d_trektone_w

Spent Saturday with my mom, so we did my birthday and Mother's Day together. One if the things she really seems to like to do, though she only hints at it when asked, is being driven around just to be looking around. So that's mostly what we did.

After mom had breakfast at the assisted care place I picked her up and took her the Berkeley Farmers' Market. Walk and taste, walk and taste. We had cow cheeses and goat cheeses; at least four different vendors' strawberries; several flavored balsamic vinegars and olive oils; pickled organic veggies, including beets, green beans, squash and cucumbers.

Then we brunched. :)
At Liaison (remember that,

debmats?) we shared pain perdu, eggs benedict, sides of spinach and pommes frites, and an especially yummy blueberry clafoutis. Mom mentioned liking it well enough that she'd return for lunch or dinner.

From there we drove around Oakland's "historic" Jack London Square, then went to the island of Alameda where I showed mom where I'd be a week later (Rosenblum Cellars' open house) and then around to various ships (and buzzed by St. George Spirits distillery). After that we drove through the suburbia that is most of Alameda, but did stop in on a couple of used bookstores.

We talked a lot while I drove and even mom remarked how she's become more hard of hearing. She sighed when I brought it up, but agreed to do the hearing test again in preparation for getting hearing aids. We'll see. I'm hopeful about it.

After more driving around Berkeley we had a small dinner at a tiny restaurant, Sushi Banzai. It was surprisingly empty. Mom got the two things she wanted, tekka-maki and cucumber sunomono, and I had hamachi-kama and rolls of una-kyu and negi-hama. As we left the waitress gave mom both a carnation and a mylar "Happy Mother's Day" balloon. Mom was grinning and so pleased as I had her wait in front of the restaurant to take a picture. A customer came out and offered to take a pic of us both, which was nice.

Happy Mother's Day, mom! And Happy Birthday to me!

(Mom had gotten the new mobile phone a couple of days before and I did the activation and programming, then went over to see her today after running some errands. She hasn't quite gotten the hang of the new flip phone, so we'll need to work on it.)