Oh, THAT Tradition!

“Mom, when do we have to take the Christmas tree down?” my son asked the other day.

“We can keep it up as long as you like,” his mother answered.

“But when are we supposed to take it down?” he wanted to know.

Smiling, his mother replied, “If we follow tradition, February.”

February? I thought.  What tradition is she following?

My question must have been visible on my face, because she continued with, “Because by February it’s so close to Valentine’s Day that you’re out of excuses for not having taken your tree down earlier.”

Advertisements

Not When You Say It Out Loud, No

Last night we were playing Yahtzee and L’s Mother had one more roll of the die to complete her Yahtzee attempt, so she was talking to the die.(1)

“If you come through as a two, I will totally do the Yahtzee thing(2), I swear!” she told it.  “Come on, it’ll be funny!”  Evidently though, the die thought of something funnier, because she rolled a five.

Not to be outdone, however, L’s Mother promptly thrust her fist into the air and cried “Not-zee!”.

Around horrified laughter (hers and ours) she finally managed to gasp “That’s! Not! Right!”

*****

(1)  It’s something a lot of Yahtzee players do, so it’s only moderately weird.

(2) Meaning, for those who don’t know, a triumphant fist being raised into the air accompanied by a cry of “Yahtzee!”.

Fortunately, I Had

Me:  So I just read that Julie Andrews voices some kind of monster in Aquaman.

Lala and L’s Mother:   (simultaneously)  Really?!  We have to see this movie!

Me:  Wow.  I hope I read that right then.

L’s Mother:  (teasing, but ominously)  I hope you did too.

She Then Looked At Me And Said “But You Can Use THAT If You Like.”

“Maybe you can use what she just said, Dad,” my son announced, prompting a puzzled look from his mother.

“He really wants me to write about you for Candles and Curses today,” I explained, “so he’s waiting for you to say something funny.”

“Sorry, son,” she replied, “but I can only be funny when I’m trying to be serious.”

But It Made Me Smile On A Day I TRULY Needed A Smile

(Another paraphrased encounter with L’s Mother.)

“Since you said you were going to wait until your foot was better to move the trampoline, I was going to move it for you,” she told me this morning.  “Then I realized if I could move it, you could move it, and you probably meant you were waiting to move it until you could use it again.”

She was right too.

We’ve Had A Lot Of Restless Nights Lately, You See

(The following is paraphrased, but still an accurate representation of what I took away from the event.)

“You were wonderful last night,” L’s Mother told me with a loving smile early Saturday morning.

Now it’s not that I’ve never heard that sentiment before, but this time it confused me.  “All we did last night was sleep,” I reminded her.

“Yeah . . .” she sighed with contentment.

It Took Me A Second, But I Got It

In part due to the aforementioned cloud over this house yesterday, I told L’s Mother that I was going to another room and shutting the door for a bit “until the urge to run away from home passes.”

To which she responded, “Do you want me to knock so you know when it’s passed?”

This Was Last Night, By The Way

Years ago I remember Dad telling me how every task in the eyes of one of his bosses was “priority one,” which eventually prompted my dad to ask said boss to please clarify what was “priority one alpha,” “priority one beta,” “priority one gamma,” and so on.

L’s Mother and I do our best to keep this idea in mind in our daily routines, but lately her job has necessitated priorities above “priority one alpha” which she has dubbed “OMG alpha,” “OMG beta,” and “OMG gamma.”

Because That IS Who We Are

Now I freely admit regarding the event I mentioned yesterday, that a lesser woman would have made my life Hell for a while after something like that, but not L’s Mother.  That’s just not who either of us are.  Another case in point:

Not long after the picture incident, L’s Mother came in and started venting about something at work, and while I was listening, I was also lacking some necessary context, so I was only getting about half the story and I knew it.  Even so, I kept listening, and as the story continued I pulled her a little closer to me.

Smirking, she paused and said, “Annnnd you haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you?”

Feigning offense, I retorted “Of course I have!”

“Uh huh,” she said.  “And what word have you heard?”

“‘Said'” I said with a grin.

Not Even REMOTELY What I Meant!

Noting that her hair looked particularly good one day, L’s Mother asked me to take a picture of her; pleased with the results, she decided to use said picture to update her work profile picture.  Personally I felt the picture, while technically fine, didn’t really capture her . . . . essence, for lack of a better word, so later on I mentioned I didn’t care for the picture because it “didn’t look like her” to me.

This prompted her to burst into peals of laughter.

Suspicious and wary, but still needing to know, I asked her what was so funny.

Still laughing, she gasped, “Everyone at the office today told me they liked it because it made me look pretty!”