Went to the eye doc today—first time in, oh, four years, because if my eyes aren’t bothering me, I just don’t give it much thought. The bad news: My frames aren’t made anymore and haven’t been for two years, which sucks because I LOVE my frames deeply and flipped at the idea of having to find new ones as cool as these. The good news, however, is that my eyes haven’t changed significantly, so new glasses aren’t necessary. But I bought some anyway, because I’m a girl who’s easily excited by the idea of having TWO pairs of glasses.

So Mother and I are sitting at dinner last week when out of the blue, she hits me with this:

Uh, wut!??

God knows Mother nags me about myriad things—MYRIAD things—but the one thing for which I always gave her credit was that she never harped on me about me being single and without spawn. So, after I looked at her like she’d suddenly sprouted three freakin’ heads, I showed her my received call log, which consists of Girlie, Poppy, my sister, the paper and, well, that’s really kind of it on any given day. She seemed satisfied, but I of course was kinda squicked out by the whole exchange.

No, there hasn’t been a regular male cast member in my merry band of idiots for going on three years, and save for a certain delicious interlude, I haven’t really necessarily been in the market for one. Things like the following remind me of why: Today a friend of mine got some pretty exciting news and naturally wanted to share it with her boyfriend, even though they’re pretending they’re casual. She gets him on the line, and he proceeds to tell her all about how he’s at HIS EX-GIRLFRIEND’S helping her with some sort of disaster, poor, poor pitiful him. And do you know that HIS crap all of a sudden became more important to her than her really good news!?? Yeah, I had something like that happen once. The night before Dad’s wake, the one guy (remember that asshole?), after not hearing from him the whole time Mer was in town, called and as we were talking, he started on some tangent about all the times he’s been kicked when he’s down (and there are many). Something about the conversation told me he’d just gotten fucked over by someone he was dating (yeeeeessssssss, besides me, y’all, no need to dwell), so I asked him if he’d gotten his heart broken. To his credit, at least he said “No” and wouldn’t elaborate, and he did show up at the wake the next day, which I completely didn’t expect (he never met Dad, so it’s not something I would’ve asked of him).

Anyway, I did think to myself, “Um, hi? My dad just died, and even though I’m probably not going to talk to you about it, can we at least focus on me me ME, you know, because MY DAD DIED!???” but that bit of righteous selfishness somehow turned into “Oh, he’s telling me in so many words about his failed relationship because he’s trying to take my mind off MY stuff! Wow! That’s really considerate!” (Yeah, wish I could blame that one on grief, but no. That would be me using my acute rationalization skillz.)

Yeah, I suppose I didn’t need to go into all that, but after two almost-in-a-row major relationships with possibly the two most joyless human beings outside of Tara’s ex, I’m perfectly happy with what little peace I have. I mean, if someone normal wants to come and hang, I could be down with that, sure; I’m not SO jaded that I’ve sworn off men or anything. It’s just something I really don’t think about on a daily basis. But yeah, so now I guess Mother wants me married off or some shit.