Life: Idiotropic

Tonight, while Tiara was in ballet, Mom, the three little girls, and I decided to try something new and went to Ernesto's Mexican Cantina at the markt in Sittard. It was long and narrow and decorated wall to wall with random souvenirs from Mexico ranging from the moderately nice to the downright tacky. At our table hung a metal skeleton - not the most appealing dining companion, but the girls enjoyed him. Ok, so we ordered the Topopos Grande and quesadillas to share. The Quesadillas were average - I mean, we were at a Mexican cantina in The Netherlands, so it isn't going to be phenomenal, but the flavor was good and if you're desperate for Mexican, it's passable. The Topopos consisted of a basket of thick overly salted chips with three small bowls of salsa, guacamole, and garlic sauce. It was average. Good to know it's there, but I don't need to go again.

I ordered a cappuccino. Here, in Europe, you can't order a cappuccino and just get a cappuccino. They come with cookies, little wrapped bars of chocolate, or, in this case, a delicious chocolate covered cream puff (profiterole). Three doors down at Die Twee, a cappuccino comes with a little class of whipped cream covered eier (egg) liquor. I can be happy with a cappuccino just about anywhere.

I think this is the place to go if you want to stay out ridiculously late. They are open EVERY day from 5 until 2am, and, most nights, they have live music. The poster that intrigued me the most had a picture of a row of Russian Matrioshka dolls on it and in large letters, it read, "Ernestos Presenteert: Russische Disco met Transit 55 "Gipsy Groove." Russian disco???!?!?! Hard to imagine.

The highlights of the snack at Ernesto's was in the conversation.

Arianna -- "For Halloween, I want to be a vampire."
Me -- "No, you can't be a vampire for Halloween."
Grandma -- "Those are icky."
Luci -- "No they're not! They're the coaches from baseball!"

Last week Luci studied the letter U at school. U is for umpire.

A few minutes later Arianna was doing her usual rant about how Luci always gets pink (i.e. the pink bowl, the pink plate, the pink pen, the pink fork, etc...). After a moment Luci asked me, "How do you spell 'I don't ever use pink all the time?'"