Twenty Ten

Here is how Bored Housewife and family rocked in the new year like freakin' super stars. We were set to go bowling with our good friends and their kids, so we got all gussied up to go to the schlocky bowling alley, drink cheap wine, eat some mediocre pizza and wear shoes of dubious origin. I was totally looking forward to it. Its a great way to have fun with adults and kids, and the jalepino poppers are particularly nice. So we're on the way, and the car makes a weird thunk noise, like someone has hit the under carriage with a hammer, but we decide its nothing and drive on. You can see where this is going, right? The night before, I had gone to dinner with my friend E. and while making a three point turn in someone's driveway, we had heard a similar thunk. We rationalized it by saying that it was just the passenger seat adjusting, like it sometimes does.

Apropos of nothing, over dinner, E and I talked about periods (its funny that the last time I talked about periods was at this same restaurant) and puberty and stuff, and she thinks I should tell you all that when I was fifteen, I went to a prom with a Junior and my mother was in China with the elecrtic razor that we shared. (Is is gross to share an electric razor with your mom? I really have no idea.) Anyway, I asked my friend to pick up a disposable razer at the drugstore and come over to show me how to use it (years later, I had to teach my mom how to use a disposable razor. Ironic.) and she brought me a Personal Touch razor with replaceable blades. The reason E thought this was a story I should tell is that I still use the same Personal Touch razor 24 years later. I can't find blades for it in my local drug store anymore, so I have to go to drugstore.com to order them. Talk about reduce reuse recycle.

Anyway, back to the bowling alley. So we get there first, and the car has made these thunking noises, and when we made a tight turn to get into a parking space, it makes another weird noise, and the jig is up. Rob gets out of the car, and looks underneath it and says "Holy Crap! Oh my God!" He tells me there is a huge piece of something metal that has broken off and is hanging out from under the car, like the car has grown a metallic weiner or something. My thought is that this is a bummer, but its New Year's Eve, its raining, and I want to get inside and secure some lanes. I say we should just go bowling and drive the thing home afterwards and deal with it on Monday. I figure we drove all the way to the bowling alley and we were fine, right? May as well bowl and eat pizza and have a good time. While Rob is muttering that he isn't going to drive this car this way, and starts crazy talking about taking it to the dealership (its a ten year-old car, man) I walk up to the door and the place is closed. My friend, A, had actually called to ask if we needed a reservation on New Year's Eve, and was told that, no, it was first come first served and we shouldn't have any problem if we got there early, like around 2. A didn't know what the lady meant by 2, so she ignored it, and interpreted it to mean that if we got there at six we would be fine. Turns out, that was not the case, they had closed at four.

So we get back in the car, except for Rob who is laying on his back in the bowling alley parking lot, under the car, in the rain, and consider our options. Our friends show up, and M, A's husband, throws himself under the car with the flashlight app on his iPhone and tells us its no big deal, that its just the wiggledy-flidget dealy-bob and we should be able to drive the car home just fine and deal with it on Monday. Sound familiar? My husband is a good guy. He once took the clothes dryer apart when it wasn't working and put it back together and magically made it work again, and he recently fixed my internet access when I broke it, but he has a Master's degree in public administration, and I don't rely heavily on his mechanical prowess. So we all go to our house and decide to go out to dinner with the kids, and maybe play Wii bowling after. The restaurant was pretty empty, and you could tell the servers wanted to be anywhere but there, but it was a good dinner, and the kids had fun. Then our friends had to go home and relive the babysitter (they only brought the kid who would annoy them least; the two and the four year-old aren't good bowlers.)

Then we stopped by another friend's house for little wine. All the kids came out and watched the ball drop for the east coast new year's and I was left to wonder whether I should pass this off to Leila as the real new years. See, I had promised her that she could stay up and watch the ball drop in times square like she did last year, but now I could just lie and tell her that was it. Happy New Year! But as we were leaving, she got wise, and I was now forced to stay up and watch parent-censored television in a queen sized bed with a man, a tall seven year-old, a dog and a cat. By the time we piled in the bed, it was only 10:30; we had a long way to go. Leila did fine, and didn't mind the boring T.V. but Rob was a grumpy-pants and kept trying to go to sleep. If I had to stay up, so did he, and he shouldn't be an ass about it. The ball dropped, we all hugged, we muted the T.V. to listen to the far away fireworks and the nearby neighbors who were whooping it up, then my mom called, like she always does right after midnight on new years, and then we all went to sleep, kid and dog in their own beds.

I don't know what Lindsay Lohan or Paris Hilton did last night, but I bet it didn't hold a candle to chillin' in a bowling alley parking lot in the rain, having sliders at a surf themed restaurant, and then watching Carson Daily shill some A-hole's new record in Times Square. Beat that.

Then, today, I was going to go see a movie, but I wasn't really in the mood to go to a movie, I just wanted some popcorn. So E brought me some microwave popcorn in exchange for some ear medecine and I popped the champagne I bought for last night and made mimosas and watched Adventureland on Comcast. Awesome. Not the movie, but the drinking alone in the afternoon.

Happy New Year!