After coordinating everything, we finally get in the truck to run errands: buy dog food, return steam cleaner, get starbucks. 3 stops.
Starbucks first, where they latch onto every single little starbucks bear there is in the store, and block the door talking about the "special edition" bears and how you can't get them in Washington, and the significance of the "special edition" bears, and how it isn't fair that they can't get certain bears at their stores... I herd them away from the door and toward the counter and order our drinks, while they continue their discourse on the "special edition" bears and the tags they use to have, but now they sew something onto the feet and EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.
On the way to Petsmart (a block away) we mention getting steaks to grill tonight... well, its M's birthday in a few days... actually over a month from now, and B wants to treat us all to dinner at a nice eating place, but not too nice since they only brought a few pairs of clothes, and since they don't know when they'll get back to see us again, since it has been FOUR YEARS since their last visit (which they bring up constantly... that wasn't there FOUR YEARS ago, and FOUR YEARS ago, gee that seems like a long time, I remember we went to eat...) FINE, where would you want to eat? Macaroni Grill... FINE! We'll go tonight.
Relatively safe visit at Petsmart, off to Costco we go. As I'm carting the broken steam cleaner toward Costco with M in tow (the guy's are behind us), she literally yells "Hey, isn't that the mexican gentleman we just saw at Starbucks", pointing at him as he walks no more than 5 feet away from us. I hide behind the cart.
As I'm trying to return the broken steam cleaner, which is always a snap at Costco, M brings up that I mentioned making a banana cream pie earlier (I was joking), and starts in on how she watches the food channel, and there's a recipe for banana cream pie that she just loves to make (remember, I'm trying to return something, she's rambling as I'm explaining to the Costco person about the steam cleaner), and how it's made with the Pepperidge Farm milano cookies as the crust, but those cookies are quite expensive, so she uses a different cookie for the crust, which isn't as rich as the milano cookies, but is much cheaper than the milano cookies, and she just doesn't see why those cookies are so expensive... EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.
We drop off the perishables at the house and drive to CompUSA to return some software we didn't need. There's a sewing store next door, and M literally shoots over to the sewing store. Fine with me. We return the software, and look into some other stuff, B is looking through scanners to find the perfect one that he wants and won't be able to use (another story), M shows up and we leave the store... except M wants us to go to the sewing store to look at the sewing machine she has. So we walk over there and stare at the sewing machine while she explains about the thread it takes, the programs it takes, the copyrighted patterns and how she needs something to sell for a benefit, but the bags she has to display don't have holes, to which the sales lady says "oh, we use a hole punch for ours", which started a whole conversation there that I blocked out with a keening noise.
Finally, we run from the store and go to Macaroni Grill. Get seated right away. Order pretty quick. Throughout the whole visit, she mentions "her special dinner", B mentions the whole birthday thing, I finally lean over to hubby and say "you better tell the waiter its her birthday or we'll never live it down". At desert time, she says 15 times that she'll share her special birthday dessert with B, and she wants a certain dessert, which he orders for her, and hubby discretely tells the waiter its her birthday. I'm sure she was expecting the usual hoopla of waiters to come over and someone sings happy birthday, so she was quite disappointed (and showed it) when the waiter brought her the dessert with a single candle on it, and admitted that he couldn't sing. She pouted over dessert, and mentioned 14 times that the lemon thing was refreshing.
Home. Dogs have been locked up for a while and need to go out. M puts her leftovers in the fridge, then blocks my way down to the dogs to explain to me EXACTLY where she put the leftovers in the fridge, and if I didn't want the leftovers there, she would certainly move them to where I wanted them (I bit my tongue from saying "hey, why don't you shove them in your purse with the rest of your sandwiches), and nicely explained that I needed to let the dogs out, who were howling pitifully downstairs.
I hid the rest of the night by doing laundry and sloooooowly folding towels.
8:30pm... we yawned and went to bed.
