12.23: Writing -- BINGO

Something snarky comes out of me when I am around my brother and his family. Perhaps I'm just rising to the occasion. Maybe I like that they laugh when I chime in with them. But we're always teasing one another, in a way that's not exactly mean, but nowhere near kind, either.

Yesterday, we had a little mini-cookout at my brother's house. My parents came, and SC and I, and my brother and his family (his wife, his three daughters and his granddaughter). I brought deviled eggs -- not my specialty, but they were requested -- and I got there around 4:30, which was a half hour past the start time, but apparently another half hour before my parents even showed up.

My mom has been kind of annoying lately. It gets worse every year. We love her, but she fixates on the same topics and talks about them constantly. Common topics include: your dad is awful, the choir at church, and how perfect my brother Michael is. I'm not the only one who notices. So before my mom got there, my middle niece (who is 19) and I made up a BINGO chart for Things my Mother says.

We got BINGO pretty quickly.

My mom noticed that we were doing something, eventually, and we handed over the BINGO card once we hit BINGO. She looked a bit upset for a second, but then laughed. And I felt bad for a second, but then I laughed, too.

Snarky? Yes. But that's just the way my family is.

NGS and I never have to write about writing again, but we WILL write.