THE BALLAD OF SUSIE'S FRIEND AND HER DUMBASS BOYFRIEND

I'm baaaa-aaaack.

Which has just GOT to piss off at least a few people.

Woulda updated yesterday but Diaryland was down and Andrew the Diaryland God was asleep and far be it for me to wake him, so I just skipped a day of updating.

My apologies.

Soooooo...went to Nashville for the weekend. Parts of it were nice ... most of it sucked. Since I feel like bitching ... we'll cover the sucky parts.

FRIDAY

Loaded up the mini-van, tossed Andy in the back seat and drove to Susie's job to pick her up and hit the road. Susie has a real problem leaving her office when she's supposed to...she can always find "one last thing" that needs to be done before she leaves. I told her that morning "When I come to pick you up at noon, we LEAVE at noon."

We left at 12:30.

Get in the van and we take off.

Susie's hungry. I'm hungry.

We decide to pull over at A&W for some burgers and root beer.

We drive two miles off the interstate and go inside to get our food.

We go to leave and I see that there's no real "Exit", only an entrance. So I'm trying to go out the entrance as people are trying to get in. Basically, I'm stuck there as cars are honking at me and flipping me birds.

Wonderful.

I end up having to go about a mile in the wrong direction, turn the car around and head back for the interstate.

I go to open my burger and it's a cheeseburger, not a hamburger. For those of you longtime readers of Uncle Bob, you KNOW I can't eat cheese or I will vomit blood. Possibly some bones may work their way up my esophagus as well. You never know.

So I'm pissed. Susie says to turn the car around, go back to A&W and exchange the burgers.

I do a Bat U-turn like Batman would do, and head back to A&W. I walk in, the guy behind the counter is really apologetic, but that doesn't fly with me, because I just wasted 15 minutes of my precious road schedule on a fucking hamburger.

I get back in the car and we head for the interstate once again. I take a bite of my hamburger and put it down on the passenger seat (Susie's in the back seat with Andy).

I turn to get on the exit and I'm tooling down the road when I reach for my hamburger.

It's gone.

Long story short...it's on the floor. The bun is off, there's mayonaise and mustard everywhere, and the patty is under the seat.

I fill up quickly with rage. I let out a very quiet "G-damned motherfucking hamburger". Susie tells me to pull over and pull myself together.

I pull over, reach down to grab the hamburger and fling it out the window into oncoming traffic then peel out and keep going down the road.

So I'm STARVING at this point.

Four hours later, we reach Nashville.

Long story short...somebody wrote down the wrong directions to Susie's friend's apartment.

So we're driving all over the place, trying to find this apartment when Susie finally says "Maybe we shoulda went left instead of right".

Fine. So I go back to the pivotal point and we go left this time.

Found the apartment complex. It's a gated community which means you have to buzz the apartment and they open the gate for you.

Apparently, when you buzz the apartment, it goes to their phone, which they pick up and then punch in some code to open the gate.

But if THE GIRL'S GODDAMNED BOYFRIEND IS ON THE INTERNET, you can't get through to them and you have to sit at the gate and wait for his FUCKING ASS to get off the internet to let you in.

What really pissed my goat off was we had just called them 15 minutes earlier to tell them that we were just a few miles away.

DUMBASS MOTHERFUCKING BOYFRIEND takes this to mean "Oh. Now I can get on the internet and play Solitaire against my geeky internet buds."

So we wait outside the gate for 15 minutes as cars are driving around us, giving us dirty looks for taking up valuable gate sitting space. Finally, a Domino's Pizza guy pulls up, hits a code and the gates open and he lets us in.

This is great except we don't have a fucking clue which apartment is Susie's friend's apartment.

So we drive around, looking for this girl's Lexus, but they have a garage so the Lexus won't be sitting outside. In the meantime, Susie is dialing their number on her cell phone repeatedly and getting a busy signal. I'm furious because not only am I starving, but we could have gone to my sister's house a few miles away and seen my family but NOOOOOOOOOOOO....we had to see Susie's friend first.

Finally....45 fucking minutes later...Dipshit decides to get off the Internet. He tells us where the apartment is and we drive right to it.

