More family pastimes: In response to one of the queries in my comments... Cousin Heather can still hold her alcohol, but she's moved on to more butch beverages: screwdrivers and fuzzy navels. As I said, she's more interesting now. Still just ever so slightly...off. But definitely more interesting.

After a rather annoying encounter with MB and his posse (the men only tonight) who were guzzling out of state beer like there's no tomorrow, I decided that I would be better off hanging out here with my computer instead of driving them all over town. But annoying encounters call for countermeasures, and countermeasures mean Chocolate. So the cookies are a-baking as I write.

However, chocolate reminds me of a little adventure I had this summer with my mother and sisters. See, Father Dearest, no doubt as a thank you to my mother for not booting him out on the street about ten years ago when he was having... issues, chose to finance a three week vacation for us women to France and Switzerland. Yeah, tough life, I know.

We took the night train from Paris to Zurich (a miserable experience in the oldest couchettes in existence) and were wandering around town looking for breakfast and entertainment before catching the train to Bern and Adelboden. The Sprugli gods of chocolate have an outpost in Zurich which we hunted down as quickly as possible. Circling the goods, we at last arrived at the counter containing the croissants, brioches, and other yummies.

Now, all four of us speak French to varying degrees, but none of us know more than a word of German, much less Swiss German which is a bizarre mishmash of German with French words thrown in to add confusion. I say that only to explain what happened next.

We nominate my mother group spokeswoman. She smiles at the sales lady, holds up two fingers and points them at the goodies in the display. "Mmmmm..." she says. "Mmmm... DER?"

Karlyn and I slap hands to foreheads to hide our faces and even Kerri rolls her eyes as the saleswoman says in a crisp accentless English, "Oh, goodmorning. You'd like two of those? Anything else?"

I take over at that point, order up two of everything (there were only 3 choices - I'm not that much of a pig, thankyouverymuch), and hustle us out of the store where we all crumple up laughing. In my family, when something strikes us as funny, we laugh till we cry and watching each other turn red and teary only makes us laugh harder. If someone ever really does die laughing, it will be one of my relatives.

God bless my momma. For the rest of the trip -- and most likely the rest of our lives -- all we have to say is, "Oh, mmmmmm...DER?" And we'll be right back there, falling over laughing at my mom's goof.

More imp-family moments to come...