Our small hospital does offer at least one benefit when you have a baby there: the congratulatory dinner.  They have a woman who caters a dinner, and the nurses give you a choice if you want baby to join in or be babysat at the nurse’s station to give mom and dad a “date”.  Although the setting is in the hospital, they take you down to a special room that overlooks the city, and we’re not talking about hospital food!  This is gourmet, delicious, and for dessert, a cake to celebrate baby’s arrival.  The dinner was so good when we had my 21-month-old that I told my husband we have to take pictures next time because it was hard for our friends to believe that food this good existed in our small town.  But it does, and here are the pictures to prove it!  I only wish they sold it in the hospital cafeteria on a regular basis – now that would totally redefine the term “hospital food”!  By the way, those are giant shrimp in the picture that tasted like lobster; complete with a vat of butter for dipping.  And that isn’t a bottle of wine but sparkling grape juice, in case you were wondering why they would give a breastfeeding mom a bottle of wine 🙂 

We were privilaged to get to spend an evening without kids to take in a local community theater’s production of Little Women, the Musical.

I must be honest – the music in this musical is not my favorite.  It has nothing to do with how it was performed or who sang it; it just seemed to me to be words set to random music.  But I don’t know much about singing, music composition, or even good theater for that matter.  That being said, I will say that it’s definitely a production worth seeing.  The costumes and set were great, and the large cast of talented actors and singers seemed very cohesive and never crowded on the stage.  The play took me back into civil war times, and I do like to see stories from this time period played out live.  I was pleasantly surprised by a few of the characters’ performances since they were people I’ve worked with before so I thought I knew what to expect – but a few of their performances were much better than I even expected, and yes, two of those people read or are closely related to people who are regular readers of this blog 🙂

But I’m not being biased…  I really was impressed.  A few of the new people – performers who haven’t done much or anything for this particular theater group – were surprisingly talented also, though I have to say at least one was not.  And I might even say that the beautiful wigs almost deserve a curtain call of their own…  but don’t let the wigs steal your thunder, cast, because you can expect standing ovations from your audiences throughout the run of the show, I think.  Overall, it was a nice evening out – the show part of the dinner and show anyway.  I was so disappointed in my lack of a good meal last night that I composed this little ditty:

RIP – Maywood Restaurant in Montpelier, Ohio

They sold the restaurant but kept the name,
The tables and chairs are all that’s the same.
The food quality’s gone,
Bob’s recipes too
It’s a shame that my dinner
Tasted like old shoe.

It was once premium food
But now it’s soured my mood.
Advice I would give:
Eat here if you dare
Since I traded gourmet
For mere Sysco fare.

The ditty tells the story – basically we had this awesome restaurant nearby with very high quality food that was always cooked by the chef-owner personally.  I understand that people have to retire, but it is almost a crime that they still use the same name for the restaurant.  I mean, with a food quality drop this severe, it’s their duty to warn people before they are tempted to eat there!  Too bad dinner didn’t work out, but if the theater keeps putting on shows like Little Women, it will be enough of a reason to drive across the county to see them.