Recently making the rounds on Facebook is a picture of an old pickup with a skeleton in the driver’s seat and the narrative is – ‘This is what happens when you ask the wife to choose where to eat out’.

To me the big point is, why are they looking for a place to eat other than at home?

We in this country have what I call an overabundance of eats – in other words, too many choices for those times you are looking to have a meal.

Another question I ask is when can we consider they have too many choices?

Where I live, we maybe have 13,500 everyday, 24/7 residents – can you take a gander on how many eateries we have.  I count 43 places beyond your own kitchen to have a meal, and that is not including the sandwich’s one may find at a Casey’s or Kwik Shop.  This number includes five places to have pizza, 16 that should be considered fast food and 17 which I would call family style, sit down to eat places to have your next meal.

An interesting point about our community and the choices of places to eat – all but seven are found in just two portioned off areas.  Of the 43 places, we find 20 of them are on what I would call the East side or out by the interstate interchange.  Downtown is where I count 16, with the North side having four and what I call the West side has just three, the lonely folks would have to be the South side of town where we find zero choices other than your own home kitchen.

So sometimes I wonder what the count would be if I knew how many residences ate at home five-or-six meals of a seven-day week.  Would we find the south side folks doing more cooking their own meals compared to the other areas and if they were would it have anything to do with the lack of eateries on their side of town and having to drive further to eat out?

But then again, curiosity would have me wanting to know just how often families in general eat out during a seven-day period, counting 2 meals per day.

Would I be mad if the percentage of them being a higher number (for me that would be eating out more than once or twice in a seven-day period) than I would think – probably not, simply because I know society has changed and taking or having the time to put together a full family meal and then have the time to all eat together – is becoming fast and fleeting within a family’s daily schedule of things to get done.

I guess what I am saying is that I feel like we may too many eateries within a short drive of our homes and maybe, just maybe this is forcing family time meals into being one of the demonstrated relics you find in a museum about human history.  The number of available places to eat out, to ability to find convenience over the work of cooking it yourself may just be getting to much of a common member of family routines – and I for one find that sad, as family time is many times very hard to come by and cooking together while eating together seems to be fleeting away.

A word of warning – the topic of food, eating at home and eating out are some of my favorite topics so reader beware it will be back again.

For now, that will do it, though this is a subject I am sure to come back to someday – that’s just the way I am.

And there you have it, a yapping in response to something I may have seen and either liked or disliked, a memory remembered or forgotten, or maybe just a general insight to the travel of life I was making that day.  Either way, ‘Grumpy Gramps’ tells it as he sees it – so enjoy, enlighten or just think about what I may yap about and if you want to feel free to respond.  You can catch me on Facebook under CrossDove Writer.

Oh, the ‘Grumpy Gramps’ comes from those moments when I spew out thoughts and opinions because I have been around the walk of life for a while and think someone needs to hear or read them.  Those moments sometimes come out a little less than calm and collected, it is those moments when the grandkids seem to cringe and say, ‘being grumpy, gramps’!!

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Prayers, blessings and happy thoughts – ‘Grumpy Gramps’.

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