He acts all sheepish that he had been on the internet while we drove around his complex waiting for his dumb ass to get off.

I was NOT happy.

We get upstairs and she's fixed chicken spaghetti.

Never had it. Willing to try it. Bring it on.

She brought out a casserole dish about as big as my fist. I stared at it and wondered what the rest of them were going to eat.

I'm supposed to dish my food out first. I try to be polite and take a spoonful of the shit and dump it on my plate.

The rest of them all get larger portions than I do and finish the dish off.

Oh wait...there's garlic bread too.

...Four fucking slices of bread.

Okay...I'm starving. And these people fixed enough food to tide over a midget and that's it.

I clean my plate in less than a minute and try to act full when I've barely had my appetite whetted. As soon as we're all done, my sisters call and they're at the gate. We let them in and they come to the apartment.

Susie's friend was holding Andy when they got there. My youngest sister Kristi had seen Andy twice in his life, my other sister Julie hadn't seen him at all and neither had her family.

Did Susie's friend hand Andy over to his REAL family???

Oh hell no.

I finally said "Susie's friend...would you mind letting his aunts and cousins hold Andy?"

What does she say???

"Do I have to?"

Oh you fucking whore. YES you have to, you not-cook-enough-food bitch. Hand that baby over to his flesh and blood NOWWWWWW!!!

She grudgingly handed the baby over to his aunts who cooed over him for about ten minutes before I thought it'd be best to go over to my sister's house instead of this cramped apartment.

Dumbass boyfriend doesn't want to go because he has geeks waiting on him to come play Solitaire with him on the 'Net or whatever the fuck geeks do on the 'Net.

I'm wanting to ride with one of my sisters so that we can stop real quick and grab a hamburger for me since I'm about to eat my baby I'm so g-damned hungry.

I'm forced to ride with Susie, her friend and the baby.

Oh fucking joy.

We all get to my sister's house, except for Kristi who wanted to take her boyfriend around the city to show him where she grew up since he had never been to our hometown.

After about 30 minutes, Susie's friend "has" to go home. It's late and she's tired.

It's 9 p.m. on a Friday night. Kristi hadn't shown up yet to hold Andy.

They leave. Kristi pulls up five minutes later and wants to know where her nephew is. I explain that Susie's friend was tired, so she, Susie and Andy went back to their apartment. I was staying at Julie's to help with the yard sale in the morning.

Kristi's upset, but it was her own fault for dawdling around town, showing her boyfriend her old high school and hangouts rather than coming home.

We watch "Best In Show" and all go to bed about midnight.

SATURDAY

Had the yard sale...it went real well...they ended up making $1,400.

Susie was supposed to bring Andy over about 9 a.m. to help with the yard sale.

Kristi had to leave at 11 a.m. to head back to Georgia. She wanted to see her nephew before she left.

Susie's friend wanted Susie to stay around the apartment and just "hang out".

Susie got to the yard sale at 11:30 a.m. Thirty minutes after Kristi left, only seeing her baby nephew for a grand total of ten minutes.

I was pissed. Pissed that Susie's friend was basically monopolizing all Susie and Andy's time, when it was my family we had actually come to see.

I had thought that we could all go out to dinner Saturday night so that my family could see Andy a while longer.

Susie's friend and dumbass boyfriend thought they were going to be cooking for us. They had bought all the food "and everything".

What? Are we having a fucking jar of olives for dinner, you lame host fucks??

So Susie and I take my niece and Andy to Opry Mills for the afternoon while my sister and her husband get some rest and Susie's friend and boyfriend do whatever the fuck it was they do when we're not around.

We get my niece back to Julie's house about 6 p.m. They had just had pizza delivered to the house. It looked sooooo damned good...a big huge deluxe pizza.

"You want a piece?" my sister asked.

"No," I said sadly. "We have to eat over THERE."

Susie and I then headed over to her friend's house. I prayed we were having steak. I needed a nice big steak.

We were having grilled chicken breasts. That's fine. I could handle that.

Four of the smallest chicken breasts that I've ever seen were brought in off the grill. These HAD to have come from malnourished chickens with sunken chests, because they were literally only about three inches in diameter.

