Lillordag: A Tale of Unfortunate Events

Project 365, Day 84/365

Yesterday (Tuesday), Charles declared that part of his lillordaging for today would ideally include some ice cream. listen, I told you that he’s the ice cream monster around here, and usually, I go along for the ride. As I’m trying to limit my dairy (not going full-on dairy-free just consciously choosing the times I partake instead of just sprinkling cheese on literally everything), I proclaimed that sure we could go as long as there were some vegan options. His favorite place in all of LA fit the bill, so we decided to add it to the list of lillordag activities.

We kept it loose and free, not deciding on any specific time to go out. As Charles reminded me, it was my turn to pick food and his turn to pick a movie (“according to your blog, the person who picks a movie doesn’t get to pick the take out” he reminded me hahaha), so I landed on a smorgasbord from a nearby dumpling house. This is my PSA to consume soup dumplings whenever you have the chance to. These in particular aren’t my favorite (that honor does to Din Tai Fung), but they do the trick for being 3 minutes up the road. Well, except it’s supposed to be 3 minutes. Today, it took us nearly 10 to get there after a series of misfortunate turns. “Sometimes, I really hate this city,” Charles said after looping around the block the THIRD time to try to get into the parking lot.

As we settled in and I cracked open the garlic vinegar sauce for my Xiaolongbao, a little bit of it splash on my palm, sending searing pain signals. Hm…what was happening there? I presume that I cut a clean slice into my left palm as I was trying to open the bottle of rosé that we decided to partake in. Cool. No big deal, it’s lillordag! I gave it a clean and moved on with my meal.

Halfway through the movie, we decided to pause and head out for ice cream, as it was approaching 9. This place, in particular, we were headed, it would be open for a few more hours but no amount of lillordag could keep work from coming the following day.

It took a few tries at me pawing on the numbers on the garage door keypad to realize the power must have been out back there. Was that a sign? Should we stay home? Welcome to my neuroses. I fumbled around the back to try to locate my avocado plantings that I realize had gone missing from their spot, and by the time I turned around, Charles had manually opened the door and was backing the car out. Welp, guess nothing’s keeping that man from his ice cream tonight.

We park, I can feel the excitement bubbling over from the driver’s seat and we take the short stroll over to the ice cream shop. “Wait…why isn’t the door open?” Charles said. “Wait…why are their lights off?!?” I said. I’m pretty sure we both said, at the same moment collectively “WAIT! WHY ARE THEY CLOSED?” A couple in similar distress was skulking around the front. “I’m SO PISSED!” said the woman, holding up her phone to confirm they weren’t supposed to be closed. “Where else are we supposed to get ice cream around here?” the man asked us. We threw out some suggestions, but all four of us understood each others’ disappointments through our shared grunts…we would not be getting the ice cream any of us wanted that night, and we were bummed. WHY LILLORDAG, WHY?!? Had this been a cartoon, Charles would have played the part of a deflating balloon.

“Well, there’s the other location, we can just go there,” I said to him, knowing it was well out of the way. “It’s so far, and your blog…you need to get home to write it,” he said back. “It’s lillordag, let’s get your ice cream,” I replied.

“You can’t use lillordag as a reason for everything,” he said.

“You bet I can,” I said back.

“No, let’s just go to the other place close by…” he said, but I knew he was making a concession for me. We did it anyway.

We proceeded to hop back in the car, take a quick drive up the neighborhood, and by some chance, a bit of luck we hadn’t been served at any other point in our lillordag evening, we found a very close parking spot.

“Are you all ready to order?” the woman at the counter asked us. We weren’t ready. As I was scanning the menu, trying to figure out the vegan flavor that would be the most non-vegan tasting (I like chocolate stuffed chocolate type flavors, so…it was going to be an uphill battle for me), I heard excitement re-enter Charles’ voice. “Plain pretzels,” he read. “They have pretzels!” The man loves a crunchy salted pretzel topping on his ice cream. Phew, he was okay again.

“Nooo…that says praline pretzel.” Oh, Charles. You just can’t win tonight.

I saw something that caught my eye that had the words “cookie” and “strawberry” in the title, and I was assured it tasted like a homemade strawberry Poptart. “Or like strawberry shortcake,” the keeper of the ice cream keys said. Sold. She was busy perfecting my scoop atop my sugar cone when I heard Charles ask for his flavor to the other person behind the counter. “Oh, I’m sorry, we’re actually sold out of that tonight.”

I turned to meet his eyes with pity. CAN THE MAN GET HIS ICE CREAM?!? “We need to get home quick, before something bad happens to us,” he said to me as a half joke. Nothing was going right…the universe was trying to keep us from ice cream, clearly, but it wasn’t going to win. “I’ll do the vanilla, I guess,” he settled. With no plain pretzel toppings for him, sadly.

As I took the first bite of my non-dairy concoction, it tasted purely of coconut. Not the least bit like a homemade strawberry Poptart, unless the Poptart were actually a cold icy coconut.

The good news? Charles enjoyed his vanilla. For the love of god, he enjoyed his vanilla.

And that dear readers, is the story of this week’s lillordag. Was is a bit of a disaster? Yes, it was. But did we laugh our way through it…we mostly did.

See you tomorrow, friends.