Chaos Attraction

A Busy NYE, For Once

2005-12-31, 10:01 p.m.

All things considered, it was a pretty busy New Year's Eve for me.

The day started out with finding out that my poor cousin Alicia had been dumped by her boyfriend of 3 years (longer than any relationship I ever managed), that she was going to start shacking up with this summer. (Shacking up and my aunt wasn't even going to have a cow about it?!) His family is a bunch of Jehovah's Witnesses, and I gather during the break they were ragging on him that he wasn't paying enough attention to them and too much to Alicia. Oh gee, WHERE HAVE I HEARD THAT BEFORE?! Anyway, he did the usual guy disappearing act for a week and she was freaking out, then he said "We have to talk" while she was still at Disneyland. The poor girl. Last year, the guy wanted to marry her.

Yes, I did take the opportunity at one point during the day to point out to Mom that she does the exact same thing that Travis's parents did. After a whole lot of "But Dave didn't thank me for gifts or open doors for your dad, blah blah I have justification for not liking your exes!" stuff, I finally got across the point that EVERY guy I ever dated that met them got the big hint that she was jealous of their getting any attention out of me. She finally ended up apologizing for that.


In other news, in case you hadn't heard, the Bay Area was having the STORM OF THE CENTURY!!! or some such going on on New Year's Eve. Buttloads and buttloads of rain and wind and lightning predicted to go on all day long. And you know that whole "This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System" they put on the TV periodically with this loud screeching noise that makes me run to mute the television? They actually USED THAT FOR REAL and specifically named MY TOWN as one that was getting alerted. That people should NOT leave their house for awhile because the storm was THAT BAD.

So I promptly had a cow and said that uh, maybe we should cancel the day's plans, or at least not leave the house for an hour. Mom strongly disagreed with that, but then the storm shut off the landline phones and she ran around for an hour trying to fix them instead. Then we went over to Mauricio's for lunch. The drive over was weird. It was raining the whole time, but it switched every five minutes from normal rain to rain so hard the windshield wipers couldn't keep up with it, back to normal rain. So weird.

And when we got there, it stopped raining and was DRY and nice for the rest of the day. Go figure.

We had lunch with Mauricio and the girlfriend, which went surprisingly fine and non-weird. Go figure. Then she went to go take a nap before working that night, and he went off with us. We went into San Francisco and went to Pier 39, my favorite spot there. Much to my dismay, a lot of good stores were having closing sales. I ended up getting a $38 necklace for free because the owner accidentally snipped off the clasp instead of the price tag- though I think she did that because she was retiring and tomorrow was the last day the store would be open and at that point, who cares? I also got a double helix rainbow bracelet.

And...argh, I got harassed. As I was leaving a store (by myself, since the other two were being all slow and Mom wanted to leave ASAP to boot and I went on ahead), some guy was all, "Hey, you're moving fast. Why are you in such a hurry? Your purse is cute." In a decidedly creepy tone. I am just lucky he didn't outright chase me down the stairs, because he just sounded like he wanted to do something bad to me. I guess pretty much ignoring him worked...this time.

Cities scare me. The weirdoes in cities scare me. I am literally terrified to walk the streets of San Francisco. But Pier 39 is one of the few places that doesn't always have scary creeps wandering around. It felt safe for me to walk around the joint alone. But that feeling just got ruined.

*sigh*

After that, we headed out of the city and into Dublin to go to the movies. With a ten-minute visit to see Dad in between, which was at least short. Mom couldn't get Dad to respond, which freaked her out, but I didn't find that out until later.

I've decided that the best way to spend a New Year's without a party is to be watching a movie in a theater when midnight comes around, so you can forget what night it is. Plus it avoids the awkward kiss issue.

We saw The Producers and Rumor Has It. The Producers was...weird. I used to REALLY have issues with the weirdness of musicals as a kid- people just break out into song at random? With coordinated dancing? WTF? I mostly got over it, but the start of this movie brought that out in me more than ever. It's so utterly UNREAL. Matthew Broderick has a security blanket and acts so weird he freaks Nathan Lane out? The fuck? Strange, strange, strange. But I got into it about halfway through, or at least it worked better for me or something. It was a hoot once "Springtime for Hitler", Ulla seduces Leo, etc. started up.

There's a long sequence in there in which the Very Gay Director and his Cast Of Gay Staffers is introduced, and during that Mom whispered to me, "Remember how your dad didn't figure out that The Birdcage was full of gay people?" I whispered back, "Yeah, he wouldn't be too happy with this movie either."

(What can I say, the man is from Montana. Flamboyant weirded him out.)

As for Rumor Has It, that was actually pretty good. I heart Shirley Maclaine, who gets to drop lines like, "Go play with your dick." If one was trying to cast a grandmother for me in a movie, you'd have to cast Shirley, because we sure do act alike.

After midnight, we dropped Mauricio off and on the way home... well, Mom had a big ol' crying fit. I guess she was due. It went along the lines of "Mauricio is kind of a substitute for Dad...but I don't WANT a substitute for Dad...I know I should let him go, but... I caaaaaaaaaaaaaaan't!"

*sigh*

Happy New Year. Same old shit, different number in the year date.



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