Shopping and Small Town Living

On Monday Grandma, Mom and I headed to "The Mall" to finish some last minute shopping. We drove the thirty miles into Chico and stopped at Target before heading off to Blockbuster and Barnes and Nobles to finish off. We stopped at The Hacienda. Only in Gerber would all the waitresses be non Latino in a Mexican restaurant. The food was pretty good.

In the evening, we headed over to Aunt Karen's for a birthday party where my little cousins Zach, 9, and Jasmine, 6, conned me into playing Crazy 8's after dinner. There's two little card sharks in the making. Maci, 9 months, was cute crawling around and pulling herself up into a standing position. She even danced a bit when they turned on the musical dancing flower.

I had fun tickling Zach and hanging Jasmine upside down... you know all the fun things that older cousins do to young ones. I was apparently so entertaining, that when they came to visit me on Tuesday, they wanted me to come home with them.

I chased them around Grandma's house, hiding in a closet to scare Zacharie. I even showed them the secret door. In the game room, there's a bathroom on one end that has a door that leads to the second attached garage. On the other end of the room is a camouflaged door without a handle that leads to a closet that also has a door to the garage. Because it has no handle, once you're in, it's impossible to open from the other side if you hold the handle on the other side. That door always used to capture my imagination when I was a kid. I played some hide and seek with them until I got yelled at for running in the house.

Uncle Chris, the kids, Dad and I headed to Los Molinos for lunch at a place where the waitress called you dear, and knew Uncle Chris's order down pat. They gave us some crayons and coloring mats that must have been left over from Halloween. I colored in my pumpkin and ghost. Zach turned his over and started playing tic tac toe with me. Man, I was out of practice. He kept winning. I felt like an idiot.

Back at Grandma's they tried to keep me with them, but I didn't have a ride back from their house to Grandma's if I wanted to go. I promised to see them later. They were apparently over today, and I smiled when I heard that they'd asked after me.

Today we went to see National Treasure in Chico. It was good, but not spectacular. I really enjoyed seeing all the bits of DC and Philly that we saw on our trip over the summer.

I swear that Aunt Karen knows everyone in town. Everywhere we went today, she found someone that she knew. At the movies, she knew two girls in the bathroom. In the fabric store, it was a lady, and in the CostPlus World Market parking lot, it was another lady. I mean we were 30 miles away from her house, and yet there were three! I guess that's what you get when you've lived in the same small town your whole life.

On the way home we stopped at got some Take and Bake Pizza, as you can't get pizza delivered in Gerber. Can you imagine? No pizza? They wanted to know why I didn't just go pick up my pizza rather than have it delivered. It was so much more expensive. Man, saving $3 is not worth getting into the car and driving somewhere and carting it back up the stairs.

So now I've got us all caught up. I'm sitting here typing away on Grandma's spiffy laptop with the 19.4 k speed modem, only half listening to the town gossip about people I have no idea existed before this point. They're watching Wheel of Fortune and I'm desperately craving a Diet Coke.

I totally forgot to mention the helicopter. Yes. They called Uncle Chris and said they had a search warrent and were going to search and if they found it, he could haul it away immediately. That was on Monday.

On Tuesday, they called and said they'd found it, but he couldn't have it. I think they said it was still in one piece... apparently it's never been flown either. Sigh. Uncle Chris was a bit miffed that they needed it for evidence, but hopefully he'll get it back soon. The guy was the known felon who stole it after all. Moral of the story: Never let a known felon rent the same storage space where you keep your helicopter.