Howling With Laughter Over Howler Monkeys
Today was a funny sort of a day. I woke up, stumbled around in desperate need of coffee before my weekly grocery run during old timers time at the only American type grocery store here. The expensive place with American and European foods. You know what their ounce per ounce most expensive food I'd seen there? Canadian Maple Syrup works out to about 46 bucks a quart. Needless to say we don't eat that.
After I finished shopping, writing this morning and finished lunch for everyone I was amused and occupied by phone calls from the 225/504/985 group. The aunties and others. Endless stream of calls. I was surprised by one of the calls, from a rare reclusive family member who happened to be hammered at 4 pm in the afternoon. Look, I know it's Louisiana where everyone stays drunk to deal with the humidity and heat, but come on. You're in your eighties lady!
What did she want? To tell me she could not sleep the night before. I had to ask why. She said that she hadn't realized that diet coke had caffeine in it and she'd drank eight of them in the afternoon and evening the night before. I had to point out that our lovely president drinks a dozen a day and often finds himself tweeting feverishly from the toilet at 3 in the morning. I don't think that's mentally healthy for anyone. Not even him.
I had to keep steering the conversation away from Nancy Pelosi and various Ping Pong pizza and Plandemic subjects. This lady never leaves her house except to shop, but she's got full blown Panic-demic-itis.
Tried to take some howler monkey in the backyard photos but they move so fast and the light is so low now that real rainy season has started now. Overcast every day and a few spats of rain.
By late afternoon I got a call from a beloved younger relative who proceeded to tell me that this same lady had called her and addressed her by my name. The younger relative I don't think had ever heard our relative that hammered before. But oh I have many times now, and when my elderly relative is not hostilely hooting out about 'the coloreds' or 'evil libruls' it can be some of the funniest things I've heard.
Spent a very enjoyable evening with both of us laughing so hard over old family tales. Like the time this older lady and her late husband adopted a set of dolls, and treated the dolls like they were living children. They'd gone out to eat, left the dolls in their car seats only to have someone chase them inside screaming that they'd left their babies in the car. I can only imagine what that person thought when told they were dolls.
The couple used to get the dolls photos taken dressed up for different holidays. Every single time I visited I did a double take because there on the mantle piece would be those newest professional portraits of the dolls dressed for that holiday.
I swear, my Louisiana relatives are Southern eccentricities to the nth power. Sometimes I need that.
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