Nicole feels

Friday night I went out with some friends. We were all to meet at D's house, where K was babysitting. It was D's birthday, and the plan was to see M:I III and then have dinner.

K and I get there a little early so that D can give the "how not to kill my kids while you watch them" speech. M arrives right on time. We sit, we chat, waiting for M's mom to show up.

M tries to call her mama about 10 minutes after she was supposed to be there (which, by the way, was the time the mom set up for us to meet). No answer.

Movie starting in 20 minutes. Time it takes to get to the theater: 20 minutes on a good day.

Did I mention it was a Friday at 4:40 PM?

M's phone rings and it's her mom. She's outside waiting for us.

"I was here at 4:30," her mom says.

"Why didn't you answer your phone?" M asked. "Oh, I was on the phone. Is everyone there?"

"Umm, yeah," M says (think teenager saying "duh").

Apparently M's mom didn't recognize my van.

D rattles off last minute instructions, and we jump into the mom's convertible. We get to the theater five minutes after the start time. The mom decides that is too late so hey, let's go eat first. In the meantime, D decides she wants to see Benchwarmers...great, there's a showing at 7:55. M is thrilled we're eating first because she is starving. We walk over to Red R0bin.

We are served right away and finish eating in record time, of course. So we sit and chat and stretch the time out as long as we can. Now M's belly hurts, so we all decide to walk over to the dollar store for some Tums. The mom looks at her watch and goes into "C'mon girls, hurry! We have to hurry!" mode, when less than a moment before she was engrossed in trying to figure out how to attach a picture to a cell phone entry.

(Did I mention that these three are related, either by blood or marriage, and by this time I am realizing that my family are not the only crazy ones out there?)

We get to the store and the mom has the loudest case of hiccups I have ever heard. Think short, cute, slightly chubby, younger-than-her-years but nonetheless middle-aged woman walking through a dollar store interjecting "Br-ahhh-p!" every 20 seconds or so. Almost running into people as she does this. Seriously, it sounds like they sweetened her tea with peach schnapps instead of plain syrup.

She goes back into "hurry-hurry" mode as we leave the store, which M and D begin to harrass her mercilessly about, hence we really don't hurry any at all. We get to the theater, grab our tickets, and head to what must be one of the smallest rooms in the place. And no one is in there. No biggie - we can be loud and obnoxious if we want.

We sit, we chat, we giggle. M's mom finally looks at her watch. "When are they going to start...it's 10 minutes after the time...do they even know we're in here...what are they doing...?"

I look down at my watch.

"Ummm, what time did you say it starts?"

"7:55."

"My watch says its 7:05."

Um, yeah. We are 50 freakin' minutes early.

They don't want to sit and wait that long, so it is decided that we will head down the road a bit to K0hl's. M's mom calculates that we will have about 20 minutes to browse. "I can do a lot of damage in 20 minutes," she says.

As we are walking in, M's mom looks down at her sunglasses sticking out from her shirt, sort of perpendicular above her chest. "Look! I have a hard on!" she says. Loudly.

M is aghast and can't understand why her mom would get on to her about saying she had to "piss" at the theater, but she will let all of K0hl's know that she "has a hard-on".

Definitely crazier than my family - I don't even know if my mother knows what a hard-on is.

At this point in the story, do I even need to tell you that M's mom starts the "hurry-hurry" routine once again? Only this time, M and D have found the 90% off clearance racks and, of course, they want to make some purchases. Which, I can't say I blame them since D got a blazer and like 4 or 5 shirts for $10.25.

We finally get out of there, speed back to the movies, dash back to our theater, and....

It's full. Well, almost full. There are four seats left. You know, our seats. But they are scattered hither and yon, of course.

M's mom decides that we should trade in our tickets for another movie because we all need to sit together. I find out later that the reason is she comments on just about anything that goes on during the movie, and I guess she didn't want to talk to a stranger.

Hmmmm, now that I think of it, that must be why M and D let me sit next to her!

I am also certain by now that the ticket-taking usher must think we are all either drunk or high - or maybe he thinks he's hallucinating since he keeps seeing the same three blondes and one brunette over and over again.

We ended up going to see M:I III afterall. We found good seats, and even if Mr. Cruise has been a royal pain in the media lately, I thought the movie was fun and entertaining. Not to mention watching D lean forward, sit back, lean forward, sit back, fidget, and jump at every crazy turn as if she had ants in her pants.

I got home around 11:30 and needed the rest of the weekend to recuperate.

(Shhhh. Not really, but I needed some excuse to be lazy, right?)