This morning out of the corner of my eye I saw L’s Mother do a cute little stage-worthy side kick in the kitchen. I figured she was probably just in a good mood, but I decided I wanted the full story.
“What was that for?” I asked her.
She shot me a curious look. “I nearly lost my balance.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well it was adorable in my peripheral vision.”
L’s Mother (First thing this morning): I took a gender role test!
Me (Still sleepy): Did you pass?
L’s Mother: I got a 117%!
Me: . . .
Yesterday I noticed in passing that L’s Mother was wearing socks, so naturally I wandered over to her and said, “Hey there, socksy.” (And if you don’t like the humor, I will remind you that you were not in the room I was playing to, because L’s Mother responded with a big smile and a childishly proud, “I’m socksy!”)
Later that evening during a more private moment between the two of us, for some reason I felt the need to point out that she was no longer wearing socks, prompting her to pout like a child and proclaim, “I am no longer socksy.”
“All I’m saying,” I was saying the other day, “was that if you want to sincerely thank someone in text, unless you’re under fire or on fire, you can take the time to type out ‘Thank you!’ ‘TYVM!’ just doesn’t cut it.”
“It’s just linguistic shift,” L’s Mother retorted. “It’s no different than saying ‘goodbye’ instead of ‘God be with ye.'”
“That actually proves my point,” I replied. “If I want to say ‘goodbye’ and mean goodbye, I’ll say goodbye; if I want to say and mean ‘God be with ye,” I’ll say ‘God be with ye.’ They convey entirely different messages!”
L’s Mother: One my nephews is asking if we can talk. I’m guessing he wants to tell me that he’s engaged . . . or pregnant.
Me: My money is on engaged.
So last night I sampled a food combination I hadn’t sampled in a while, and this morning I woke up with a feeling in my guts that reminded me why I hadn’t sampled that particular combination in while.
L’s Mother (ever the food scholar) speculated that even though I’ve never had that reaction to these foods individually, because they were of the same plant family, perhaps they were reinforcing each other’s effects, and that’s why I was feeling this way. This observation prompted her to suggest that, “Maybe next time you should add a third member of the same family and see if you–”
“Die?” I somewhat testily (but playfully) finished for her.
“I don’t have much time to make myself a cup of tea,” L’s Mother announced today.
“I can make tea,” I said before asking, “What kind of tea would you like?”
“Any kind,” she foolishly told me.
Flashing her a grin I said, “Worm and mud tea it is.”
“I don’t think worm tea would be very good,” she said with a smirk.
I nodded in agreement. “Just mud then.”
“I want to spend more time with you,” L’s Mother told me this morning, “but between L. staying up later and me having to go to bed earlier there just isn’t enough time right now, and I am really tired of being clock blocked!”
Last night L’s Mother had an ephipheny. I’d just finished saying that I needed someone (not her) to stop telling me that I was going to react in a certain way, because it was only making me defensive and therefore less likely that I would react in the way they wanted, when L’s Mother looked at me and said, “I just realized something; you are innately defiant!”.
I have to admit, her saying that to me shook me to my very core. “You mean you just figured that out now?” I asked in genuine utter disbelief.
