Sunday, Bloody Sunday

First there was a croak. Unlike a frog's of course, because it came from her. She took her blanket, covered her head and went back to sleep. In her head, she thought. I'm not going to work. Not on Sunday... she will wake up extra early to sneak in an hour's worth of work on Monday!

Sunday: Mother's Day.

It started well enough, only to have an adequate amount of crazy thrown in by the afternoon. And not the nice kind of crazy, but the cruel, wicked kind. My sister and I had gone to get our 'new' broadband connection (yes, my internet problems have not been fully solved since September last year!!), only to be told to come back at 5pm because they had run out of stock for the modems. I wanted to forgo the whole thing but my sister insisted that we come back later that evening! The thing is we were supposed to go in one big jim bang for some Mother's Day dinner (which was supposed to actually be Mother's Day lunch at first but thanks to people who don't pay attention, reservations were made for dinner instead!!) And then we tried to get mom something else (we had previously given the parents a massager seeing that they're old and all and it was supposed to be an all in one present for them - birthdays, Mother's Day, Father's Day and wedding anniversary all encompassed into one) which we were to find out later didn't fit her as we thought it would. Bummer.

A mad dash later, and we are home, only to go through the process of getting ready to go out again. More mad dashes and the new modem and a few freebies are in our hands. One more mad dash towards the highway. We're supposed to meet *Uncle Paul after the first toll because:

a) I've never been to the place we are going
b) My hopeless sense of direction
c) We couldn't find a proper road map there!

As we are leaving after the first toll, Uncle Paul tells me. " You just follow behind me, Terra. I'll drive slowly" I nod my head, but think that if Uncle Paul drives any slower than he usually does, I'll definitely get bored on the road!

So we finally reach the place where we're supposed to eat. The reservation for 17 people (really? that many?!!) was split into two tables. We were fine with the seating, where the plan was the 7 kids (including yours truly - a female peter pan in the making) and my mom would be on one table (dad wasn't around) and the adults will be on another table. But then comes another uncle, swoops in maniacally at the person who arranged our tables and forces her to give us one long rectangular table right now. He was incredibly rude at them. I've had a few friends who used to bartend back then, and rude customers were sometimes given flavour enhancers in the form of spit or urine. Who knows what our food would have been laced with after that?

The scared folks in the restaurant gather a few tables and give us a new table. Broken hearted, we leave our cool 'young and hip' people's table and join the rest of the group at the 'long and boring' rectangular table. What happened after that was a series of disasters. No one could really communicate with anyone, because it was right in the middle of the restaurant, and the space being limited and all, one particular waiter kept having disasters. At one point, he accidentally poured some hot soup which not only scalded his hands, but also scalded a customer who was sitting near us! And people at her table started yelling at him and were being so rude. It was horrible. They can be angry, yeah, no doubt, but to yell at the waiter that way in front of everyone was just plain ugly. And apparently maniacal uncle himself decided to make a scene (about what, I don't know exactly because I wasn't paying attention, and I was also trying to ignore the fact that we were related (thankfully only through him marrying my aunt!))

But seriously, perhaps due to the overwhelming crowd, although the food was pretty good, their service was less than desirable. My request for plain water was ignored that I had to drink my sister's water!! See, problems can be solved without making a scene!!

Anyway, thankfully it was all over around 9 pm. We went back to our respective homes.

With a new modem in our clutches, we decide to install it into our respective laptops. It installs fine, but we're unable to connect. A call to their 24 hour customer service does not help although I was on the phone with the customer service guy for about an hour. I mean, I understand if the modem can't connect on one computer, but it's inability to connect to two separate computers? It was the most frustrating thing ever!! And right before I go to bed, I feel the sorethroat from Friday morning creeping back. As much as I scout around the house (this was almost 2 am after the frustrating attempt with the modem) I can't seem to find my packet of Fisherman's Friend. So I just drink water and hope that it doesn't get worse by the morning. I wonder how can a day turn so particularly awful!

I wake up early this morning with a swollen lip ( allergy?) And I also find out that my neat freak cleanaholic of a mom had put my packet of fisherman's friend into my gym bag! Of all places! Tonight I have the task of rectifying the problem with the modem. Wish me luck!!


*Nickname given by my dad