So, this year's Whole Earth/Mother's Day/birthday extravaganza:

Friday/Saturday: On Friday I happily left work early to avoid answering the phones and to go hang out with hippies, though I did pal around with a coworker during her lunch break and chatted with a few more I ran into, and hung out with Dawn after she got off work. I got a bunch of fancy rocks, a terrarium for Mom, some earrings, and some very cool clothes. At my favorite tie-dye vendor, I got a rainbow cotton velvet long-sleeved shirt and a rainbow pair of zip-off legged pants with tons of pockets. I love zip-off pants (especially in the season of "who the hell knows what the weather is going to be like," which certainly covered this weekend), but they are usually sold in ugly colors. I was so excited to find these, you have no idea. And then I found a new booth this year that offered a reversible skirt that I liked BOTH sides of, which is incredibly rare. They also sold a skirt-ish thing along the same lines with a belt pouch/pocket built in! And I found another Guatemalan waist belt, which thrilled me no end because those are incredibly hard to find. So, it was a good haul.

Merry was working a booth this year--she's involved in a tea enterprise that's kind of along the lines of Tupperware (i.e. there are booths and parties). I visited her a few times at it on Saturday and got lunch for us at one point. I also tie-dyed a shirt because there was a booth set up for that. Huzzah. Not my best work ever, but what the heck.

Of course I had to leave early due to Mom stuff. I left mid-afternoon....but it started raining heavily around 4 p.m. for about 20 minutes or so out of nowhere, not predicted, nothing. What the fuck? Much as I normally whine about this topic, here isn't Hawaii and we don't HAVE sudden 5-minute rainstorms here. I would like to point out, for the record for later, that my car had no problems with this.

So I got into town to meet up with Mom and everyone going to the fake Beatles show. It turned out there were two birthday girls in the group--another friend of Mom's (last seen at the Deacon Dave's trip) had her birthday the day before. We went to the fancy tapas restaurant that's new in the olde hometowne. Mom took me there for takeout a few months ago, so I knew ahead of time to NOT GO THERE HUNGRY. The food is tasty and all, but why the tiny portions? Seriously, as a Taurus I find that irritating. But whatever.

The concert was very good. They had three major costume changes: the early 60's, Ed Sullivan, black suits and mop heads, all high school love songs phase. the late 60's terrible suit wearing, acid trip, "Yellow Submarine," everyone has a mustache now phase. the 70's phase where everyone started wearing different clothes and everyone else dressed nicer than Lennon. I wore more tie-dye to it, which delighted my mom's friend Tom and he ran off to bust out his tie-dye socks for the occasion. Tom is adorable.

They also had... a fifth Beatle. No, seriously, there's a fifth guy on the stage, similarly dressed, hiding in the back. Sometimes singing/clapping/tambourine playing was going on, and he might have had a keyboard back there (I could never tell due to equipment blockage), but.... um, if you're re-enacting the Beatles, you guys can't do the same sound that they did on stage with four dudes? Were they trying to bring back Stuart Sutcliffe? WHAT IS THE DEAL?! I desperately want to know, but much to my annoyance, this group does not have a website of any sort, and the supposed organization that puts on their shows doesn't mention them at all on their website. This article was the best I found on them, for the record, but no fifth Beatle was mentioned. I think they introduced the guy at the end, but I thought they were introducing the guy who played Lennon (I guess he was also named John) and then was all, "Wait, what?!"

Mother's Day was surprisingly okay for being a totally unplanned day. We went to see the Grand Budapest Hotel at the local indie theater. I should probably explain that growing up, my town had a 2-screen theater and now has a giant fancy one down the street. The indie has survived somehow, and acquired a restaurant, and now has the option of you ordering food and sitting at a table within the movie theater (they took out some seats to add tables and even couches!), and they bring you food. Mom had mentioned wanting to try that out, so we did. It was fun, though I'd recommend freaking finishing your dinner by the time the lights went down because I don't know how you'd find the food after that.

