Hm, here's a little secret I've found out within the last few days: I guess a lot of people-including moms--kinda hate Mother's Day too.

Mom was much better behaved on her actual birthday/Mother's Day. She didn't get too many calls that I noticed (though I at least slept through Mauricio's 6:30 a.m. serenade), seemed...okay...about her presents, I guess. But she behaved nicely. I'm not sure how that happened. Maybe it had something to do with us not being alone on the day for a change.
Because we went to the Hawaiian festival, and we were going to meet up there with Angelica, whose mother apparently prefers to go to Reno and gamble all day instead. Which boggled my mind, clearly. What? No Paying Attention, no financial bribery, no whining about spending time with her? She must be a Cool Mom, or just really into gambling!

Anyway, we were a bit surprised (or I was, Mom's not entirely sure if this was mentioned ahead of time and she didn't notice) to find out that Angelica brought the new guy she's been dating along! My impression from Mom is that she's been...a little shy about mentioning him, I guess? Or at least while she's dropped details to the both of us recently, she hadn't like, mentioned a name. Anyway, we met him and I vote that she keeps him because he was delightful to hang out with. He REALLY reminded me of hanging out with Jess's husband Mike--in the highly unlikely event that they could ever meet, they'd probably get along splendidly. I was all "aw, a guy friend! just the kind I like!," essentially. While she can't go to the Pirate Festival after all because it's on Father's Day, he said that he goes, so maybe I'll run into him or something. Anyway, he was a hoot to hang out with and as far as I'm concerned, bring him along whenever he wants. He was also a "Navy SEAL" at hanging out with women while they be shopping--"I got this." Adorable.

You know what was also interesting? At one point Mom was separated from the rest of us in line and both of them said that their mothers were pissed off at them for Mother's Day too--Angelica because her mom wanted her to spend all weekend in Reno and work-wise she didn't want to be driving for half the day and night to get home, and Gary's mom wanted him to come over and, I think deal with her 12 dogs? Something weird like that. Anyway, I was all, OH GOOD, FOR ONCE I'M NOT ALONE IN THIS ANGER THING.

We did do more hula watching for a change, at Mom's request, and I hardly bought anything. I bought a couple of dollar rainbow roses for me and that was IT, and a book on Hawaii movies for Mom that she's been wanting ever since she spotted it on Big Island. Happily, the Hawaiian book dealer recently got that one, so I snagged it as an extra present. (The lady also said, "Nice!" when she saw my ID and age. Hah.) After our party split at the end of the festival, we only had about an hour left before I needed to leave and we were still pretty full from having lunch from about 2-3-ish (the lines were soooo long), so we had ice cream and just hung around. It was nice. Probably not what she wanted, but nice.

So this morning at work, everyone was comparing Mother's Days. At first it started out like the usual, i.e. the moms compare how much pampering they got, who got their nails done and dinners and whatnot. But...after I got asked how my usual drama went, most folks started running over here to sympathize and say how much THEY DON'T LIKE MOTHER'S DAY EITHER. Yes, that was a bunch of moms saying it. Specifically saying that their moms are unhappy with them no matter what they do, they complain all day, their sons get off the hook while the mothers have to put on Pretty Pretty Princess Day.... My boss said she had to take her mother home Saturday night because she couldn't take her for another 24 hours and all she talks about is wanting to die. When it came to Mother's Day, her own daughter can't do anything for her On The Day because Grandma and her moping have to come first. My boss actually told her daughter to stay home on the day and they'd do something next weekend, meanwhile she'd just rest up from dealing with her mother. Only one person actually seemed to have a nice, normal, "traditional" Mother's Day without someone being crazy.

Of course, my coworker whose mother is dead was kind of like "You'll be sorry when they're dead" about it. I can't argue with that. But at the same time...hell, if everyone else is finding it stressful as hell to put on a Pretty Pretty Princess Day and make them all feel special in the way that they want.... gah! Therapy this week is gonna be interesting.

Oh, two more things:

(a) now that the Mother's Day drama is over, that means I'm over the hump and on the downhill slide of the rollercoaster towards the end of May and things finally starting to chill out a bit from here on in. Woot!

(b) My mother called during The Good Wife to announce that she heard Alicia was pregnant. I naturally assumed she meant she'd heard a spoiler for the show. Then I called back at the end to say, "no, she wasn't...." Uh, no, she meant that my cousin is pregnant again. Sigh. Good lord, don't make calls like that while the show is on.

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