Bedside manner

earlier today:
mom: Since you're sick, I will bring you home some soup from Central Market!
me: Thanks! *wheezes*

later today:
me: Mom, why does my soup have the label torn off?
mom: Well, it had chicken broth listed on the ingredients and I didn't want you to see it and get mad!
me: What!? You're a bag of dicks! Eh, fuck it. I'll eat it.

moments later:
me: *wheeze*What the fucking hell!!?! This has BACON in it! *kakak* You're a fucking jerk!! I'm sick and you're feeding me bacon!?!?!

later later:
mom: Ok, I'm at the pharmacy. Do you want NyQuil cold and flu or NyQuil cough? The flu one has antihistamines and the cough one has cough suppressant.
me: Whichever one doesn't have BACON IN IT!!!!!! *hack*
mom: *click*

Dating Advice

Mom: So I was reading your blog...who's the guy from Columbia?
Me: Oh, he was just some guy I met at a holiday party for five minutes. He's getting a Masters in Economics at SMU.
Mom: *gasps in delight*
Me: He's 23.
Mom: So? Economics, you say?
Me: You have a crush on him, then.

Old.

Me: Daddy, have you ever been to St. Louis?
Dad: Yeah, one time. We just drove through, though.
Me. Oh. Well, did you see the arch?
Dad: It wasn't around yet.
Me: What! Who were you there with? Lewis and Clark?!?
Mom: And that Indian girl. Sacajawhatshername.

Nostalgia

Me: Mom, do you like my hair color? It's almost like my natural hair color!
Mom: I don't remember what your natural hair color looks like.

Mission Accomplished

Me: Hey, mom. Did you see my video?
Mom: Yes. Jesus!
Me: Did you like it?
Mom: No!!! God, I mean, jeez, well... This is your Bub's fault for always letting you light the candles at Thanksgiving! Here's your dad.
Me: Hey, Daddy. Did you see my video?
Daddy: Yeah. My one question is: is it hotter than Tabasco?

Thanks, Mom.

Mom: "If you did that [flunk out of school], you'd be in the nunnery! Although, you'd probably make a good nun."
Me: "Uh, really? Why on earth would you say that?"
Mom: "Well ... you're mean."

More fun with my parents

So in my typically indiscreet fashion, I told my mom about cherry onion firefly after quoting her extensively. Of course, in my mom's typical mom fashion, her first comment was that my writing style has not athrophied and reamins engaging. Her second response was to tell me she didn't read everything because she wasn't sure if it was private or not which is completely hilarious not only because that probably is not true, but also because I am the least secretive person on the planet (ex: "I am retarded for you." "Haha. You're retarded?" "No! *I'm* not retarded...I...er..." FUCK.). Then my mom told me that my dad was kind of disappointed that I hadn't written anything about him yet which is so adorable it makes my teeth hurt.

My dad is very easy going and very Texan. He knows everything about geography, history, and politics. I get my uncanny sense of direction from him. All my guy friends drive up to Dallas to tailgate with Daddy even if I'm not anywhere near Dallas because he's that awesome.

The problem is that Daddy stories usually work better being told than transcribed because my dad tends to make up words or twang them randomly. In case you're a yankee, a twang is a Texas accent, it isn't called a "drawl." Every once in a while my dad will use really obscure words for perfectly normal things too, like calling something "persimmon" instead of orange-colored. I'm not even sure my dad's ever even eaten a persimmon, but there you go.


So I will make a concerted effort to incude more Daddy stories as they transpire.

My Mom rocks....kinda

Mom: Oh, I love this song! [sings and bobs back and forth] I want to rock and roll all night. And party every day!
Me: Really, Mom? Do you?
Mom: Mmm-hmm.
Me: Party every day?
Mom: Well, I could read a book all day.
Me: .... I'm not sure that's the same thing.

Email from Barby

From: Barbara Pool
Sent:Mon 11/19/07 11:11 PM
To: Leesie (valkyrie@alumni.rice.edu)

Little B2Shoes,
send me the stuff I need to get for your dips so I can get them hopefully tomorrow or wednesday.
LA(ww)M


Emails from my mom are always a bit perplexing. Despite the fact that she is an erudite librarian who has been proofing my papers for two decades, she prefers to type emails in a telegram style frequently leaving out punctuation and pronouns. She happens to be asking me for a salsa recipe, but as you can see, she eschews the ethnic Spanish for "dip."

What I'd like to point out, however, is the salutation and closing. If you're confused that the email is addressed to "Little B2shoes," knowing that stands for Little Bouef-y Two Shoes probably doesn't help either. I, in fact, have no idea what this means, but she's been calling me this ever since I can remember. I guess it's a conflation of "goody two shoes" and the French word for cow, which may or may not be a term of endearment in France. Who knows. The B can alternately stand for "bitchy two shoes" which is used with almost the same frequency.

LA(ww)M stands for "love always, without wax, Mommy." This is also weird, but easier to explain. The word "sincerely" derives from the Latin "without wax" which refers to the practice of patching up botched marble sculptures with wax. If a sculptor fucked up someones nose, he would fill in the mistake, but a master's sculpture, in contrast, would be free of revisions or wax, thusly a "sincere" work. Anyway, I learned that in fourth grade and my mom has been signing notes like that ever since. I imagine that she was hoping I'd follow in her footsteps and take Latin and watch "I, Claudius" marathons with her, but much to her disappointment I studied Greek and our Classical impasse sustains itself to this day.

Lastly, I'd like to point out something that I think sums up my mother's character pretty succinctly. My mom spells her name "Barby," but half of her college friends mistakenly spell it "Barbie." Every Christmas there is a crisis because my mom tries to remember who spells it which way when she's signing her Christmas cards because she feels it would be rude to correct that person and feels obligated to sign "Barbie" lest they feel embarrassed. 40 years later. No, really.