Mr. Toad's Wild Ride

My nerves are now officially and completely shot.  AND I have just broken every Cardinal Rule shared by the Mystic Bond of the Sisterhood of Housewives.  I not only went to Target, the grocery store and Costco the day before Thanksgiving, I did so in the company of my parents and my ten-year old son.  Who pushed a cart.  I think I've established how I feel about cart-pushing minors in grocery stores.  I stand firmly against it.  In this instance, however, I had reached that point at which you say, "fuck it" and just go with the flow.  They wanted to go out with me? Fine.  Well, first of all, flow-going is not my forte.  I scoff in the face of flow.  Second of all, it's THE DAY BEFORE THANKSGIVING.  Any procurement missions on this day need to be stealth in order to prevent injury to yourself or others.  This is the big time.  The Show. You get in, you zero in on your target and you get the hell outta Dodge. It is hard to be stealth with a kid and two old people in tow.  And then throw in the fact that certain people, unfamiliar with the lay of the land, keep getting lost, resulting in having to stop and make phone calls in order to locate the rest of your party.  This is the modern day equivalent of having your name announced over the loud speaker at the store.  I had to pull over, dig my phone out of my gigantic purse and call my mom to figure out where exactly in the ass she and Jack were.  My dad was at that point sleeping in the car.  Strange, but he's a famously shitty sleeper, so whatever......didn't think much of it at the time.  This becomes relevant to the story in that I had noticed that he was driving a little less than competently, which is unusual for him.  It actually crossed my mind that we were at that pivotal moment at which you realize that your dad is officially a geezer.  I'm thinking a Buick sedan with that rear-seat clothes hanging bar, the hallmarks of codgerdom, were in his immediate future.  And maybe one of those little wastebaskets that sits on the floor between the driver and passenger seats.  But, nooooooooo!!!!!!  Of course not!  As it turns out, dad was hopped up on sleeping pills.  Or hopped down as the case may be. Seems that he couldn't sleep and decided to take something at 4 am.  You know, those things that your doctor prescribes that knock you out for EIGHT HOURS?  Well, four hours into it, we're driving the wrong way through the parking lot.  And we went around the traffic circle a few times. Wheeeeeeeeeee.  I sincerely hope nobody saw me.  And I also sincerely hope that it is after twelve noon.  Cheers. Again. Maybe I should just be hooked up to a slow drip of booze for the duration.