#15

Last Friday I worked a double shift on six hours of sleep and when I finally get home my mother wants to take my brother out for his birthday- which no one wants to go to plus my brother's birthday was the week before. Now it's pushing nine o'clock. I'm tired and starving (a really bad combo for me). No one will pick a place to go, and because it's Friday and my catholic mother isn't eating meat until Jesus turns into a zombie. So we get in the car ANYWAY without a destination and proceed to drive around for about 45 minutes to an hour. My brother just wants to sleep, his girlfriend looks miserable, I'm passing out in the back seat and my mother is getting pissed. So logically, my mom, while at a red light right at the exit of the BQE just goes "Forget this!" jumps out of the car and books it to the bus stop. My brother follows her for a bit but since this is Northern Blvd. we have to go faster than three MPH. He pulls into the Dunkin Donuts, gets out while Paula and I wait in the car chit-chatting about Chicken Soup for the Alcoholic Soul. We make an executive decision about where to go (after she tells me that Red Lobster has cheesy bread- I've never been there and this sounds like a great combination of two things I love.) and drive around to the bus stop when neither my brother or mother come back after 20 minutes.
Now, I'd like to say that this is the first time my mother has done this, but then I'd be a liar- and I don't like to lie. Lies are poison, like margarine, I don't want it in my body. This is my life people. This is my family. We were just lucky this time, the last time she went all AWOL she was driving the damn car. And if you've never contemplated your family's mental stability you definitely start to when you're sitting in a driver-less car on Broadway with your two siblings all with the same "what the fuck?" face on.

Next,

Okay, the weekly trivia question at work was: What U.S. war was 105-year-old Hiram Cronk the last living veteran of, until 1905?
The answers given were: War of 1812 (which is correct), the Civil War, the Mexican-American War and World War I.
Just wow, people. I get that the Mexican American war and Civil War were at least in the same century, but World War I? Are you freaking kidding me? That just makes no sense. He was 105-years-old in 1905, NINE years before World War I even started. That's just stupid. Stupid with stupid filling.
Ugh.