Baseball and Cheesecake

There’s a small price to pay for sharing a pillow with a two year-old through the night with a side order of gimpy neck. It’s a king-size bed, son; can’t you just scoot about six inches to your right?

I was flying solo at the Winter Warm-Up this year, at least for Saturday. Now that Irish works at Dillard’s, she couldn’t get off till Sunday to join me. Also, Oxbear had thought twice about my safety, probably after I mentioned my dream of being hunted down in a parking garage a few nights ago, so all three boys drove me down to 4th street and dropped me off at the curb on a chill gray morning for the occasion.

One year is just like the next inside those ballroom doors. Already I saw Greg Garcia, Tommy Pham, and Matt Carpenter signing on one side, and Jaime Garcia on the other. I found a seat near the cameraman as usual, and waited for the 90-minute discussion and Q&A with John Mozeliak, taking podcasting notes for next week.

It’s always an enthusiastic crowd that contains a few unusual characters, and more than one giant creepy Yadi bobblehead carted through the autograph lines. Yadi himself made an appearance in a right-handed cast at around eleven, as Mo kept talking Cuba, Korea, designated hitters, and NL Central rivals. Good times, good times.

When Oxbear came to collect me at three, I felt I got my thirteen dollars and thirty-three cents out of the day, splitting the price of admission between all three days of the extended weekend activities.

So we had a date. Our first since our 11th anniversary last August, if memory serves. Sometimes the months just get away from us. Fortunately, for answering phones and administering Children’s Tylenol twice a month at the school office, I was kindly given a Cheesecake Factory gift card during the holidays. So that’s where we went.

“I would recommend the Godiva chocolate cheesecake,” our waiter told us, as he passed out the desert menus.

I could see the amused confusion in Oxbear’s face. “Did you just say Cadaver?”

I couldn’t see our waiter’s reaction to notice if this offended him or not, but he clarified, “Godiva.”

To smooth things over, when he returned for our order, I requested the Godiva cheesecake.

“You mean Cadaver?” he asked, and grinned.

Turns out it was a good recommendation.