Not the worst day, but pretty high up there.

Who knew my day could start off with such innoccuous words: "Hey, we're going to Raleigh. Want to come with us?"  I knew it was for my sister's wedding and all the preparations going into, so I'd figure we'd talk numbers with some of the venues for the dinner, reception, and the catering service.  No big deal, right? I'd get to eat some cake, see how big 1200 square feet is, and note the colorful ambience of the dining feng shui.

Except none of that happened. Well, I can't say that; I did get to eat a tiny amount of cake.

My sister and mother kept getting into arguments over the whole thing.  It first started off with a squabble over the dining venue, but that soon resolved thanks to some well-placed sniffs by my mother. Then we moved on to the catering service and sampled the different cakes and tried to pair them with the different mousses.  My sister decided on several patterns for linens and things and chose a navy and ivory color scheme. I asked her, "Are you sure you want me to appear in uniform at your wedding? I'll be in full dress blues and they're black."  The woman organizing the catering fawned, "Ohhhh, you're in the Navy! I was a CTM for 6 years!" and she seemed impressed that I was going to OCS in a week. It's a small world, I guess when it comes to previous service.  Right now I'm not sure black will go with a navy color scheme, so I might wear a regular ol' navy blazer with matching slacks.

After the catering, the catfight reached feverpitch when we headed towards the museum to look at the room for the reception area.  It sort of looked like the room my highschool prom was held in. Drab carpet, wood panelling that comes in rolled up sheets, and lighting that could cause epileptic seizures.  My sister did not like it for the aforementioned reasons.  My mother was convinced that it was absolutely gorgeous and that all it needed was a little sprucing up.

The tension was palpable.  If I were to make an analogy, I'd say it was equivalent to someone taking a mallet and banging away on 100 crates, with 10 of the crates filled with TNT.  I was expecting my sister to blow her capillaries and my mother to flip her lid.  Or my sister to throw a hissy fit and my mother to hem and haw.  Or my sister to throw a hoot 'n' a holler and my mom to kiss the wampus cat.  Or my sister to wring the 'possum's neck and my mom to stamp in the muscadine jelly. Or however those Southern US phrases go regarding losing your temper.

Lucky me that I happened to be in the middle of the whole thing.

My sister drove back with her fiancee to visit her future father in law, and I drove back with my mother.  Guess what our topic of discussion was?

In essence, the day boiled down to: "This is my day, this is what I want to do!" "No, I think this would be better, yes this would be much better if we did it this way!"

Oh yeah, and if my day wasn't bad enough already, I got blatantly checked out by two gay guys and was ignored by every single girl I saw.  This seemed to amuse my sister greatly.