haha
All I've got to say is it's a good thing I have such a low pulse, because, as expected, things are getting to be a smidge too ridiculous. For serious.
Before my mother left for work, she ducked in from Eleanor's house, where Lila and my other aunts are, and where she apparently had an explosive argument with the bride to be. Lila off-handedly said my mother and I should just drop by the sari store on thursday because she just realized she can't. See, she didn't realize that putting things off for the last week before your wedding meant that you'd actually be busy that last week. I need to explain to you that "just dropping by the sari shop" includes a 3 hour trek up to Queens (more than that if there's traffic) and then dealing with shoobie rush on the way back. I have to work, my mother panics driving in cities, and she isn't supposed to be taking her car rental out of state anyway. If someone even knick's her, she's in trouble with the rental place and her insurance company. Mom told her that. Apparently, mom told her everything and she had a response for each excuse.
"It's fifteen minutes away from your house. Why can't you bring them?"
"I have to travel with a lot of boxes and stuff when I come back down on thursday."
"Can't Jimmy bring some of the boxes down when he gets here?"
"No, he'll forget."
"Maria has to work and she already took off on friday to drive up there. She's taking off this friday and saturday for the wedding and rehearsal."
"Well, go up in the early morning."
"It's a three hour drive each way. There's going to be traffic, and we could get lost like we did on friday."
"She knows the way now since we were there on friday"
"No, she doesn't" [I don't - we got lost]
Let me tell you about what happened on friday. I didn't write about it because I didn't feel it was worth the rant. Basically, I had her driving directions in my had and was, in my opinion, following them well considering we weren't yet lost. As soon as we got into Manhattan, though, she whipped out her phone and said "Priscilla knows New York. I'll call her." Well, Priscilla got us lost for an hour and refused to answer our questions when we asked them. She did that thing that some people do when they don't know the answer to something, where they just answer questions you didn't ask to see if that passes. Man, it was so awesome.
You know, we drove right by the hotel I stayed in the last few nights I saw Kevin. It was kind of freaky. It was really freaky, and I was nervous about anyone in the car seeing me lose myself a little bit.
After I found the place (and I am totally going to take credit for that), I spent a good 15 minutes parking the car. What was supposed to be a short visit during which mum and I each said "I want that one" and got measured turned into a 2-hour ordeal. I overheard the girls in the store talking about what a bitch my aunts were the day before and I totally understood. Agh. I told the seamstress I was sorry about their impatience and assured them I inherited all of the calmness they somehow missed out on.
We got back into the car and I asked "okay, where do we go from here?" and Lila really just expected me to be able to find her house--not just Jersey City, no no, her house. When I finally got us to her city, she didn't recognize it and was telling me we were in the wrong place. I was on the phone getting directions and a tumour from 411 on my cell phone while she kept telling me the place doesn't look right. Well, we were just a few blocks away from her flat. Gah! I know a great deal of my hatred for people who refuse to not shut up when they don't have of value anything to say comes from my family. Noise polluters.
So, yeah.. that's the situation. It's really stressing my mother out, I can tell.
milquetoast
(noun) [MILK-toest']
1. a person of meek or timid disposition: "Is there no middle ground between macho and milquetoast single men?"
adjective form: milquetoasty
Origin:
Approximately 1938; from Caspar Milquetoast, a timid comic-strip character created in 1924 by Harold Tucker Webster.