Some Days You Just Have To Take Your Laughs Where You Can Find Them

“Just in case it’s not abundantly obvious,” I announced to L’s Mother yesterday, “there’s no way I’m going to be able to install the battery in the car tomorrow.”

“Why not?” she asked.

“Because I already did it,” I answered with a chuckle.

And She Was

So, about what I got L’s Mother . . .

Many moons back her obsession at the time was a game I had bought her, and in that game it was possible to find a bizarre (but cute) in-game pet. One day I noticed that the makers behind the game had started a Kickstarter to produce a limited number of plush versions of said pet. To make a long story short, I backed the project as soon as I saw it, and aside from checking that they’d made their goal and what the approximate shipping date would be, I didn’t give it any more thought beyond mentioning in passing to L’s Mother that I’d gotten her “something.” I truly believed that she had no idea that this plush even existed.

But in actuality, she was very much aware of this Kickstarter, but it had already closed by the time she followed up on it, and she was absolutely crushed that she had missed out. Her exact words to herself at the time (and repeated to me after the plush had arrived) were, “I hope the person who gets mine is very happy with it.”

Turns Out She DID Know What It Was (And I’ll Tell YOU Tomorrow)

“Something I ordered for you a while back finally arrived,” I told L’s Mother last night. “To be honest, I’m not sure you’re going to know what it is at first, but I know you’ll think it’s cool.”

A few moments later after she’d seen what it was:

“You GOT one?! ?!You GOT one!? !!?YOU GOT ONE?!!”

And, Yes, I Said It WITH My Smirk

Recently L’s Mother has been taking about wanting to get a new vehicle, and she mentioned that you could fold the back seats down in the one she was looking at, but that she “couldn’t think of any reason why we’d want to do that.”

“I can,” I said with my smirk.

She Won That Round, But There’ll Be Others

Knowing that I was feeling exhausted last night after a long day, L’s Mother made a show of awkwardly patting my shoulder. “I wanted to make a gesture,” she explained with a grin.

Smirking, I retorted with, “And now I’m feeling inspired to make a gesture of my own.”

Before I could make good on that threat with an appropriately rude gesture, however, her eyes got big and she cooed, “Aw! I can still inspire you!”

It Was The Really Blue Bag

The following is a paraphrased, but otherwise true, exchange:

Me: Which coffee did you want me to try again?

L’s Mother: The one in the blue bag.

Me: Do you mean [calls out name]?

L’s Mother: That’s not in a blue bag.

Me: *contemplating the blue bag with brown lettering in his hands* Okay, let me ask it this way: Is it the blue bag, the other blue bag, or the really blue bag?

That’s . . . Actually A Really Good Suggestion

The other day I half-rhetorically asked L’s Mother, “How do I get across to an engineer that I agree with them, I just think they’re being excessive in this case?”

“Tell them,” L’s Mother replied, “their direction is fine, their magnitude is not.”

Because Of Course I Did

Today, for reasons I don’t even pretend to understand, L’s Mother had a pair of socks in her back pocket this morning. The logical thing to do would have been to ask her why.

I went for the socksy joke.

This Just Always Strikes Me As Funny

L’s Mother: Oh! Something else I was going to tell you . . . oh, you wouldn’t care . . .

Me: If you say so. I trust your judgement.

L’s Mother: *Proceeds to tell me at great length what she wasn’t going to tell me*

Because Like I Said, I KNOW How Things Work Around Here

I have since found out that the aforementioned “worm slingshot” incident involved a stretchable toy worm and stretching it out to “slingshot” it across the room. Apparently both L. and his mother were unprepared for the amount of force this generated, but were fortunate enough to not hit anything breakable.

And, yes, L’s Mother was indeed the instigator.