The movie was interesting, albeit weird because Wes Anderson JUST DOES THAT. I think he's very odd, what with everything being as stilted as it is in his films. I can't exactly claim to be a fan of his because stilted is not my thing, but the plot was crazy fun to watch, and god knows Ralph Fiennes is having a blast as the cheerful bisexual, overly friendly concierge who gets framed for murder of one of his client/girlfriends. Mom wasn't as into it, which didn't surprise me--I did kind of wonder why she picked it! But whatever.

I am happy to report that Mom liked her presents, so whew on that. I got her a Beatles CD (as ah, done by the cast of Glee, DON'T JUDGE ME, IT'S PRETTY), a college transcript because she asked for it, a guitar pick with her face on it--thank you, L and that marvelous guitar pick punch, the terrarium, and a bunch of books. She seemed happy.

However. There was one buzzkill to the day. I mentioned my sunroof on my car, which I never mess with or use intentionally because wind is noisy as fuck while driving and tends to make my hair stand on end. She decided that it was "sticking up funny" and it MUST, MUST, MUST, BE LEAKING even though I said that I'd driven through rain on the way here and it was fine. As usual, she did not believe me whatsoever because I'm a total freaking liar or something. And she kept nagging me, "Are you going to fix it? Are you going to fix it?" I said multiple times that no, it was fine, leave it alone. As per her usual, she can't leave anything alone, so she decided to climb on my car and somehow proceeded to BREAK SOMETHING off the sunroof, presumably the piece that keeps the weather out. She claims it was already broken. Oh yeah, and that someone must have been trying to break into the car through the roof. I know you can't yell at your mom on the all sacred day of Mother's Day, or her birthday, but ARGHHHHHHHHHHHH.

You know what? I am tired of being lectured about how I don't set boundaries with my mother. It's not that I don't try, but she doesn't respect them worth a damn when she's decided that she'll do what she wants. Such as insisting on fixing something that wasn't broken--and then breaking it in just the way she was trying to fix it. Oh yeah, and she knows nothing about cars, so fuck if I know how she was going to "fix it." To make a geek reference about people who don't respect the rules to get what they want: RED WEDDING. Or an even older geek reference: immortals killing each other on holy ground. Just because it's taboo doesn't mean you're safe and that everyone will obey, ahem. Or in this case, just because I said no a billion times doesn't mean she'd listen. Too bad my shrink is out of town, therapy this week would be fun good times.

So now the car WILL leak in the rain, and wind is whooshing loudly into the car through the roof once I go over 50 miles per hour. Which was a lovely LOUD RACKET, WITH SHRIEKING WHISPERING ON TOP OF IT, for the hour and a half drive home. It made it very difficult to listen to the radio or anything else, and it was making me crazy. And pissed off. Very pissed off. I pulled off the road to try sticking rags in the sunroof crack She was all, "I'll "help" fix it," but when she said that, she sure as hell didn't mean paying for the repairs. Instead she called around dealers in the olde hometowne...um, yeah, thanks, that's super helpful, I'd love to take another loud, windy ride home right now just for that.

I've mentioned in the auto mechanics class posts that there's going to be two makeup classes and I've had a bitch of a time trying to get CC makeup shifts for it. Well, her suddenly breaking the car has made trying to go to that a priority. Thankfully, the magic kicked in and I managed to get a last minute makeup shift for Monday night, so I'll be showing up for Thursday makeup. I went to Napa Auto Parts before the shift started and asked the guy there if I needed to order a replacement part for the car. He was all, "It looks like it was glued on. Ask Dave if he has any glue." So I guess for the moment I don't need to order a replacement part, and he said I could order one on Wednesday and have it for Thursday (really?!) if I end up needing to replace the entire sunroof or something. God, I hope not. But maybe this won't be as horrible/expensive to fix as expected?

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