My life is a sitcom: July 21st & 22nd

Monday July 21st
I picked up some flowers to put in my aunt Eileens hospital room -because at this point, she's still being held captive - and when i get to the hospital, she's asleep. now, knowing that this 84 year old woman is a light sleeper and she's been trying to sleep in the hospital, i know she's not been sleeping well. so i dropped off the flowers and headed an hour and 10 minutes into LA and back to Pasadena. i literally passed the wedding site. seriously too much driving.

i had promised my friend dave that i would meet him at some point on my vacation while i was out there and had it not been for skipping my first flight, i never would have had the chance. so, i met him at the pasadena california pizza kitchen and we had a great lunch. we exchanged tshirts - did you know that firemen trade tshirts??? they actually bring extra shirts on vacations with them to trade other stations. - so i brought him a tshirt from the 'harris township fire department' and traded him for a 'los angeles city fire department' shirt. now there is one good reason this really stinks. 1. LA vs. harris township. are you kidding me?? and 2. i carried it out there, i lugged it around for two weeks of travel, i traded it, i lugged the LA shirt back and oddly, neither of them were mine. stupid shirts.

so, after lunch with dave, i figured that i was in pasadena where Dots was, they catered merediths cupcakes for her wedding. and i wanted to bring some home so i stopped there. at 2:47pm. i go inside, i get my cupcakes and they asked me how the wedding was. i showed them a couple pictures on my phone and went on my merry way at 3:03 pm. why do i know the exact times, you might ask. i'll tell you why. i got a parking ticket at 3:01pm under the sign that says, "no parking between 3 and 6pm" you have to be flipping kidding me! so, i said to the girl, "oh, am i not supposed to be here?" not knowing that it had ticked past 3pm. she shook her head and handed me the ticket. i, knowing that she must put up with a lot of crap and i was having a pretty good day, decided to chalk it up to my own mistake and be kind to this poor girl. so i said, "oh, i'm sorry." and like a moron said, "thank you" when she handed me the ticket. but i'm sure it made her day a little better knowing i wasn't going to yell. after all, it's just a parking ticket right? i mean the eagle river one was only $10. so i get in my car and sit and look at this fancy ticket that printed while i stood there and realized that it was $38. i then started yelling like a crazy person in my car, to myself. stupid ticket!

i headed back to huntington beach, went back to the hospital to meet up with wendy, mark, brandon (their three year old), heather, john and paulette. (wendy is married to mark. wendy, john and heather are siblings. paulette is their mother and aunt eileen is paulettes mom. did you follow that?) we hung out for a bit and then went to dinner across the street. mark had to leave before dinner and i mentioned that i had brought him a cupcake and it was in my car. i jokingly said that my window was down a little. about three inches. mark is a big guy. he's a parole officer for some rough kids in a pretty rough area. so he's not small. he later calls wendy laughing and says, "it's pretty bad that people just saw me cram my arm into a car window, to break into a PT Cruiser to steal a cupcake. a fat guy just stole a cupcake!" so great! and, ps, the cupcakes are worth it.

the next morning i had to head to the airport at 3am to return the rental, catch the shuttle, find out that checking and extra bag was going to cost me $125 and in turn repacking ALL THREE SUITCASES in LAX. it was... priceless. but i did it. i carried the duffel bag - after repacking because thats where all my bathroom liquids and makeup and hairspray were. stupid terrorists. traveling used to be so much easier!

this is brandon. he's so cute! he's 'reading' a wall-e book. he has the whole thing memorized exactly, page by page, it's incredible and very cute! he's three.