It’s Friday so we’re ordering pizza. Bella Pizza, our go-to “good” pizza, as opposed to Pizza Hut, which is our “so bad it’s good but you might not stop your heart from racing for a week because of the salt” didn’t answer the phone so I looked over at a New Westminster blog called Tenth to the Fraser and someone said something about Papa Dave’s on 20th street which is ALMOST Papa Joe’s or Papa John’s or Papa Somebody’s that we used to order in Burnaby (best pizza ever; too bad I can’t remember their name) so I said what the hell, I’m risking it.
It is a risk to order from a new-to-us restaurant because we live in a 6 year old housing development that just made it to google maps last year and is still sometimes mistaken for West Vancouver by the Translink route planner. When we order from a new restaurant, three things might happen:
1. The delivery people might know where we live and we get our food within half an hour and the food is crap.
2. The delivery people might know where we live and we get our food within half an hour and the food is awesome!
3. The delivery people haven’t got a screwed clue where we live but the person who takes the order says s/he knows so rejects our attempt to offer directions and 45 minutes later we get a call from the delivery person, who is now in West Vancouver or often Surrey and we have to direct them back. 45 minutes after that they call back and ask for our buzzer number and we tell them for the fourth time that we live in a townhouse not a condo and 15 minutes later we get another call and have to go out onto the street and shout, “We’re over here!” and then the food is a) crap or b) awesome but either way we never order from them again.
Well sometimes we do, because we forget which places are which. If it happens the second time, we will just order for pick up, like the Indian Star, where the food is pretty good but the service, whether in person or by delivery, has been consistently bad.
I figured we could risk the lengthy delivery time tonight because we have leftover fake pizza that I made for Trombone and he sort of picked at and then ate a bowl of cereal. Here is what happened:
Trombone (about 30 minutes from when he usually eats supper): Hey, Mommy, you could make me a bacon, tomato sauce pizza for supper!
Me: Well, it’s already 5:30, so no.
Trombone: You could order one.
Me: Oh yeah? Do you have any money?
Trombone (goes to his piggy bank, counts his money): Here, how much do I have?
Me: Thirty-four cents.
Trombone: How much is a bacon, tomato sauce pizza?
Me: Probably closer to ten dollars.
Now at this point you’re thinking – hey, you knew you were going to order pizza anyway, why not cut the kid some slack and order a bacon, tomato sauce pizza and another pizza and it would get there for his supper at roughly 6 PM and then you could eat the other pizza later. Why? Why? Because I knew full well he was not going to eat the pizza. Trombone likes the idea of pizza but when you put one in front of him, there is ALWAYS something wrong with it. The last time it was because the cheese was melted.
Right? How do I work with that logic?
A: I work with that logic by saying no pizza for you until you goddamn appreciate it.
Anyway.
Trombone (looking forlornly at $0.34 in his hand): Maybe *someday* I will have enough money for a bacon –
Me: Hey, I have an idea!
Trombone: Oh yes?
Me: Yes. We have bacon. We have tomato sauce. We have parmesan cheese (the only kind he eats, anyway). And we don’t have pizza dough but I have this bagel. How about I make you a bacon, tomato sauce, parmesan cheese pizza bagel?
Trombone: That sounds GREAT!
15 minutes later:
Me: How’s the pizza bagel?
Trombone: Well, I really like the parmesan cheese part. And the bacon part…
Me: But you are picking off the bacon –
Trombone: Well, I really like the parmesan cheese part.
So you see I have plenty to snack on while I wait for Papa Dave to find us and bless us with two medium pizzas.
Impressive: it arrived before I finished typing this, with only one phone call from the bottom of the stairs. So far so good.
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