Grab a chair and a couple of root beers...

So, last night, I was up late writing, and had just finished brushing my teeth when my ringtone started playing from the bedroom. Not wanting to wake the Husbandly One up even more than he already was, I hurried into the bedroom and snatched up the phone.

Now, in my family, if your phone rings after ten o'clock... it's very rarely good news. Especially if you don't know anyone who is pregnant. And my mom had called earlier in the day to tell me she had a urinary tract infection, and she was having pain in her back. And I had urged her (and the Flaky Sister) to actually go in and see the doctor, rather than just calling in, because back pain with a UTI is never a good sign in someone my mother's age. Especially with her family history. So, when I answered my mobile, I fully expected to hear the Flaky Sister telling me she'd had to rush Mom to the hospital or something.

What I didn't expect was to hear a teenaged boy say, "Auntie?" And by Auntie, I mean he called me "Aunt (insert my RL name here)."

I froze, racking my brain to remember what my youngest great nephew sounds like, and said, "Yes?"

He laughed and said, "It's Adrian! How are you?"

Uh... wait... what? I don't have any nephews called Adrian. At least... I don't think I do. I have some cousins named Adrian, but I don't know them very well, and they wouldn't call me "Aunt" without telling me their last name so I'd know where they are in the family, and how we're related, nor would they call me at 1 a.m. But... he knew my name. It was... surreal.

"Sorry, but who are you calling?"

"Aunt J! I'm calling Aunt J! That's you, right?" he said. "Don't you remember me? We were dating when my dad went to jail?"

What... the... FUCK??

"Sorry," I said with a frown, "but I'm not in the habit of dating my family. Who is this?"

"Adrian!" he said insistently. "Don't you remember me at all?"

"Sorry, kid, but I only have two sisters and no brothers. And I don't have a nephew named Adrian that I'm aware of," I said tartly. "Now if you tell me who your mother is, or how we're related, maybe we can figure this out, but it's really late..."

"But we dated!" he insisted.

"I don't think so." I was starting to get angry, and yet, it was so ridiculous, I couldn't help laughing. I mean, this guy sounded all of 16. "Look, you obviously have the wrong person. Why don't you call it a night and hang up?"

"Okay," he said, and that was that.

Weirdest phone call ever.

Some of you may remember THIS little adventure of mine from three years ago.

Well... yesterday, I had a lot of errands to run, and finished up with another visit to the grocery store to pick up things I had forgotten on Tuesday. I was hot, tired, I just wanted to go home, and I was also thinking of things I needed to do when I got there. So, I was again on autopilot. I went to my van, unlocked the back, and started stowing my groceries. Vaguely, at the back of my mind, there was a transient thought of Something's missing, but I rather irritably chalked it up to having forgotten something at the store, and I wasn't about to go back and get it! No, I just wanted to go HOME. It was 102, I was soaked in sweat, and my flip flops were melting to the asphalt. I just wanted out and back into the cool, you know?

So, I close the back of the van and put the basket away, then hop in my car, thinking vaguely, Didn't I put up the sun shade? Oh, well, guess I forgot again and then wondered why the car was still so cool despite sitting in full sun for at least 30 minutes. Then I thought, "Wait... where are the Soot Sprites I hung on the mirror? And when did my car get so clean??"

At that moment, I just happened to look at the car parked on my right... and saw my Soot Sprites hanging from the mirror, in front of a silver sun shade. I wasn't sitting in my car!!

I had done it... AGAIN!!

You know what the worst part was? I had to unload the groceries, then put them in MY car!!!

*dies*

That brief thought I had about something being missing? Yeah, that was the myriad bumper stickers the Husbandly One has thoughtfully put all over the back door of my van!!!

I can say this, the owner of the mirror van no longer has a Virgin Mary on the dashboard or a pink flamingo hanging from the mirror. But her car is still insanely clean!!

After I got over my frustration, I laughed pretty damn hard at myself. And you can imagine that Auntie will very carefully check EVERYTHING before she so much as pokes her key in the door again!!

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OMG,I have no words! Just... put down anything you might be drinking first!! Calling this surreal would be a major understatement!!

Some mornings, I am soooo in automatic, and because I'm sick, it's worse. So, I got up, got the kids up, made their lunches, kept pushing them to get dressed ("No, Impossible Son, you may NOT wear those pants because one, they are way too short and two, if you button them, you may not be able to actually INHALE anymore without serious internal injury..."), made sure all papers were signed, all projects were in hand, all shoes were found... in other words, all the mom-stuff I do because...well... I'm the one stuck with the job. And yes, I was the one doing it because I AM the Mom and Mom's are not allowed to be sick. At least, not until the kids are at school.

So, I made sure the Impertinent Daughter's classroom agenda was signed, and I made sure the Impossible Son had his Big Bag of Popcorn for the Thanksgiving feast his kindergarten class is going to have, and forced my fevered brain to remember which way to go to get to the school.

I got them signed in, and helped Mr. Manzie carry the popcorn (which was in a bag bigger than he was) to his class, and when I left, I was on auto-pilot. Y'all know how that is, right?

So, I walked to my mini-van, unlocked the door (I'm a city girl, you BET I lock my doors when I get out of the car! and when I get in, too!) and got in, buckled the seatbelt, started up the engine, looked up, and my first thought was, "Who the hell stuck a Virgin Mary to my dashboard? And why does my car reek of patchouli?"

Yeah, I can hear you laughing from here, Alex.

Anyhow, that sort of popped me out of auto-pilot and I looked around. My next thought was, "Holy Mackinoly, I've been hit by a thief who cleans your car, steals your CD's, and puts Catholic icons on your dashboard." Because Mr. Manzie's Tonka dump truck, and two other toy cars were no longer on the floor in front of the front passenger seat, sharing space with a large bin of half-melted crayons, and a soccer-ball. And the Husbandly One's soccer association i.d. was no longer hanging from the rearview mirror, nor was the Texas State Parks pass, and the Kid Mirror was now purple instead of black. And there was a small pink flamingo dangling from the mirror. I looked down at the table between the front seats where I had put my purse, which was gone. And I looked behind me. The Impossible Son's booster seat was gone, as was the Impertinent Daughter's inevitable sheaf of drawing paper. I turned to face forward again. OMG, I thought... I'm in the Twilight Zone. That or my fever is REALLY high, and I'm hallucinating.

Then common sense kicked in and I looked around the parking lot. Gee, that red minivan three places down looked awfully familiar, with the big soccer ball sticker on the back and the "Keep Austin Weird" bumper sticker below it, along with the other stickers we have there. I turned off the engine, and got out of the car. Somehow, I had come across one of those truly weird coincidences. Somewhere out there, folks, is a car the same make and model as yours, that your key will fit in, and you'll be able to start their engine. It happens. There may even be two. This isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened to me. I got out of the car, and looked at it. It was the same make and model as mine, same year. And the same color. I hadn't really looked up when I walked out into the parking lot, I had just headed for the red minivan. It's something I do when deep in thought. Or on automatic. I locked it back up, and walked back to MY minivan. What if I hadn't snapped to it? What if I had driven home, and only noticed everything when I went to pick up the kids? That made me fall apart laughing until I was weak. Oh, geez, can you IMAGINE the phone call the Husbandly One would have gotten? And what about the other person? Would they have just automatically gotten into MY minivan and sat down and thought,"Wait... this isn't my car!!"

Today can only get weirder.

*hides*