Gifts and Non-Gifts

So� Mother's Day. I woke up feeling like my brain liquefied overnight and was sloshing around in my head. There is a reason, I reminded myself, why I don't drink vodka. I don't know what it is about the stuff, but it always does that to me. I don't get the normal headache hangover. Oh no. I get the swimmy head hangover. I hate that one. I'd rather have a headache. I had a very fun night though, making an absolute fool of myself on the dance floor, so it might have been worth the seasickness.

I drank a ton-o-water and got myself ready to go to the big Mother's Day BBQ at John's aunt's house. This meant having to fix a side dish, and of course, I had absolutely no idea what I was making. I thought about coleslaw earlier in the week but canned that idea while in the grocery store looking at shredded cabbage. It just didn't make me think, Mmm, coleslaw. I was thinking more of mmm, brownies or mmm, torte, but not mmm, coleslaw. I don't think I've ever had that thought in my life, but coleslaw did sound like a good idea earlier in the week. John's family seems to like anything cabbage.

So the coleslaw was out, and I had to figure out what the heck I was going to make that would take absolutely minimal effort. When you want minimal effort, your mind should definitely think pasta salad. Not only did pasta salad sound easy, but it sounded even easier when I remembered I had some McCormick's seasoning packets specifically for pasta salad. I wouldn't even have to mess with herbs and spices or anything. Woo! Not only that, the stuff actually turned out to be good as could be witnessed by my eating a penne here and there after the salad was made.

By the time John and Hammy got home from Ham's soccer game (What's up with that? Having soccer games on Mother's Day.), I was ready to go, and my head had advanced to slushy as my brain made it's way to it's normal, more solid state. But just as we were leaving, the power went out, and a major storm came upon us. As we watched the house across the street disappear through the sideways rain, we were thankful for our chronic lateness. There are still a few people without power after that storm.

Once the storm let up, we went out to pick up some Mother's Day cards. Yes, I said Mother's Day cards. And let me tell you why it's a bad idea to put off buying Mother's Day cards until Mother's Day. Because there will be a really bad stormburst that knocks out the electricity and shuts down every damn store in town. We had to go to a grocery store that had a backup generator to sift through the meager scraps of Mother's Day cards to find one that sounded just a tad sincere. We picked up some flowers too. We have no creativity whatsoever, and the store didn't have any other good gifts. As we pulled out of the parking lot, now an hour and 45 minutes late for the barbeque, the power came back on in the strip mall across the street where the Hallmark was. Flowers and shitty grocery store greeting cards would have to do though, because we weren't stopping again.