This Weekend

In my attempt to get out of the house I went out with my parents. They were making a trek to a Wal-Mart in New Jersey where my dad can get cheaper prescriptions. With the cost of gas and tolls over the George Washington Bridge I'm not sure getting his meds in Jersey is really the smart economical choice but my parents use the opportunity to do something other than sit on the couch, buy cheap stuff, and of course eat at some restaurant they enjoy but can only get on the other side of the Hudson.

So here we are, sister in tow, eating at Fuddruckers. A family tradition though I've moved from burgers to chicken in a lame attempt to make "the smart choice". We eat, we schmooze, we all climb into the car to head to Wal-Mart. Somewhere on Route 17 South a massive bang occurs and the very noisy Geo Prism turns into the insanely loud Geo Prism that is dragging something. We pull into a Holiday Inn parking lot. Now everyone goes quiet because this of course is not what we want to occur and I'm thinking: Great. My dad is an awesome help when you need him but he's really not good in pressure situations. He gets too hot-headed and can't think and yells and screams at everyone.

My dad and I (because my mom and sister are princesses) get out of the car and onto our knees and some cylindrical part with a pipe leading all the way to the muffler is hanging onto the ground. I'm all about going to find some duct tape and wiggling under the car and taping that sucker up and just heading home. But it's not to occur. The car is insanely low to the ground and even if I could drop the 8 pounds that I'd love to be rid of I still wouldn't fit under this thing.

We call AAA. Of course they are "sooooo helpful". First they can't help us because we're in New Jersey and we can't tell them what county we're in to get transferred to a New Jersey operator. Then we find out what county we're in (I guessed correctly but we double check with a guy in the parking lot) and they can't help us yet because our membership is expired. Then we begin to renew it and the cell phone blanks out and my dad gets all pissed and curses and swears his phone just died.

Then we call back and go through the whole county transferring thing again and we're about to renew and the phone blanks out and my dad curses and screams and throws his phone onto the floor, all the while the call is still going on and the woman is like "Uh...Hello...are you there?"
So my dad gets fired from talking on the phone and my mom takes over.
You get the drift.

After three cell phones, a credit card charge, a call to the Aunt who lives in Jersey, a discussion with the friendly (no sarcasm, they were very nice) Holiday Inn front desk, a crack-head, insanely unhelpful tow truck driver, a lot of petty bickering between me and my mom, a couple of "oh my God he's so freaking cute" about my cousin Tony's adorable 2 year-old, we finally end up in front of our apartment building.

Big thanks to my cousin Tony, his adorable wife Yvette, and their son who really is the cutest thing ever. He didn't do any of the driving but he did provide some cute little 2 year-old babble.

Sunday morning I spent with my dad on the couch waiting for my mom's macaroni and cheese to finish baking. We ended up watching a Millionaire Matchmaker marathon on Bravo which was fun because my dad totally got into it. (He was a HUGE fan of that old show on UPN back in the day, Blind Date. A couple would go on a ridiculous date and bubbles of trivial information about them would pop up on the screen. Very VH1 pop-up video-esque.)

After stuffing my face I had to get out of the house but didn't want to set foot on the A train so I walked over to the Boogie-Down Bronx and hit up Marshall's. I bought jeans I'll probably return, an ankle-length dress only appropriate for the hot summer days but I also bought this AMAZING cocktail dress. It fit me perfectly (which just doesn't happen to me and my hips and tummy) and two people were like "Oh I love that dress! and it was the only one so I had to get it. Sadly, I have abso-freaking-lutely nothing to wear it too. At all. So sad.