Conversations With Mom...

Arrived home yesterday from our 2-week Arizona fun-time extravaganza. It was all I dreamed and more. When I spend any amount of time with my family it almost always amazes me that, even though I often feel quite unique, I am more similar to them than I am different.

My mom is the kicker. Let it be known far & wide that while I have the nerdy, engineering humor of my dad, the random & warped portion comes from my mom. As does the part that is funny without intending to be. And the part that doesn't always think before speaking, or is fatigued to just short of coherence, or joins the conversation mid-way through, and therefore ends up saying some pretty bizarre things. And I think the latter just explained the former. Yes, in many ways I am my mother's daughter. Cases in point--

1. Dad & the Cat Daddy painted the guest room a very nice green. They had to unplug the internet temporarily so they wouldn't also paint the power cords & coaxial cable a very nice green. I'm such a baby about not having internet access. I think it was off maybe 20 minutes, but to me it felt like three days. After the Cat Daddy told me everything was back on I still couldn't connect, so I went in to investigate. He had reconnected the cable & everything else, but had forgotten to plug in the modem. So I plugged in the modem, called him silly, and took credit for fixing the internet.

As I was relating this to Dad later, mom joined in the conversation roughly halfway through and heard just enough to determine that the internet had been down for about 20 minutes. Not clear on why it was down, she asked if it was because the paint fumes disrupted the wireless and needed time to dissipate before it would work again.

I was about to explain that the tiny people that live in the modem and run on little treadmills to keep everything running had staged a temporary boycott because they didn't like the very nice green paint she picked out, but then I remembered the time I asked the Cat Daddy a question about rewinding DVD's, and decided not to pursue the matter further.

2. Eating at Longhorn for Dad's belated birthday dinner. Dad, the Cat Daddy, & I were debating the nature of the artwork on the wall at our booth. It was very pretty--a desert scene with vibrant sunset-ish colors in it. Was it a painting? A screen print? Some sort of lithograph, or other artistic method we know nothing about (lotsa possibilities there)?

Mom said, "It's the Grand Canyon, you idiots!!"

And she was correct. It was the Grand Canyon. Unfortunately that still didn't explain what it was made of. We never did find out, in fact. We really are idiots when it comes to art.

It drives the Cat Daddy nuts when I ask him several clarifying questions in a row, but he doesn't realize that doing so prevents exactly the type of situation above. Maybe he'll read this and cut me a little slack the next time. Just saying.

3. Upon further consideration, my third example needs to be its own post in order for me to do it any sort of justice. I'll give you a hint: it involves Napoleon Dynamite. And maybe the Catholic channel...