An Ipad? Really Grandma?

I received the following email from my grandmother over the weekend:

Please be nice to your friend Orlando. I am considering the Ipad. Your uncle says it will be easier than WebTv.

Your mother told me you were out jukin around last night. I hope you had a nice time. You know if you were on a date you shouldn’t keep that a secret.

Love, Grandmother

*Backstory – while my uncle was here for Easter he told my grandmother she should get an Ipad to replace her WebTV. Normally, my grandmother does whatever my uncle says when it comes to technology. He’s the reason she has a flat screen tv in her bedroom, wireless internet service, a dvd/vcr combo player and WebTV. I have received several emails from both him and my mom telling me to start casually talking about the Ipad to my grandmother in an attempt to help convince her. I did my part by telling her one of my good friends has one and loves it.

I’ll have no problem convincing Orlando to bring the Ipad to my grandmother’s house. He thinks she is hilarious and would welcome a chance to hang out with her for a little while. Yes, she’s that funny.

Secretly I’m hoping she’ll buy one (preferably the top of the line model), get frustrated with it after a month or so because it’s too fancy and then insist on giving it to me. Seeing that she thought my Blackberry Bold was the Ipad I think this scenario could actually play out…….

Wake Up Call

Yesterday my mom called me from my grandmother’s house. I assumed she was there for a knitting lesson – I was wrong.

She told me that my grandmother had called her because the smoke detector in her bedroom went off and she couldn’t get it to stop, even after she managed to take out the batteries. So my mom went over to the house to try and help.

When she went into my grandmother’s bedroom she saw the removed batteries on the bedside table and still heard the loud beeping sound coming from the room. But she told me it just didn’t seem like the noise was coming from the smoke detector. Her first thought, and this is the truth, is that the sound must have originated from the batteries themselves and thus removing them did not make a difference. How she came up with this explanation is beyond me…….

Long story short – the smoke detector never went off. It was my grandmother’s alarm clock the entire time. Talk about a wake up call.

Watermelon Head

My grandmother loves to tell stories. And, usually, it’s the same 10-15 stories over and over again.

One of her favorites to share is about the time she went to visit my mom when she was in college (at Duke…champions!) and found a half empty bottle of vodka in her dorm room. This leads into a discussion of how vodka is the most potent of all the alcohols…my grandfather didn’t pay all that money for my mom to get drunk in her dorm room…and so on and so on.

Yesterday evening my grandmother told me another one of her favorite stories – this one is about me and it’s completely embarrassing. But, of course, she tells it to me at least a few times a year. Here’s an overview:

Grandma: We took you to this nice seafood restaraunt when you were about 2 years old. You could never sit still and while we were waiting for the food you kept banging your fists on the table yelling “Where’s my scrimp! Where’s my scrimp?”

Me: I know, you’ve told me this one before……

Grandma: Then you got antsy and decided to try and slide backwards out of the chair but then your head got stuck. It was like your head was a little watermelon. They had to cut the chair apart to get your head out.

Me: Please stop. This is why I have a complex about the size of my head.

And, yes, I do have a complex about the size of my head. When I look at my baby pictures it always looks like my head is about to make me tip over. My mom, like a good mother should, always tells me I’m being ridiculous and that my head size is perfectly normal. I don’t believe her and I have proof – for example, those one-size-fits-all hats don’t fit me. But the point is she tries to make me feel better.

Meanwhile, my grandma repeatedly tells me a story comparing my head to a watermelon.

Jesus Is Her Homeboy

I called my grandmother yesterday just to check on her and ask her about her weekend since I didn’t get a chance to go and visit.

Here’s how the phone call went:

Me: Hi Grandma, how has your weekend been?

Her: It’s been good. I’ve been correcting your mother’s knitting all morning.

Me: That sounds fun.

Her: Guess who’s out working in my yard right now?

Me: I don’t know who?

Her: Jesus. Too bad he missed Easter dinner.

Jesus (pronounced Hey-Zeus by everyone except my grandmother…) is the young Spanish man that has been doing the landscaping in my grandma’s yard for the past year or so. She cannot understand why anyone would name their child Jesus no matter how many times I’ve tried to explain it to her. She also refuses to pronounce his name correctly – I think this is mainly because she gets a kick out of telling people Jesus is at her house.

Maybe this is the real reason she’s stopped going to church as often (she says it’s because of the new pastor). Why learn about Jesus in church when she can just walk out her back door and chat him up in person? Assuming she can speak Spanish of course……….

All Quiet on the Grandma Front

I am in shock. We had our family Easter dinner on Sunday at my mom’s house (me, mom, grandma, uncle, cousin) and my grandma was completely and utterly under control. She did not use one curse word, didn’t mention her desire to smoke pot or catnip, didn’t criticize my cousin’s decision to eat nothing but starches, consumed no alcohol and only refused to eat one item on the menu.

Some may speculate that Grandma held her tongue due to the nature of the holiday – unless Jesus himself came down and spoke directly to my grandma, this explanation just doesn’t fly. The ONLY explanation I can come up with is that my mom made her take some sort of sedative before the meal. Either that or she spiked my grandma’s Diet Coke with liquor.

Grandma needs a dealer and apparently my mom is the pusher.

PS – We have another family dinner scheduled for tonight. Considering the fact that since I’ve been at work my uncle has called 4 times and left me 2 voicemails, I have a feeling that grandma is in one heck of a mood today. Hopefully tonight’s events will make up for our peaceful Easter 😉