What?!

my grandmother, nana, has been staying with us over the holiday season. more so than most years, nana has become hard of hearing. this has made for fun times.

just now, as i was checking the weather reports and my dad was eating lunch in the kitchen, one such time occurred. it went something like the following:

(phone rings, dad is at the table & nana close by)

dad: hello this is bill (to the caller)
nana: bill, is that you?
dad: yes (to the caller)
nana: yes bill, what is it?
dad: (continues on with business conversation)
nana: what?! oh.

this conversation is a very standard kind of thing. it is also interesting how easily and inevitably i scare her. when i come up the stairs, regardless of how quietly or loudly i do so, she will be very startled, proceeding to tell me that i "scared the s#%t out of her." according to my unofficial calculations, i've scared this material out of her close to 24 times in only a few weeks (a personal best).

also, i feel it important to say that i started this year off in manly fashion. on new years day i chopped wood, started a fire, and sounded a barbaric yawp throughout the wilderness (the roofs of the world were far away). i'm a lumberjack and i'm okay.