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Since December of last year, I’ve gone on an out of town trip an average of twice a month. You would think that for a long weekend, I would want to go on a trip, but that would be wrong. I hate traveling during holiday weekends, when everyone else is traveling.

I had a lot to catch up with around the house; general chores and stuff. Yoshi is usually the one who cleans and stuff around the house (since I am so horribly bad at it), but I figured that I should pitch in so long as I had some “extra time.” Also, I made a mess of the kitchen, so cleaning some of the more awful messes (especially ones I cause) are really my responsibility. I should have made an appearance at Darleene’s birthday party on Saturday, but I since I am almost always using the excuse that “I’m never home” so I don’t have to clean, I figured leaving for a party on cleaning day wasn’t a good idea.

By the end of the evening, I was tired of being home all day, and I whined my way into having Yoshi go to the movies with me. We ended up stopping by the drugstore to buy a stash of candy, grabbing a quick bite of pizza, and then watching “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian” at the Century City AMC*. Boy, that is a long movie! It’s a good thing I looked at the running time (2 hours, 20 minutes!) before the movie started. I decided not to drink anything until the movie was almost over so I wouldn’t have to run from the film doing the pee-pee dance.

On Sunday, I made a quick visit to see Grandma and to run a quick errand near her place before driving back to OC to spend time with my Mom. Mom had been at a friend’s funeral service in the morning and decided to get gas and groceries on the way home. I had intended to extend my cleaning streak to help my Mom around her house, but instead, she asked me for help in making potstickers. From hand chopping the nappa cabbage to folding the potstickers, my Mom let me sit on the living room floor in front of the TV (as I did when I was growing up) and fold a couple of hundred potstickers. (I watched the movie “Clueless” on TBS and then kept flipping back to CNN as they were doing live coverage of the Phoenix Mars lander.) My Mom was taking potstickers as fast as I was making them, and throwing them on to the stove as she was pan-frying them. Yum!

I brought a couple of batches home, foolishly thinking that I’d freeze them and save them for another day but I ended up pan-frying them myself so Yoshi and I could pig out on almost all of them for dinner on Monday night. Yum! Gyoza!

But I skipped something.

After dinner on Sunday, I took my Mom to The Block in Orange to run a quick errand and do a quick walk-through of half the mall. We stopped into Bath & Body Works and tried a bunch of fragrant lotions and stuff. My Mom had the most fun trying on the flavored lip glosses. I tried pink grapefruit. She had fruit punch, which made her lips a bright pink. With glitter. Hilarious and so much fun.

Then we stopped by the house to drop something off and headed off to catch a movie. My Mom wanted to watch “Made of Honor” (since I had described it as a romantic comedy), so that’s what we watched. It wasn’t that great of a movie, but it had its charming moments and Mom was having fun, so I had a good time. It was about 11pm when Made of Honor ended, but Mom wasn’t done yet! We walked out of the theater and she said, “Let’s see another movie!”**

“Mom, there are no movies starting at 11pm on a Sunday night,” I reminded her.

“I don’t have to see the whole movie, let’s go see something that’s already started!” she answered!

Oh yay! I was going to be theater-hopping at midnight with Mom! She headed to “Harold & Kumar,” but not wanting to have to explain any potentially gross humor to my mom, I steered her to the Narnia movie I had already seen the previous night, especially since I knew there was at least an hour of that movie left to go. We walked into as a massive fight scene was happening and since there was no context of what what happening my Mom was confused.

“WHAT is going on here with all these animals fighting?” she asked. I had to explain that the animals were the good guys and the mean looking people were the bad guys. After that, it was all good.

Of course, by the time the movie was over, it was 12:30… way past my bedtime! Instead of going back to L.A., I spent the night in OC at my Mom’s house.

When I woke up on Monday morning, I was trying to leave early, but I had accidentally popped the trunk of the car the night before and the car battery died from the little trunk light being on all night. Ooops. Luckily, no one stole any of the Cup-O-Noodles out of the back of my car while it was open all night on the street in front of my parents’ home.

Anyway, I had to go get gas, so while I was out, I stopped by the movie theater and picked up a pair of tickets for my Mom to catch a matinee of the new Indiana Jones movie. I wanted to stay, but wanted to hit the road before the mad long weekend traffic kicked in. I made it home in 35 minutes flat. Nice!

*Through my old job, I have an Annual Pass for movies at AMC Theaters, good for me + 1 through the end of this year. Sadly, the pass I had for 2007 was practically wasted on me because I didn’t have time for movies while I was in school last year. I have resolved to make VERY good use of my pass this year now that I’m done with school and while I still have a pass. I most definitely won’t be getting a pass next year.

**As always, italics means it was in Mandarin.