The sincerest form of flattery.

My elderly aunt, No-legs' sister, is really sick right now, but nowhere near as sick as No-legs was. Still, she's in a bad way, so my mother and sister picked me up after work on Thursday and we took a car trip to see her in a hospital in Connecticut.

I never see my mother or my sister without other people around anymore. It kind of sucks because I really like them one on one. It's when it's everyone all together that I start moving myself slowly (and then more quickly) towards the door. I'm a delicate flower. Also, I think my whole family, when together, brings out the worst in each other.

But just the three of us together was really nice. And even though our mission was pretty depressing (visiting a sick old lady), we ended up having a glorious time. Oh, the laughter! Oh, the tears from laughter!

One of the things that drives me the craziest about my mother is that it seems like she thinks everyone around her is a moron ; she's constantly explaining things to people - or maybe it's just to her kids - that they know already. I don't know how to explain this well, but it's maddening and it's been going on since I was very young. I've had actual fights with her that have included me shouting, "Why do you assume I'm a moron!? I am NOT a moron!"

And it's funny how my mother explaining something to me like that will turn me almost instantly into a raging lunatic. Everything will be fine and then I'll be ready to resort to fisticuffs, like, thatfast.

We were in my mother's new car. Tesia was driving, I was the passenger due to my tendency towards carsickness and my mother was riding in the back seat. Tesia asked me if I knew that bastard is a really bad swearword. "It's as bad as asshole," she said. I said, "No way. Maybe it's the same as ass, but it's nowhere near as bad as asshole." She said, "I had no idea it was a bad word until, like, five years ago." I said, "I still don't think it's that bad."

My mother chimed in, "It just means a child born to an unmarried mother."

My sister and I instantly were all, "Yeah. We know what it really means, Ma. Gimme a break!" and etc.

In our family hierarchy, I'm the sister who makes fun of people, so when my sister turned to me and said, all casual-like, "You know, Jennifer, your asshole is just a hole. It's in your ass." I came unglued. We were all laughing and laughing. Tesia and I were crying. My mother was laughing and also seemed miffed at the same time. Tesia was laugh-shouting, "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" And I said, in a mocking way, "Yes, I'm so sorry that I'm laughing at my mother that I can't stop laughing at my mother!" Oh and that just kept it going.

When my mother doesn't like something going on, she'll start talking in a higher-than-her-own-voice sort of voice, and she always starts with, "Well..."

For example, "Well...I didn't know you felt that way and I guess I'll just ..." whatever.

I do a dramatic interpretation of it that I think is dead on. It makes Tesia laugh really hard. Scott says it sounds like Cartman.

I came home and relayed the whole story to Scott. We laughed and laughed.

For this next part of the story, you should know a few things. One is that I talk in my sleep. A lot. I complain about Scott snoring and everything, but I snore too. My snoring doesn't keep him awake (or me, incidentally), though there have been times when I've woken him up and asked him to roll over because his snoring has woken me up and he has and I've fallen back to sleep and started snoring like a chainsaw before he's fallen back to sleep. Why does this guy live with me? In any case, now I sleep with earplugs. Also, I drool like a faucet. But the talking is the thing that wakes Scott up.

Last night, he woke up because I was talking in my sleep, but I wasn't talking in my real voice. I was talking in the voice I use to imitate my mother. On and on I went, imitating my mother in my sleep. So Scott had to wake me up to get me to stop.

(Aside: Earlier in our relationship Scott tried to engage my sleeping self in conversation, but I never went for it. I woke up and became embarrassed by my sleep-talking, not realizing he was trying to egg me on.)

I called my mother to tell her about it. She said, "Oh, well, you must have been dreaming about me." I said, "Not about you, about imitating you!"

Well, you know what they say about imitation.