(My sister and I are in the kitchen and I’m drinking a soda in front of the sink. My sister tosses her used spoon into the sink.)
Sister: “Are you going wash that for me?”
Me: *grunts yes*
Sister: “Thank you!”
Me: *grunts you’re welcome*
(My sister wanders out of the room and I finish drinking.)
Me: “The fact that you understood me means that we’ve been spending way too much time together!”
(I had just put my newborn and my 3 year-old in the car when I have to run back for my keys. When I return, I have a conversation with the 3 year old, who is pretending to be the mother. She also loves astronomy stuff.)
Daughter: “Where are my keys?”
Me: “Oh, I didn’t grab them, sorry!”
Daughter: “Well, I can’t go anywhere without my keys!” (I say this often. Whoops.)
Me: *thinking quickly* “Well, the problem is, I can’t go back up to get them because there’s a black hole on the stairs! The Black Hole Removal Team is on their way, so by the time we get back, it’ll be all cleared out.”
Daughter: “Is that because of the particle acceler-thingie?”
Me: *relieved that she bought it* “Sure.”
Daughter: “Oh, okay. Tell them to be careful!”
(My younger brother, my boyfriend, and I are playing a word association game called ‘Anomia’ at a family get together. Basically, you have to come up with an example of the word on the card before your opponent does. It’s a lot harder than it sounds.)
Card on the table: “Cause of death.”
Me: “Death!”
(My boyfriend and brother both die of laughter.)
(My husband and I are both huge nerds, obsessed with anything to do with science and video games. He’s currently playing “Skyrim,” a fantasy game with beautifully rendered dragons. I happily note that the dragons actually look plausible. A pet peeve of mine is “unrealistic-looking” fantasy creatures. This leads to a long discussion/argument about how to build a truly plausible dragon via evolution. I, a marine biologist, have referenced everything from iguana tails to egret necks to various species of bats’ wings and even proto-birds like archaeopteryx, over the last hour to cobble this thing together, but my husband, the physicist, is still unsatisfied.)
Husband: “That’s all well and good, but you’ve only given me possibilities, and things that could maybe fly, given the right size-scale and circumstances.”
Me: “Sweetheart, I would be happy to genetically engineer a functioning dragon in our kitchen for you, but I think I’d end up doing something illegal in the process.”
Husband: “We’d probably get evicted.”
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(My boyfriend and I are snuggling and starting to get intimate. My alarm goes off.)
Me: *sighing* “Sorry. I need to go take the pill.”
Boyfriend: “No! Snuggling!”
Me: “I’ve already ignored the first alarm. I need to take it now.”
Boyfriend: “Snuggling now!”
Me: “We’ll snuggle later.”
Boyfriend: “Snuggling now!”
Me: “Snuggling now will mean babies later.”
Boyfriend: *bursts out laughing* “That needs to go on the internet somewhere.”
Me: “I know just the site.”
