Sunday was pretty stinky. It started with my meeting my parents alone (at my mom’s request so she can have some exclusive mother-daughter time with mother-daughter talk, which sounded anxiety-attackishly vomit-inducing to me and turned out my instincts were right) for breakfast out, which opportunity my mom took to tell me, both through anecdotes allegedly from her coworkers and through directly saying it, that I must bear her grandchildren immediately or I will die alone and neglected in my old age. And she was not having it when I gave her my usual answer about how long we expect to be engaged before getting married (9 years), and said that it had better be within 2 years. She claimed she may not be alive in 9 years to attend the wedding, and I said that’s all the more reason for me to put the wedding even farther out, so that she’d HAVE to stay alive and healthy in order to attend it, and that I was now elongating the engagement period to 25 years. After that breakfast, during which my dad stayed mainly silent, the three of us went to my aunt (dad’s 2nd sister)’s house to make the engagement announcement. My dad’s 3rd sister was invited to join us there, but she turned it down claiming she was presently unpresentable and took a rain check. My cousin, the 2nd sister’s daughter, was to meet us there too, but she never showed up. After staying awhile, my parents and I left to my grandma (mom’s mom)’s house to make the same announcement. Grandma asked me how soon we expect to be married, then promptly turned around and got distracted into shuffling through some stuff on her shelf as I answered, “9 years.” She didn’t react, and I turned to my mother and said, “See? She’s all right with that.” And after that visit, my parents and I went back to our respective homes.

Turning right onto my street, I passed by a black SUV that was going the opposite way, toward me. I saw out of the corner of my eye that someone in the back passenger seat had his/her full arm stuck entirely out the window toward my car, and I thought it was a neighbor I didn’t recognize waving at me or something, until I realized he/she had his/her middle finger up flipping me the bird. WTF?! It was definitely not anyone I knew, and what the hell were these people’s problems, they don’t like Lexuses?! I hoped karma would see to it that the person got his/her arm broken off soon as I fantasized about what I would’ve done had I possessed a secret laser-beam shooting space-age weapon. I doubted my ability to take the high road and keep my keys in my purse if I ever I see a black SUV parked on my street with a Raiders football decal on the center top of the rear window.

I eventually made it back to Mr. W’s in the late afternoon and we went to a pizza joint I’d been recommending, and turned out he thought the parking lot design was awful; we were seated in the last available booth which was in the back by the restrooms and patrons constantly went in and out and every time the door opened, we could smell the bathroom air freshener; he didn’t like the glass the chianti was served in (they used a chardonnay glass so he was unable to swirl the red wine without spilling some); he thought the antipasto salad wasn’t very fresh as it wasn’t “crispy”; and he thought the pizza was too soggy in the middle. Sigh.

Sunday evening ended with our attending a funeral at 7pm. The pallbearers brought the coffin into the church followed by a procession of the deceased’s family members, and I saw a teenage boy wipe furiously at his face, trying to hide his sobs, as his sister and mother on either side of him walked with their arms around him protectively and rubbed his back in an ineffective attempt to comfort him. Watching his agony choked my chest and brought tears to my own eyes. Sigh.

Tomorrow is a new day.