First of all, our flowers are starting to bloom or are blooming. It’s so exciting to see our yard come alive each year. Prepare yourselves for way too many photos of wild roses and peonies over the next couple of weeks. Here are a few until then! (Also, my life is very sad. Watching my wild roses bloom is one of the highlights of my year. It’s close to watching grass grow.)

***

Just before we hung up one night last week my mom told me she’d been reading a book where a man didn’t like crowds because he had PTSD from something. His wife wanted him to go with her to a store so he did and while he waited he went to a bar and started drinking so he didn’t have to think about the crowds.

“Then he had more to drink and then he got home he shot his wife.”

I was like, “Mom! Why are you telling me this! What books are you reading?!”

She continues without answering, “So anyhow, I was thinking about my uncle. You remember me talking about him, right?”

At this point I am trying to figure out what this has to do with the awful book.

“Well, anyhow, I think he had PTSD. They always said he was dishonorably discharged from the Army, but I don’t know the story there. Anyhow, he used to go on these drinking binges and then he wouldn’t drink for a while and then he’d go on another binge. I wonder if that was what happened to him. Maybe he drank to forget what he had seen overseas. Maybe he had PTSD like that man in the book. Well, anyhow, everyone always said he married his niece but he didn’t really marry his niece because she actually was Uncle William’s daughter from another marriage so she wasn’t related by blood and —”

“Mom…seriously, how did we get here? How did this conversation even get here?”

“What? I was just saying that that book reminded me of my uncle and —”

“I appreciate the happy story Mom, but I should go now.”

There is only so much information about my extended family I can take in during one conversation.

***

A woman on Instagram commented a few weeks ago that she kills plants very easily. I left this comment for her: “You’re not alone. A flower threw itself off a shelf when I walked by it in a store one time because it figured it better just kill itself before I got a hold of it and slowly murdered it.”

***

My son says that people forget he is there all the time. He said someone will tell him a story and he’ll say, “I know. I was there. Don’t you remember?”

Or one of us will tell him something we heard and he’ll say, “I know, I’m the one who told you!”

Or a friend of his will say, “I was talking to some friends the other night on the phone and —”

“I know! I was there!!!”

He said his grandfather and dad are always telling him stories that he experienced with them, like he wasn’t there.

I’ve tried to assure him that it isn’t that he is forgettable, it’s just that we are all getting old and we forget a lot, like who was with us when we went somewhere, who we told what, and sometimes even where we are at the moment.

***

 Another day The Boy said to me, “Wait. Wait. This will be funny,” and then proceeded to do something dangerous and stupid.

I told him that are a couple of sentences people say right before the ambulance is called.

One is “watch this.”

The other is, “Wait. Wait. This will be funny.”

***

Here is a corny dad joke from my dad:

I told my dad I’m allergic to Tide laundry detergent a few years ago. If I remember right, he is too.

“My dad always washed in Tide, though,” he told me.

“Oh, did he?”

“Yeah, I mean, doesn’t everyone wash intide? It would be embarrassing to wash outtide.”

***

We were watching Shakespeare and Hathaway and the one actor said he was doing an American accent. “Yeah, it’s American. It’s from Nebraska.”

I said to The Husband, “Oh my gosh. Nebraska. Until he said that I completely forgot we had a state called Nebraska. Whatever happens there anyhow?”

My husband says they grow corn. I’ll have to take his word for it.

***

I was reading with Little Miss the other day and came across the word umbrage. I told her it was a very British word because I couldn’t seem to say it without a very British accent.

Try it. It’s true. You have to say it with a British accent.

***

I finally watched a couple episodes of The Office with my family recently and wow — as a resident of Pennsylvania, that show is creepily accurate about the people of Pennsylvania.

When they go out on sales, I swear I do a double-take and think the people they are talking to might be one of my neighbors or the boss at one of our local companies. I’m not very far from Scranton and have lived here my entire life, so trust me, people in PA really are that down to earth. Sometimes we are a little weird too. *wink*

***

So how about you? What random events have been going on in your life? Let me know in the comments.