Life has been quite manic around here lately, and last weekend I had to go to Arizona for a family wedding. With my mother. Anyone who has followed the blog for a while knows that my mother is a very difficult person, with whom I have a fraught relationship. But she wanted to go see the granddaughter of her late sister get married. My cousin Jennifer is sentimental about our side of the family, because she lost her mother when she was just 15, and so, because it was important to both of them, I made it happen. It was…