Bizarro Week

Edit to add #6 below

Here is a recap of the strange events that transpired over the past week.

1. My mom and I were heading out to my sister's house for NYE and we took the toll road to get there. I had the 75 cents in my hand, ready to hand to my mom as we pulled up to the booth. I went to hand it to her and my hand got caught in my coat sleeve and I dropped the money, so I quickly got my wallet and got out a dollar bill to give to her, which she handed the booth worker, but she didn't have the ticket. I had seen her put it up in her visor, as we both do every time we take the toll road, and now it was gone. We looked around for a little bit and it was still nowhere to be found. The guy told us we could pull over to the side and look for it so we weren't holding up all the people in line behind us. I swear, we spent what felt like 10 minutes over on the side of the road looking for this stupid ticket. I was ready to just say fuck it and pay the entire fee, but my mom was adamant that we find it. It had to be there! With the help of a flashlight, we finally found the stupid thing under her seat in the back. How it ended up there is a mystery. Best guess is that when I dropped the money down my sleeve, she dropped the ticket to look for the money. Or something. It was frustrating, but we got a good laugh out of it.

2. The activities of NYE were also rather strange. My sister belongs to a message board for local moms and they were having a contest to win $1000 worth of groceries. She had a list of 17 letters and they needed to be unscrambled to form a phrase. The first person to guess correctly after midnight would win. This is what we worked on almost all night long. My mom figured it out first and we were pretty confident with our answer (Cleveland Moms Rock). At 12:00 we weren't watching the ball drop and drinking champagne, we were huddled around the computer screaming "Post it! Did you do it? Are we the first?!" Heh. I don't think they've received official word yet, but we were definitely the first post at midnight, so it looks like we won. My sister said she would give my mom and me $100 each. Yay!

3. I went out with my mom on Saturday because she needed to look for a new car. She wanted to get a car wash, so we stopped off there first. This is one of those car washes attached to a gas station, but she didn't need gas, so she was just going to pay at the wash instead of getting a code from the pump. Well of course it wouldn't accept any bills, even though they were perfectly crisp and straight. It was kind of sunny out and impossible to see the screen because of the glare. She tried a credit card, but that wasn't working either. The stupid machine kept saying to input your code or money, or push the button for assistance. Except there was no button to push! One of the things that drives me nuts about my mom is that she will do the same thing over and over and over and over again and expect something different to happen. We sat there for like 5 minutes, making all of the people in line behind us pissed off, and she just kept blindly pushing buttons and trying to insert money. I wanted to strangle her. Eventually, she gave up and pulled through, but of course we couldn't just leave. She wanted to go in and buy a code. *sigh* So she gets that and then pulls back around to the wash, where there is now a huge line because of the moron who held up the line for so long. After about 1/2 hour fiasco, the car was finally clean and we were on our way.

4. We got to the dealership and sat down to talk about her options (either buy the car she has now, or look at a new lease) when the salesman says "Hey, if you guys want to get crazy today, we just got this Sebring convertible on a trade-in. Wanna check it out?" Umm, ok. Funny thing is the Sebring convertible has always been my mom's dream car. This one was an '02, but it only had 21,000 miles on it. It belonged to an old lady who only drove it in the summer to run errands and stuff. It was in really good shape, and the salesman guy kept gushing about it. He must've said "Mint!" about 20 times. We took it out for a test drive (see #5) and I could tell that my mom was probably going to buy this car. She was really excited about it. Now, I should also say that earlier she had told me under no circumstances was I to let her make a final decision on anything that day. And I did my best to remind her of this, but she was under the car's spell. So after about 10 bazillion hours in the dealership (it was a really long day) my mother bought a convertible in the dead of winter. *shakes head*

5. Now, about that test drive. We tooled around a little bit, took it for a drive on the highway, and everything seemed good. We were returning to the dealership when all of a sudden, there are 2 deer running across the road. Oh wait, now one of them is FLYING through the air. It did like 3 somersaults and was at the height of the power lines. My eyes were bugging out and my mom's screaming. At that moment it occurred to me to look at the car that had hit it (it wasn't us, thank god) and this van was demolished. The entire front windshield was cracked to shit and there was a huge dent on the hood. We pulled over into a parking lot and another deer came and ran across the road. We were scrambling for our cell phones to call 911, and my mom is yelling at me to put the hazards on, but this isn't my damn car and I don't know where they are and I can't find them! Then I got out of the car and saw that the driver was out of his car and he had a phone in his hand so I called over to ask if he was ok and he said yes. Phew! That was freaking scary. I also looked back to see what had happened to the deer, and it was gone! We couldn't believe that it had survived that hit! Insane. Another 2 seconds, and we might've been the ones to hit the deer.

6. On Friday, I decided I needed to get some cleaning done. I loaded up the dishwasher and started it and then went back to clean my bathroom. I scrubbed out the tub and toilet, and then I went to get a step stool so I could get something from the top shelf in my closet. My entire living room and dining room smelled like burnt candle wax and it was a little smokey. I was freaking out! I ran around the house looking for anything that could be on fire. I thought maybe it was coming from one of the other apartments, but it was so strong, I was sure that my apartment was on fire and I just couldn't find it! Eventually I noticed a line of smoke coming from the dishwasher. I opened it up and discovered that one of my plastic lids had fallen through the bottom and was laying on the heating coil. I grabbed a pair of tongs and fished it out and all was well... Ya know, except for the horrendous smell and the fact that I almost had a fucking heart attack! Sheesh!

I'm ready for a nice normal week now, and I think I'll try to avoid doing anything with my mom for a while. LOL. Except I have to go with her to pick up the car tomorrow night. Uh oh.