Mama PlaygroundA Blog for Moms

Who has carpets on the floor of an Italian restaurant anyways? Well, lunch started out nice enough. It was a rare adult meal with completed sentences and no Cheerio explosions on the floor. My daughter was at school and my husband’s beloved aunt was nice enough to go shopping with me and take me out to lunch. I ate my body weight in salad and breadsticks in an attempt to give a much needed jolt to my blood sugar. Finally a rich and satisfying meal of seafood alfredo topped the afternoon off. Feeling entirely pleasant after my meal, I sat back to rub my barely pregnant belly because belly rubbing is just so relaxing. My smile turned upside down in a matter of seconds.

I went from zero to near-barf with no warning. I strategized quickly – realizing that the U-shape of the restaurant left me at the farthest point from the bathroom. While I began to salivate and desperately gulp swallow with a world record frequency, I thought of poor Aunt Margaret across the table. She is older, and rather proper. I did not want to embarrass her by yacking in front of a surprisingly full restaurant of people. It is the middle of a workday people – go somewhere! There were really only two options for me that I tried desperately to decide between. I could tell that I had 2-3 large strides in me before the moment of embarrassment. That left me 1/10 of the way to the bathroom and in the middle of a carpeted restaurant, or option 2 (my personal choice) out the emergency exit directly across from our table. Sadly this meant either disturbing a large number of unassuming diners by yacking on the carpet in the middle of their lunch, or disturbing a large number of diners by sounding a piercing alarm in the middle of the lunch.

This all occurred within seconds of realizing the my esophagus was being encroached my rapidly rising lunch. Aunt Margaret was still chatting away. I was beginning to sweat and gulping every second or so. Poor Aunt Margaret…