Wow, what a weekend. I am a lot calmer now writing, but during the entire weekend I was pretty much crying and shit-fitting and yelling and desperately wanting a drink. Car buying is fucking hard even when you are doing it the easy way, apparently.

I went home Friday night to see a play in Castro Valley, "Social Security," because my mom knows someone in the show and wanted to introduce her to me. Wow, her friend was good, along with the guy who played her husband. Their expressions and humor and general "can you believe this shit!?" looks going on throughout the show were adorable. And even though the husband is prone to making pervy remarks about his hot-to-bone niece, his relationship with his wife is still pretty darned cute, especially at the end when they are, ahem, briefly let alone. I met both of them after the show and they were very cool. (Mom asked later if her friend would ever date him IRL, and ah, he turns out to be gay and taken. Darn it twice!) I am ah....apparently the loudest laugher on the face of the earth or something... but the guy playing the husband thought it was great and that I should be at every show. Hah, so there. Also, come on, you're supposed to laugh at a comedy.

The play is about a NYC art dealing couple. The lady's frumpy housewife sister and her nerdy accountant husband (my mom pointed out to me that the guy also plays one IRL....and he even looks like an accountant I know) show up unexpectedly to (a) gripe about how the sisters's mother who lives with them is driving them crazy, and (b) how their 18-year-old daughter could never be gotten a hold of at her dorm room--they called every day at 7 a.m. and 11 p.m. and somehow she's always eating/in the shower/at class/in the library....The daughter later says she's boinking two dudes, and apparently told her dad what they were getting up to in Great Gory Detail. So naturally, these 1980's helicopter parents are gonna run up there and talk some sense into their baby...and we brought Mother in the car.

We get to see a little bit of the "Jewish mother from hell with a walker who refuses to take off her housecoat...and when she does, she just strips to her slip" act out of Mom....and then the husband brings home a famous 98-year-old artist. And Mom suddenly dresses up in sparkles and completely blows the artist's mind, and next thing you know they're running around doing awesome things and he's painted her picture and they'll probably head off to France soon. And the mom suddenly becomes awesome and fun and sharp because she has a reason to live again. It's adorable, I gotta say. (Especially since in this play in the last scene, Mom has a sparkling silver suit and pink spotted sunglasses.) Don't we all wish some miracle like that would happen to us?

The other play I saw this weekend was "A Chorus Line," which I saw at the same theater ages ago. I won't go into that as much since most people have heard of it, but it was a good show (even if it had some sound issues). I still love the "Nothing" song in particular, that's a cool one. It's kind of a depressing show in a way, but it's interesting, you know?

Also, some shopping was done. I bought books....and spent waaaaaaaaaaaaay more money than I intended to, darn it, because Mom wanted me to buy hers too and given how much stuff she gets me, I cannot argue with this. Sigh. So much for restraint...well, at least I skipped buying three hardback books, so there is that. Still want those books, but will wait or whatever.

That was the good portion of the weekend. The not-so-good portion was me flipping out about buying car insurance. I was freaking the hell out about her being ready to sell it Sunday, which meant that I had to pick an insurance NOW and preferably get it bought SATURDAY. That last bit did not go so well. I also told one of my friends about the situation and she was all, "Call my guy at (redacted 'cause I am not getting paid to plug companies)," and I was all, "Look, I am out of time to waffle around and dither and compare costs at companies any more, I am going to go with (company my dad used to work for, we still know people there) because it's easier and throwing out a fourth option at the last minute is only making me more crazy right now," and then ah...she kind of yelled at me over the Internet. Sigh.

Anyway, on Saturday we attempted to go to Dad's Company during their weekend open hours. Since Mom was involved in driving my ass there, it was a weekend, and she tends to run late, we got there...I think about 45 minutes before they closed, and the lone agent around already had four people in line ahead of us. So obviously that wasn't going to work, and Mom and I kept....well, nastily and embarrassingly fighting in the lobby. I'm pretty ashamed of myself now, but she kept pushing me and saying, "What do you WANT?" all day, and between all of the various numbers and other confusing insurance crap I have been trying to compare for the last two weeks, my answer to that was, "I want to cry. I want to get drunk. I want to not deal with this shit," but obviously I couldn't get that one. I needed some space from discussing this, but cars and money are Serious Business in my gene pool and Mom wouldn't let up and I was kind of going out of my tiny little mind. FUN TIMES. So, basically we had that discussion off and on for two days, and I really wanted to get drunk except my self-control was already pretty weak and why make it worse when I can't be alone to calm down.

I went home early-ish today--we arrived here around 4:15 because I was going to (a) attempt to go to a craft fair (which I missed making it to in time) and (b) I was going to meet up with L to do the car stuff. Now, what with the insurance not being bought on Saturday and L wanting to get a hold of a friend one last time on Sunday, we had decided to put it off until Monday. So we were kind of up here early-ish for no reason after all :P So I sat Mom down at my laptop and had her look at everything insurance-wise. For the record, I did check company #4's prices and they were pretty much around the same ilk as the companies my dad didn't work for. All three of those end up being more expensive than the other company (I had Mom look at the math for all of them because at this point I don't trust myself worth crap), so...fuck it, Dad's Company wins. Okay then. I will call the guy tomorrow.

There was massive ugly traffic going on leaving my neck of the woods to go to the Bay Area this afternoon and evening...so to kill time, Mom wanted to go to Trader Joe's and Cost Plus and stuff like that. Imagine my amusement when we ended up parking next to L's car and spotted her on a bench outside on the phone. She had tried to go to the Bay Area for that dinner, but the traffic leaving was just too slow and miserable, so she gave up. So I talked about car stuff with her, decided that we'd do the paperwork Tuesday (whew), and she showed me how to change the back light bulbs and how to check the tires and stuff like that. Then she went out with Mom and I to dinner and that went lovely. It was a good farewell dinner there.

So happily, I am a lot calmer and less OMGWTFBBQ about everything at the moment. You know, at least until tomorrow when I actually have to take action on things....

previous entry - next entry
archives - current entry