Post-Christmas Craziness

I planned on starting my painting project that day (painting the new trim white in the bathroom and kitchen/living room divide and painting the kitchen yellow), but Mary needed to do some exchanges/returns. I had to exchange my slippers (I’d just gotten a pair from Mrs. Ruiz and already have some other ones) and my City of Angels DVD so I offered to go along with her. Better than having to drive on my own and brave the insane crowds with the kids. They stayed with Mom.

We picked up Yazmin and Angela and when we’re on the Expressway getting into McAllen, Mario calls Mary. All I hear her say is, “Are you okay? Was there any damage?” My heart sinks. I know he’s been in an accident. I don’t freak out and say silent until she turns and tells me he’s at Jack-in-the-Box and had a fender-bender. It was nothing serious, but Mario was at fault and the women are from Monterrey, Mexico and we should make our way over there. I’m so glad she was there. We know nothing of that stuff, except being able to tell when we’re trying to get screwed.

We get there and meet the two sisters and the mom who were in the other car. The girl who’d been driving was nice and actually really knowledgeable about all the paperwork. They didn’t, however, want to call the cops which we found weird, but Mario insisted. So while we waited we assessed the damage.

Mario was trying to turn left on a busy, busy street and when he was looking to the left and the women were in front of him, he slightly accelerated thinking they’d moved up, but they hadn’t. Still, the only damage was a tiny swipe that smudged the dust on the bumper (seriously, it was mostly dust—no paint got scraped off) and the light impact caused the bumper to unsnap from the clips. Mario could have just pushed it back in himself and wiped the car down, but we decided it would be best to let the cop examine it first. I took pictures of the damage just in case, because I had a weird feeling. The cop got there, took the report and he was on his way.

We exchanged phone numbers, policy numbers and Mary told them she’d be in touch from her office once the report went through around the next Wednesday. We were already starting to walk away when the quiet, tall and lanky sister says something about paying upfront. We kind of chuckle and tell her no, that’s not how it works. The mom chimes in and says that in other countries she’s been to, that’s how it works. Mary tells her she’s in America and it doesn’t work like that here. They ask us to wait and are on the phone for an eternity. Every time we gesture that we’re leaving the Mom or sister raise their palm up to us to wait. After about half an hour we tell Mario to leave, that they’re just trying to get money out of us. Sure enough, I hear the lanky sister talking to someone and getting really frustrated because they don’t have an answer she wants to hear. They give us the same crap again about how we should pay up front and Mary raises her voice and tells them that’s what our insurance is for—to avoid having to worry about anything or paying anything “up front”. So we leave. This was half an hour after the cop had left. Dumb women.

The mall parking lot was insane, just as we thought it would be. Traffic wasn’t too bad on the roads, but it was awful at the actual stores.

We went to JC Penny and I exchanged the slippers for a nice sleeveless nightgown. I wasn’t a big fan of nightgowns before, but since I’m becoming so huge and PJ bottoms but me I’m warming up to nightgowns more now.

We were starving, for waiting around so long after the darn accident and whatnot so we got some pizza at the mall. We were extremely lucky to find a table and chairs since the mall was packed to the brim with people. We went to Academy next and then to Walmart, where I exchanged City of Angels for Baby Mama and A Knight’s Tale. It was a total pain in the ass, though. I couldn’t find the price for the 1 Baby Mama Blu-Ray left and it took me forever to find the regular DVD. It said $13, so I grabbed it and went to pay. We were in line for half an hour because they were charging me the DVD for the Blu-Ray price. I should have just gone back and gotten the darn Blu-Ray since they were taking forever. We even sent Yazmin over there to show them because not even the people that work in electronics could find anything but the guy was being a jerk with her. Even though I could see people in line behind us breathing smoke through their nose for having to wait so long, I was even more insistent on having them give me the correct price because they were all being idiots. Acting like we made the price up. After what seemed like forever they finally went to the counter and agreed that it was $13 after Yazmin showed them the price on the rack. The DVD was just mislabeled. Grr.

Mario and I chilled out with the kids and then watched Journey to the Center of the Earth with Alaethia (and Jaylen for a little while). That was one of the movies Mario received for Christmas. I really need to update my DVD List! Too bad Alaethia had a field day moving her favorite ones all over the place and took them out of alphabetical order!