friday i woke up to her telling me we were taking her grandmother out for lunch.

no big deal, i enjoy the elders, show them the proper respect and all.

EXCEPT WHEN IT LEADS TO A BREAK DOWN IN THE FAMILY.

i heard her on the phone, asking her mom where we should take her grandmother.

apparently my suggestion of chuck e. cheese was not appreciated.

she calls her grandmother, her grandmother says she wants to go to my girlfriend's favorite restuarant. my girlfriend, of course, doesn't argue with this.

however, this restuarant is only in... one part of town, i think, and this part of town happens to be where her grandmother's favorite shoe store is.

except, you see, her grandmother's a bit manipulative. her grandmother also is slightly in debt, and my girlfriend's mom has had to take over finances.

part of the problem is that the grandmother loves buying shoes. she's got a million pairs.

dating emily opened my eyes to the... well, i guess i understand why women buy shoes. however, i don't understand why you would have up to like 35 pairs of shoes.

back to my story.

the grandmother has been told she can't buy shoes anymore.

so, yeah, on the way to the restuarant we asked the grandmother what she wanted to do.

she says, "well, since we're over there, why don't we go by cook and loves? they're having a sale."

cook and loves being her favorite shoe store.

my girlfriend kind of pauses, says okay.

man, this story is long. to sum it all up, the grandmother only wanted house shoes.

she started looking at all these other shoes ("because you can't beat 22.95" or, you know, 50.80) and the total ended up being 99 dollars and some change.

my girlfriend called her mom because she felt as if she'd been played, and i was sitting there, quietly, because i kind of wanted the grandmother to be alright and everything, not manipulative, i was pulling for the grandmother.

i ended up sitting outside while the mom came to the store. by the time the mom got there, the grandmother put back two shoes because she knew she was getting in trouble.

so that was day one of being "all mine."

the next day she ended up calling me, from her work, to let me know that we were going out with her parents to see a movie.

we ended up seeing two movies with her parents. that's, what, 4 hours? 5?

i like her parents, don't get me wrong.

i just kind of had planned to be with just her.

so tonight her step bother comes in from where ever he's been the past month, and i'm hoping that maybe i can take him out with us to get dinner tonight.

he's 14 and, from what i hear, seems to be in a kind of a rough period in his life, but he's incredibly damn talented with music, gifted and what all, and i know he won't listen much to his dad so i kind of want to step up a little and be there, if he needs someone.

odds are, though, we'll end up going out to dinner tonight with the entire family and her grandmother will come and then her crazy father will show up and yay.