Clean-Eye Pie

This past Saturday, I drove down to Corona del Mar in Orange County to visit with my brother and his family. I had expected my niece, Alyson, and nephew, Sawyer, to be there, but they were off on the Colorado River with their mother. So, I was only able to see my brother, his wife, Jaime, and his youngest daughter, Emelia, who turned two this June.

The day was largely uneventful. I arrived at around noon, just in time for a lunch of tortilla soup, which Jaime is quite skilled at making. There really wasn't much on the agenda- we just sort of spent the day around the house.

At one point, I started getting a craving for some Key Lime Pie. I'm not entirely certain where this craving came from. Truth be told, I don't even like Key Lime Pie all that much, but I'll be damned if I wouldn't have strangled a homeless person for a piece of it that day.

As it turned out, my brother just so happened to have a gift certificate for Marie Callender's, so we set out in search of one. Erich thought that he knew where one was, and led me on this long, circuitous route to what ended up being a Mimi's Cafe. (Incidentally, every time I see a Mimi's, I have horrible flashbacks to this one time in 2001 when I asked out and was summarily rejected by a rather flirtatious Mimi's waitress. She admitted that she had been flirting, but insisted that she had only been doing so to procure a larger tip. Harlot!)

Even though our quest had hit a slight snag, we remained undaunted. I drove to where there was a phone book, and my brother hopped out and found the location of the nearest Marie Callender's. As we were ordering the pie, we had to endure questions from the staff as to whether or not we were brothers. We actually look quite similar, and people immediately can tell that we are kin. This particular pie lady, however, went beyond the superficial, and started asking us all sorts of questions about our family background. Which one of us was oldest, were there any others, had we ever been in a Turkish prison or seen a grown man naked...that sort of thing.

I briefly entertained the idea of making up some story about a younger sibling who had died of some rare disease such as bovine spongiform encephilitis. But the fact that I was unable to come up with a credible backstory, coupled by the fact that I knew my brother would tell them I was lying in order to make me appear foolish, caused me to bite my tongue.

After getting the pie, we rushed back home, where I was forced by my niece to watch four episodes of Charlie and Lola on Tivo. I must admit, I was slightly disappointed when my sister-in-law told her that was enough Charlie and Lola for one day, as I was just beginning to understand and appreciate the characters.

Soon, it was time for dinner. Jaime went out with a friend of hers at this point and Erich and I were left to fend for ourselves. He whipped up a batch of chicken fajitas while I was engrossed in an episode of Law & Order: SVU. The fajitas were good, but what I was really waiting for was the pie.

We gave a slice to Emelia and, although she initially wrinkled her nose in disgust, she soon began to devour it voraciously. Now, normally, I am pretty indifferent to the antics of small children. Friends often try to get me to be impressed by something their child has done, or to smile at some cute thing that they have said. Rarely does any of it really interest me.

It is an entirely different matter, however, when you actually witness something cute done by a child who is related to you. Emelia seemed to have trouble understanding what we were calling the pie, and soon began to ask for "more clean-eye pie, please!"

I don't care who you are, or how tough your emotional exoskeleton is. Anytime you hear a two year old ask for "more clean-eye pie," you will think that it is the most adorable thing you have ever witnessed.

In about forty minutes, I will be heading out of town. I'm pretty tired of just sitting around here in Los Angeles, and am going to go visit friends in San Diego. I am going to attempt to spread the visit out over two weeks, although I'm not sure if there's anybody down there who will want me for that long.

This Saturday, I will be going on a ride-along with Officer Adam Young of the San Diego Police Department. I am going to try to give a detailed account of this experience on this blog. So, check back for an update early next week.