I saw Jesus on Picnic Day. No, seriously, there was some guy with long brown hair wearing a white robe, a blue stole, and a backpack strolling down past the Gap. I only wish I'd had the time to snap a picture from the car.

Picnic Day was...large and crazy, but not too crazy in my experience. I did see fire trucks and sirens and ambulances going by twice (once on campus in the morning and once downtown in the afternoon), but other than that it wasn't too nuts that I saw. I saw a few lawn/house parties going on outside, but thankfully my neighbors didn't throw any parties for a change. We are located just outside the boundary of the area where cops were REALLY cracking down on shit, so it could have happened, but it didn't. I did see some cops lurking behind my block the night before, though. You definitely see a lot more cops around these days than I did back when I was a student. As someecards pointed out, it was a less embarrassing weekend than the one Reese Witherspoon had.

Mom and Mauricio came up for Picnic Day this year. I'd say that this year's theme was "acquiring free plants." I have never tried to do so before, but Mom enjoyed picking up free tomato and strawberry plants...even if I doubt she'll even get around to planting them, much less having them survive. The rest of us live in apartments, so as far as I'm concerned, they're all her responsibility for dealing with. I also got 2 servings of liquid nitrogen ice cream, which pleased me greatly. If you've never had it, it's like a lighter version of a malt. Delicious and fluffy. We also went by the Craft Center, where Mom watched some demos and chatted with managers. I signed her and him up for a weekend class in a few weeks as a birthday/Mother's Day present. We'll see if they show up, but at least I tried. I have been trying to come up with Alternate Ways To Kiss Mom's Butt For Abandoning Her On Mother's Day (AGAIN), so so far they boil down to "celebrate the weekend before, even though technically that still won't count" and "ask Mauricio to take her out on Mother's Day if he can/is in town so she's less brooding about it." We watched some doxies race and Mom bought stuff in the bookstore. I wanted to go to the Battle of the Bands, but Mauricio insisted on going home and passing out for 3 hours instead.

Mostly I spent that 3 hours talking to Jess on the phone (my birthday presents came in the mail and were awesome, plus we discussed past Picnic Days, like when the town was all hippies), and dealing with baby drama. My cousin Alicia had her baby like a week and a half early--that kid is gonna be sharing his birthday with Picnic Day like every weekend for the rest of his life. (I'm sure my aunt is super-thrilled at YET ANOTHER APRIL BIRTHDAY there. She gets very gripey in April at all of us having birthdays in the same month.) We got him a "Cow Tipping Team" onesie in his honor...which my aunt promptly bitched about because "we have lots of 3 month sizes already." Mom was all, "They only HAD the one size," and I thought, "You know what, I can understand your wanting a bigger size, BUT THEY DIDN'T EFFING HAVE ANY, so maybe just be polite about it?" If it had been me who paid for it, I would have just freaking taken it back after that little snit.

I have the impression that becoming a grandmother has brought the super cranky out in my aunt somehow. During the day, out of the many baby-related texts Mom got, one of them said to go visit her in the hospital today before she goes home tomorrow. This did not happen, much to my relief, because Drama Was Going On. I gather the baby's father's family came to visit and my aunt was annoyed about them taking all of her grandmother spotlight or something, grumbling about how they kept saying that the baby looks like him rather than her. (How can you tell? It's a BABY. You really can't tell who they resemble right off the bat.) So it was deemed that we would not go see the baby this weekend...and possibly not next weekend either since the in-laws are returning then too. I have the impression that my aunt is jealous/annoyed that she isn't getting all the FIRST GRANDCHILD attention-- "it's their FIFTH grandchild!" seems to be the attitude going around. Uh, it's still the first grandchild out of her son, she is still excited about it. I heard her say so, she's not all bored and jaded about it yet. At any rate, Mom is going to be around for the next couple of weekends and I'm sure the baby will still be a baby then. Besides, we're like, third (Mom) or fourth (me) tier relatives and there is no need or justification for the likes of us to be swarming in on day 2 of the baby's life when the mother would probably rather not everyone cram in all in at once anyway.

The next day, Mom and I were on a phone/Skype call with my cousin Matt (the other one with a baby these days) and Mom was going on about how why can't the two sides get along and share? This got me flat out angry and I said right then and there that Mom would do the exact same thing if I were married, and she couldn't even deal with me having boyfriends way back in the day. She then went on once again about how when I last had a boyfriend "I never visited them because I was always seeing him." I repeated once again that I visited them once a month SAME AS I EVER HAD BEFORE, I just spent my other weekends out of town more. But she blew that off, of course. And she seriously, genuinely wonders where this behavior comes from? Beats me, but clearly it's genetic.

Other than baby drama (sigh), Sunday was much calmer. I spent the afternoon trying to figure out how to fix one of my knitting projects that I am having whopping problems with, and went to knitting group, and watched television. It's nice to have unexpected moments of chilling out after a Mom visit without having to immediately go back to work.

Today is three weeks exactly until I'll be in LA...weird. I wonder what I'll be doing now at this time?

previous entry - next entry
archives - current entry