You can't say "motherfucker" without "mother."

I love my mom -- I can't help that. But I can say with complete confidence and veracity that I don't like her very much.

She is quite a piece of work. I'll spare you all the gory details, but suffice it to say that we had a loooovely Mother's Day conversation regarding her travel and lodging plans for my impending graduation (which is a week from today... AAAHHH!). She and my crazy (No, I'm not exaggerating. The man really is insane.) Algerian stepfather are leaving home at the asscrack of dawn on Friday so they can "beat the traffic" into my small college town. Great. What the hell am I going to do with a crazy midget Algerian and my mother, who is constantly desperately afraid of pissing off said crazy midget Algerian, for TWO WHOLE DAYS before I fuckin' graduate so they can get the hell out of my apartment, in which I have recently been informed that they are staying, because they are too effing cheap to shell out the money for a goddamn hotel room???

My dad, stepmom, sister, and brother, all of whom I actually WANT to see, will be in town Saturday and Sunday. HOWEVER, my stepfather can't be in the same place as my father, because my stepfather refuses to associate with him (also, I think he's secretly afraid, because Dad is a full foot-and-a-half taller than the diminutive African), and my mother can't be in the same place as my stepmother, because my mother is crazy and immature and cannot handle the fact that Dad has moved on and is finally happy. Thus, I'm left doing the Step-Parent Shuffle, which is a lot like the Electric Slide, only with less boogie-woogie and more just-kill-me-now-and-put-me-out-of-my-misery.

NOT TO MENTION the fact that my mother may actually skip my "real" graduation (the individual biology department ceremony, in which I will receive my actual diploma) because she doesn't like driving on the interstate at night. Yes, my 50-year-old mother is contemplating leaving my college graduation early because she's afraid of the dark.

Four years of rigorous college curriculum was NOTHING compared to what I'm going to have to survive this weekend.