Yesterday, after the funeral (which, inexplicably starts with the word “fun”), Esteban had plans with Ward to work on our kitchen remodeling project. I myself had plans as well, one being to go and pick up my kicky new eyeglasses which are really just an expensive fashion accessory.
So we split up for the day, I wound my way back across town, listening to a fabulous CD mix in the Monte, singing, and trying to shake the residual misery from my funeral (yet fun) clothing. I busted tail to get to the eye place before it closed. I happily walked in and there was a different Eye Girl than the one that helped me on Wednesday.
“I’m here to pick up my glasses.”
“Here you go, Weetabix.”
She hands me a pair of tortoise shell DKNYs with a chartreuse backing. “These aren’t them,” I said, profounding her with my grammatical acumen. “Mine are black.”
She checks the order. The order is for Havanna Sage, which is the pair she is holding in her hand. She starts looking through the racks of frames, searching for the black set. I walked immediately over to the locked DKNY turnstile, pointed to my frames and said “These are my frames.” This seemed to convince her that I wasn’t just making it up, having buyer’s remorse and stuff. She then tried to convince me that with my coloring, I probably wanted the tortoise shell rather than the black frames anyway. Um. No. But the black ones are making more of a statement, she countered. I didn’t care. Did she think I was buying Drew Carey frames to be subtle????
So I left empty-handed. They have to order the correct frames.
Then I went to my niece Abigail’s Christmas pageant, which was cute and adorable beyond words. When I was three, I played the Virgin Mary in our Christmas pageant. One of my lines had the word “Centaurians” in it. I don’t think I’ve ever quite gotten over it, the sense that I am God’s chosen vessel. Vessel for what, I’m not sure… maybe for cute kicky black DKNY eyeglasses.
Abby was Angel Abby. Her line was “And God made a promise”. A far cry from whatever it was I said that had the word “Centaurian” in it. At one point I waved at her onstage and she waved back. If that doesn’t just make a person melt into a big Christmas puddle right there, they’ve just got to be a robot.
I returned to Casa Weetabix, where my driveway was filled with the cars of various of our man friends. The call for Assistance With Tools had apparently gone out. Inside, they struggled with huge pieces of drywall. At one point, someone farted. It was a very testosterone filled day at Casa Weetabix. To counteract, I watched my tape of the Buffy musical again while painting my nails.
At 6:00 pm, I offered to go to a far-away but extremely delicious pizza place to pick up a large pizza to feed our tool-wielding minions, but Esteban declined, as they were all going to see Phil’s band again and he’d just feed them there… besides our kitchen was covered in dust and there would be nowhere for everyone to sit and eat said delicious far away pizza. I grumbled a bit, however, because that meant that I wasn’t going to get the delicious far away pizza either.
I hopped back in my car and drove with Cheri, who was there to chaperone her husband (who is sometimes a scary force when he has tools), to pick up the Christmas pageant pictures (which I will post if I have any sort of motivation a bit later today) and get myself something to eat.
I decided upon Fazolis. Now, if you don’t have a Fazolis near you, it’s basically fast food Italian. They have various pastas and various sauces all sitting in steam tables and they give you whichever combination that you order. It’s certainly not excellent dining, but it’s not terrible and their breadsticks kick ass. If they didn’t have such good breadsticks, I doubt that I’d eat there.
I drive through the drivethrough and order Spaghetti Marinara and a garden salad with french dressing, which comes with two breadsticks. Then we pull up to the window.
The cashier comes to the window.
“$4.73”
I hand her a five. She disappears. For what was literally five minutes. Cheri laughed. I made a joke about them waiting for the water to boil.
Eventually, she came back to the window with my food, in one bag, and handed it to me. Now, that was a bit strange in itself, because normally, they package the salad separate from the hot stuff, being that lettuce will get all wilty and gross if you get it terribly warm.
I can tell that the breadsticks are missing, however, so I ask the girl “Are there breadsticks in here?”
