Church today

So I went to church today and I feel like I wasted an entire day. I love my family but I keep forgetting that I hate dealing with them. I told my mother last night before bed that if we leave my house at 9:30 am, we'd make it to church in L.A. by 10am. She didn't believe me. She hasn't driven a car in over 30 years but she still doubted me. So she got up at 7am and yelled at me for not waking her up earlier. I rolled back over to try to go back to sleep and ten minutes later my phone rang. It was my step father. Then 15 minutes after that, my cousin called. My mom spoke to both of them and after she hung up, she told me they'd meet us at church. Cool, whatever. I gave up the fight to sleep and decided to get dressed. We made it to L.A. at 9:30. We'd planned to go to the 10am service. As soon as I got off the freeway, she says to me "We have to pick Tony up!" HUHN?! "I thought he was meeting us there!?"
"Oh," she says, "no, he needs a ride."
This is the kind of shit that annoys the hell out of me. Don't spring stuff on me at the last minute. Ugh! So I make a detour to her house, in the opposite direction of church, and we pick him up. Then she says "call Nicky and tell her we're getting on the freeway." So I do. Nicky says "okay" and 10 minutes later, we arrived at church. Early, just like I told her, lol. Smh.
Throughout the whole service all of us kept looking towards the door for Nicky to show up. She's always late so it didn't occur to me until about 30 minutes in that she might've wanted to be picked up. Never mind the fact that she lives 5 minutes away from the church and has a gotdamn car herself. If she can use you in any capacity and save herself some gas and effort, she will. Thats how she is. Then my mom begins to yell at my stepdad for making room for yet another woman in our already crammed pew. My son is mad dogging everyone because he doesn't want to be there, and every time we're told to bow our heads and pray, my mother nudges me to point out something stupid. "Look at Barney over there in all that purple," she says referring to a woman in a purple hat with purple feathers and a purple cape. Then, every time the choir starts singing, she quickly finds the song lyrics in her book, nudges me and points them out to me because I'm not singing along. I used to leave church feeling refreshed and smiling, thoughtful and energized. But today all I wanted to do was drive home and start my day over after a nap. It wasn't our usual priest giving the sermon today. It was some Jamaican man that, for some reason, I couldn't believe was a priest :( so it took real effort for me to focus on his word and not his accent/nationality. And I can't decide if it was just me and my prejudice or if he was all over the place with his message, not making any real points. He began to talk about the virtues of a good wife, which I was dreading but was open-minded about. Then he asked women to tell him what they wanted in a husband, then he asked the married men to tell him what made them want to marry their wives, and then he started talking about being greedy and selfish and shopping for things we don't need, and he finished with forgiveness. Somehow, though, I was able to pull a couple of good things out of it, thank God. What I was really disappointed about was that they didn't sing my favorite church song and they've changed things so much since I was last there. I don't know if I'll ever be back. In my older age, I've found that I don't care for change in tradition so much. More on that some other time though. My takeout dinner is here.