I like to eat. I figure most people do. It’s a sure cure for hunger they say but beyond that it’s also quite enjoyable most times. So I like to eat.

Occasionally I like to go out to eat or perhaps splurge a bit and instead of making myself lunch at home, to go out and have someone else do the making for me and take that home home instead. And, of course, I enjoy taking my wife out now and then as well.

At least I used to.

Don’t take that wrong now, I still like to take my wife out now and then. The problem lies in the simple fact that there’s no longer anywhere to take her to.

I’ll explain.

A long time ago I wrote a post about what ya’ ain’t got around here in the Northeast Kingdom. The title said it all and it’s gotten worse since then. Especially in the area of food and the restaurants in which to get it.

There was once a lovely little family restaurant just small jaunt away from the house that Laurie and I loved to go to for breakfast or for the traditional Saturday night prime rib special but we hardly limited our visits to only that. It was the kind of place where the waitresses knew you by your first name and the food was actually quite good. Standard diner/family restaurant fare but the cook really knew what he was doing.

They even had a model train on an elevated track that they ran around the place during the Christmas holidays.

Now I go there to pay my auto insurance. I swear I can still get a whiff of bacon, eggs and hash browns if I stand just in the right spot. There’s a copy machine where our favorite table used to be. I hate it when I have to go down there every month to pay the bill—I get all choked up.

All that’s left now is McDonalds, Wendy’s, Subway and a local Chinese restaurant. I don’t like McDonalds, Laurie can’t tolerate Wendy’s but I like the fish sandwich they serve so that’s the occasional lunch taken care of.

Except that they’ve stopped serving it.

I went through the drive thru today and they told me they no longer serve a fish sandwich. I guess with the economy the way it is they couldn’t afford to pay people to go out and fish any longer.

So now it’s down to Subway and the Chinese restaurant and you can only tolerate so much Chinese. Too much and you start retaining water. And I’m sorry but a quiet night out at Subway just doesn’t cut it. We’d settle on a Ponderosa Steakhouse but we don’t have one of those either. I think the nearest one is in Connecticut.

There are 2 other restaurants in town that I haven’t bothered to mention simply because they serve mediocre food for outrageously high prices. There’s several well off folks we have around here that patronize these places because it makes them feel…well…it makes them well off. They also bring their well off, out-of-State friends to these places so that they can show them there’s classy places to eat all the way up here in the boonies even though there really isn’t.

So pickings are getting awfully slim around here as far as places to eat are concerned. So I think that once the holiday season is over and the “long haul” sets in, I’ll plan on taking my wife on a bit of a holiday.

To somewhere we can eat.

Nearly two years now since my disabilities forced me from the working class and you’d think I’ve become used to used to this new “life in the slow lane”—but I’m not. Sure, the effects of these disabilities, especially the one which recently required surgery, kept me down and out but it didn’t stop me from getting frustrated with the whole mess.

Now it’s down to taking the time to get back on my feet from the surgery itself. Once I do that I’ll have to bounce going back to work against progressive deafness and the increasing chronic pain due to a back injury (limits me to light labor only). This would be no problem if I was say about 230 miles farther south than I am since work opportunities there for my type of folks are much more plentiful shall we say than up here near the border of Canada even in this day and age. But up here I am and up here I stay so I’ll just have to deal with it when the time comes (there is plenty of advantages in living up here though, both present and future, aside from lack of employment opportunities).

The problem with combination of living here and the idea of possible employment is that this town has one of the highest unemployment rate in the state of Vermont (17.8%). The other problem is the majority jobs that are available often require heavy labor which leaves me right out of the picture. The other types of jobs require a CDL which I can’t get, being an adult supervisor to troubled kids/impaired adults with behavioral problems (uh…no thanks) or being a certified nurse (nope). I also don’t have a teacher’s certification and that about wraps it up for available jobs around here.

I’m not really belly aching about this as I still have a ways to go before I can even begin to consider working again but once in awhile I just have to get things of this nature off my chest and that’s what this blog’s all about.

In the meantime, I just wish it would stop raining long enough to let me finish mowing the lawn.