I ate mine in one bite just to prove a point.

Side dishes? Macaroni and motherfucking cheese and some scorched squash that got left in the oven too long.

I wanted to cry. I was so goddamned hungry I was eyeing the table and wondering how long it'd take me to chew a piece of wood off.

We then spent the evening listening to how much Susie's friend's family LOVES Dumbass Boyfriend. Her father loves him. Her mother loves him. Her aunts and uncles love him.

He just sat there and beamed.

I sat there, knowing that the only reason they "loved" him is because her family always thought Susie's friend was gay and were probably relieved to find out she may still bear them some grandchildren some day. Susie's friend is quite possibly the most masculine-looking woman that I've ever seen. I always thought she was gay until she hooked up with Dumbass Boyfriend. She's always had a man's haircut, short and parted on the side, never wears makeup or feminine clothes and always walked more like a man than a woman.

I never had a problem with this. I just figured she was gay, she was my wife's friend and that was cool by me. My only wish is that if my wife was going to have gay friends, the least she could do is pick out a pretty gay friend, rather than this hulking hunk of woman so that if we three ever got drunk and had a threesome I could at least get it up rather than be repulsed.

Anyway....

We sat for four hours and listened to stories about these two idiot's families...not able to get a word in edgewise.

I went to bed at 10:30 and left the three of them to sit up and regale in more tales of their families.

SUNDAY

I had told my sister that we should all get together for breakfast on Sunday. She agreed and we decided to call each other on Sunday morning and set a time.

At 8 a.m. she called. She said they had to meet by 9 because her husband had to catch a flight at 11.

Nobody else was up in the house but me.

So I had to wake the others up and force them to get in the showers.

It was like herding retarded cows. They all just looked confused and certainly didn't want to jump in the shower just yet. After all, they still hadn't told the story of how Susie's friend's Dad loved her Dumbass Boyfriend so much that he bought him a gag gift ... a grilling apron with the body of David (the Greek statue) on it.

Oh! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!!!!

Now GET IN THE FUCKING SHOWER NOWWWW BEFORE I FUCKING KILL YOU PEOPLE!!!

We got to the restaurant where my sister and her family had already secured a table.

We all sat down and ate. Susie's friend and Dumbass Boyfriend didn't tell one single story about their families. I was shocked beyond belief.

We say goodbye to my sis and her family and they leave.

We go back to Susie's friend's apartment where Dumbass Boyfriend gets on the 'Net to play cards against his buddies rather than entertain us with more stories of how loved he is.

Meanwhile, Susie's friend passes out on the couch.

Susie goes to nurse Andy while I pack all the bags and start carting them downstairs MYSELF.

I had armloads of crap that I was carrying downstairs while Dumbass Boyfriend pretended not to notice so he wouldn't have to help me carry our bags and could continue playing his stupid card game against his fellow geeks. I made four trips up and down those stairs carrying bags, muttering under my breath.

We then had our goodbyes where I stupidly thanked them "for everything" (i.e. a spoonful of spaghetti and a slice of bread, a chicken breast the size of a pencil eraser, a shower, and a sore back...thanks a fucking heap) and we left.

Not a moment too soon.

Got stuck in Nashville church traffic at which time Andy decided to have the mother of all baby shits in his diaper.

Shit went everywhere. His car seat was covered in shit.

We stopped at a McDonald's where Susie went inside to clean him up while I stayed outside and tried to clean shit out of a carseat with a handful of McDonald's napkins.

A homeless guy walked up to me and tried to sell me three cigarettes for a dollar.

"I don't smoke," I said. "Here...have two dollars."

I tried to give him two dollars but he was a proud bum and wanted to "sell" me something for those two dollars.

"I can help you clean that seat," he offered.

"It's okay," I said. "I've got it. Take care."

He thanked me about 125 times and then walked away while I scrubbed shit off a seat.

We got back in the van. Andy slept all the way home. Mama slept most of the way home. I got behind a motorcycle with two women riding on it and fantasized about a better life riding around the country on a motorcycle with two women with real tan arms wrapped around me which carried me all the way home.

That was my weekend.

How was yours?