoy it. And before you give me any grief about eating a Flamingo burger or say something like “Real Men Don’t Eat Flamingo Burgers”, let me tell you what it is: Burger with grilled jalapeños, pepper-jack cheese, cayenne hot pepper sauce and cream cheese (along with lettuce, tomato, pickle and red onion). To top it off I added Hickory Smoked Bacon to it, and it was great. The patty was about one-half pound, and I’m glad I didn’t get the double-burger option. It was fantastic.





We did play four rounds of Mexican Dominos after dinner, and each of us one at least once. And Sean can rest easy because Sharon insisted on counting all the dominos and we didn’t leave any in the garage where Sharon dropped them. We did have trouble finding the double-12; but, it eventually showed up during the first game. We decided to resume play the next day, and enjoy the view as the sun set. For a while the sunlight filtered through the distant clouds in streaks of light streaming towards the horizon. Shirley works some more on her word puzzles, until she was tired enough to retire again downstairs. We helped her down using the chair lift. We were all quite tired; but, we can’t really figure out why.

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