Out on the Town

Bitzee, Breakfast, and Beads

Spawn of Phos, all two of them, and Ms. Phos unlocked the door for a short period and let me out in public. I hadn’t seen my son and his wife in quite a while, so it is nice having them and our grandpuppy Cashew visiting. We were lucky in that my daughter was able to come along as well, though we missed having her husband with us. Someone has to work, I suppose.

Anyway, we loaded up Ms. Phos’ van and headed for Glendale, AZ - a town that is probably one of the more poorly named cities in the US, as there is neither a Glen nor a Dale anywhere within about 500 miles of the place. There is however, a quaint restaurant called Bitzee mama’s where the Phos clan had some breakfast, if you count tamales and tostadas as breakfast food. The food was ok, Ms. Phos and daughter of Phos stuck with the more rational breakfast, son of Phos ordered a hamburger just to needle me (I hate when you take someone to an ethnic restaurant and instead of trying the specialties of the country they whuss out and get the cheeseburger) and his wife ordered biscuits and gravy, which had the appearance of congealed dog vomit. The original Bitzee Mama sold it to someone else and the place isn’t quite the same - the quality of the food has fallen off a bit, so sad but that seems to be the way things go when a popular place changes hands.

After the meal it was off to the Bead Museum, one of the few things in Downtown Glendale worth a look. They have revamped the facility and this time the change was for the best. The museum is really nice and we were lucky enough to see part of the exhibition. The womenfolk retired to the museum store where they proceeded to empty my wallet – ok, the book on making glass beads is mine. Looks kind of interesting and I can see the fascination Gnat has for glass blowing, though this is on a much smaller scale. You can still get some cool shrapnel if you screw it up, so I have that going for me, which is nice.

The final stop in Glendale was Arizona’s Best Kept Secret (their words) Cerreta’s Candy Company. They do make some great candy and once again my wallet found itself in Ms. Phos’ hands. I got some jalapeño peanut brittle out of the deal so all is well.

It is so nice having everyone around, including al three dogs. We had son of Phos’s in-laws over and with her sisters two little ones it was a three ring circus without a ringmaster. The dogs loved the little kids because the kids were easy marks for handouts. As much as I hate this Deitz-Crane shanty they call a house, and I do, it really felt nice to have it filled with life for at least a couple days.