“Oh, you wanted them?” She disappeared again. I went to hand the bag to Cheri and then realized that the cover of the plate inside the bag hadn’t been put on tightly and now the entire contents had slid of the plate. I was now holding a bag of loose sauced hot pasta.
Fazoli Girl returned with my two breadsticks and I handed her the bag full of spilled pasta, saying “The cover wasn’t on this tight and it spilled.”
Without a word, she takes the bag (and the breadsticks) back and disappears again. Cheri is laughing at me at this point, telling me that I just shouldn’t go to drive-throughs.
I was trying very hard to be kind at that point. I have sort of a reverse stereotype going on and it’s probably not healthy. She was a fat chick and I am always easier on fat chicks. In general, fat chicks aren’t complete tards. We just can’t get away with stupidity. Society already thinks we suck because of the size of our asses, thus Social Darwinism makes sure that fat girls are always on the ball. A cute blonde chick with big hooters can afford to act stupid and get away with it. I’m thinking that if she had been a skinny chick, or even worse, a cute blonde with big hooters, I would have been acting snotty and imperious already. But I wasn’t. Because I figured she was a kindred spirit and if you can’t get some slack from your sister, who are you going to get slack from?
She returns, empty handed. “We’re outta da marinara sauce… would you rather have meat sauce… otherwise we’ll have to make you da marinara sauce.”
Now honestly, if I had RATHER had the meat sauce, I would have ORDERED the meat sauce, as it is generally greasy and a little scary, but I played out the scene in my head. If I demand the marinara, they will either spit in my food OR take the bag of spilled spaghetti and dump it back on a plate because I know already that she DOESN’T want to ‘make’ more marinara sauce…. regardless of the fact that ‘making marinara’ probably involves opening a can and microwaving for two minutes.
“Meat sauce is fine.” I said. Cheri laughed hysterically.
She returns and hands me another bag. Through the plastic bag, I can see spilled sauce on the inside.
“What’s this?” I ask, pointing to it.
“Oh, that’s just a little marinara sauce from the salad. Is that alright? Or do you want that I should get you a new one?”
“I want a new one”… because generally, I like crisp cold salads, not hot, wilted, sauced salads. I’m funny that way.
She returns with another salad. At this point, we had been at the window for fourteen minutes. She hands it to me and then says “Do you want….. oh, nevermind.”
“What?” I asked, expecting her to offer my money back. At this point, the Fat Girl Slack had been completely used up and she was well into “Pissing Weetabix Off” territory.
“Well, normally, if you want, I could give you a free cookie… if you want.”
“I want.” I didn’t really want. Their cookies taste like dog biscuits. But at that point, I was a little testy.
She bent down out of sight then returned.
“We’re out of cookies.”
I shook my head in disbelief.
“If you want… I could give you some chocolate cheesecake… since we’re out of cookies.”
She offered this as though it were a great reward, up there with myrrh and gold. A slice of their prefab cheesecake costs $1.29.
“Sure.” I said. She handed me the cheesecake.
“Here you go…. though just so you know… we don’t normally do that and all… give free stuff away… but because it was my fault.”
I sat there staring at her. I honestly think she expected me to thank her for her graciousness, to extol the virtues of Fazolis as being a kind and gentle fast food emporium, to offer my gratitude for the boon that was a $1.29 piece of pre-fab cheesecake.
Instead, I pulled away, screaming to no one in particular (ok, well, to Cheri) “S-O-R-R-Y??!?! Is that so hard to say?!? Sorry, Ma’am, I’m a complete and utter tool and I can’t even manage to get premade pasta on a dish and then a little Prego over the top?! I’m sorry that Fazoli is Italian for ‘Hire Dumb Fucks’! I’m sorry that you almost wore your dinner or got it all over your car and that I gave you a salad covered in sauce and then expected you to eat it!?!”
When I got home, my shit was lukewarm. Except for the salad, which managed to retain the heat of the spaghetti quite nicely.
Next time, it’s McDonald’s. I don’t care how bad it is for me… I don’t usually pop a blood vessel at McDonald’s.
