Sometimes life happens and all you can do is laugh.  This morning, my mom ended up with a raging case of heartburn.  She literally thought she was dying.  Apparently she started explaining to my dad (again) about where to find everything (wills, safety deposit key, etc.)  This ended with me driving to the grocery store at 4:00 am to get her some milk.  Thank God, it worked.  She normally swears that eating an apple helps, but if it’s a bad case, she goes for the milk!  So, guys, if you ever get heartburn, reach for the milk carton.  It did help her and she was finally able to get some sleep.  Before I started Weight Watchers, I used to get terrible heartburn.  Since I started it, though, I can count the number of times I’ve had it on one hand.

I mentioned already that tomorrow is my birthday.  My parents decided to give me my birthday present a day early.  Which, as it turns out, was a very good idea since my present was tickets for tonight for my mom and I to go to The New Theatre.  The New Theatre is probably one of my favorite places to go in Kansas City.  It is a dinner theater that serves yummy, buffet-style food and then has a live theatre performance.  They usually have at least one well-known actor, too.  Tonight’s were Marion Ross (from Happy Days) and Paul Michael.  They both were amazing.  There was also a young man named Joshua Jeremiah who did a bit of opera singing in the play (the entire play wasn’t opera, thank God), who was absolutely mind-blowing.  His voice was simply incredible.

A couple of other people that I’ve seen there are Haley Mills (I love her) and Richard Kline (from Three’s Company).

Before we got to the theater, though, we decided to run some errands.  Due to my late night grocery store wanderings, I slept in a bit today.  My mom and I usually run errands together on the weekends and today was no different.  Since we’d be running around, I decided to wait to take my shower until I got back, especially since I knew that I’d need to get ready to go out anyway.  We had plenty of time.  I wanted to go to the JC Penney Outlet and to Super Wal-Mart.  We go to the Penney’s outlet with no problem.  We go to Wal-Mart, which was a different one than the one we usually go to, and so I, of course, wasn’t able to find everything I needed.  I did, however, get a box of Blue Bunny Frozen Fudge Popsicles.  Why is that important, you may ask?  It really isn’t.  But when we got back to the car, guess what?  It wouldn’t start.  Barely even a click.  It’s now 3:08 pm.  We have to leave for the show by 5:45 or 6.  We call AAA and it finally gets there at about 3:50 pm.  He checks the battery and it is about as dead as a doornail.  To have them replace it, it would have been about $130.  Um, no.  So, he jump starts it, guaranteeing that it will get us home.  We let it run a bit as he recommended (to charge it, I guess),and then head out.  However, we notice that the lights on the dash are shaky.  We drive around the corner of the building to head out the back way, and it dies.  Right there.  At the back corner of Wal-Mart.  Of course, by this time, the AAA guy has hightailed it out of there.  What to do, what to do.  Luckily, the car died just around the corner from the Wal-Mart service station.  We walk over there and plead our case and they send someone over to check it out.  He went to try and jump start it to get it into the shop so they could replace the battery and guess what?  His jump-start machine thingy wouldn’t work.  So, he said he had a couple of things to take care of, but then he’d just walk over there and replace the battery where the car died.  Which he did.  By this time it was 4:50 or so.  It takes about 15-20 minutes to get back to my house depending on traffic.  At this point, I’m also picturing the load of laundry that I threw into the washing machine right before leaving the house that, of course, contained the pair of pants I needed to wear tonight.  <sigh>  Lots of mental time calculating was going on in my head.

The trip to the Wal-Mart service station ended up costing about $80 after taxes.  WAY cheapter than AAA would have been and no charge for the service.  I have to give the Wal-Mart service guy kudos for being so helpful in an unusual situation.  He also got us out of there in less than an hour and still apologized for it taking so long!

We finally get back at about 5:10 and I threw my pants in the dryer and took the fastest shower in, well, my history.  I tend to like my showers on the longer side.  Now, what happened to those Blue Bunny Fudge pops?  I don’t know.  They got thrown in the freezer when I got home and I’ve yet to get up the courage to find out what kind of shape they’re in considering they were sitting in the car for two hours. 

But, we made it to the show just in time and I was able to keep a good attitude throughout the whole thing.  I think it was one of those situations where you just have to laugh.  I mean, we’ve been to Super Wal-Mart about five gazillion times, but today is the day when one of our cars broke down?  Never fails.  I can’t wait to see what tomorrow and the rest of the year have in store!