And "buttress" starts w/ "butt"--so what?

Mike has sum more 2 tell abt Dee prepping 4 the Xmas dinner:

April,

Formerly little sis. After my little conversation with Deanna over the presents, we sent our daughter off to go play somewhere in the house, wherever her brother was hiding. One of the nice things about having a bigger house, aside from being able to entertain the family, is that the kids often disappear to places unknown. It gives my wife, the lovely Deanna, and I the opportunity to have a conversation, something which is difficult when the kids are nearby.

Deanna rarely talks about anything other than our children, so when the occasion does happen, not only is it a moment of conversational rejoicing, but it frequently ends up presaging the things which are going to happen next, almost as if my wife were some kind of soothsayer, saying unto me a sooth. As she was putting out the wine glasses for where Iris would be sitting, she said, “So…Liz is bringing Anthony!...That’s a majo(u)r step.” My initial thought was, “I don’t think my wife got the memo about calling the Lizardbreath, Elizabeth instead of Liz.” My second thought was, “Was my wife at our summer picnic back in August, when Liz invited Anthony and his half-Quebecoise child? If she were there, then she might have remembered Liz has already taken that majo(u)r step. Naturally, I didn’t want to bring that issue up; because if I did, then it might put Deanna off this conversation and back onto a conversation about the kids. So, I simply said, “Well, they have been seeing a lot of each other.” I am sure you get my little joke about “seeing a lot of each other.” My wife didn’t.

Deanna continued on with, “But this is Christmas dinner, Mike! You don’t bring someone to a family gathering like this unless that person is a ‘significant other’.(’)” I had a napkin in my hand and I closed my eyes as I started throttling it. As you know, when a Patterson starts using quotation marks in the style of someone from the States, there is a pun coming. Unfortunately, with my lovely wife, she feels the need to spell her pun out deliberately so that everyone in the province can understand it. I awaited the worst. What kind of joke was coming from “significant other”?

My wife circled the table in one direction putting down napkins as I went in the other. After a moment she started on the explanation of her pun. “The first part of the word ‘significant’ is ‘sign’,(‘) right? This is a sign!” I suddenly felt the need to stop her before she started any further on “sign” jokes. I suddenly saw flash in front of my eyes a stop sign, a yield sign, a heavenly sign, a no smoking sign. The possibilities were endless. I had to provide an answer to her sign question before she did, for the sake of my sanity. I hurriedly said, “Of what…that he’s willing to put up with her relatives?”

Lucky for me, Deanna took the bait. She said, “Are you saying that you ‘put up with’ my relatives?” I felt a certain degree of relief until I realized she had shifted subjects to her relatives, which was another topic having nothing to do with our children. Once again I had a sense of foreboding. I knew that the majour topics of our Christmas Dinner were going to be Anthony and Liz, and my wife’s relatives. As my lovely wife poked her finger deep into my stomach and the resulting pain caused me to raise my eyebrows and move my lips into a smirk of agony. I thought, “to ‘put up with' Deanna’s relatives…it’s a lot safer than putting them down!” I wasn’t sure how much of that merciless poking I could take; but at least my inner pun gave me the respite of great humour.

Love,
Michael Patterson

The puns, they buuuuuurn! Here's another memo 4 Dee: Just cuz a word starts w/another, shorter word, doesn't mean the other, shorter word gives U special insite in2 the longer word!

And speaking of memos, I got the memo abt calling Liz "Elizabeth," and I shredded it up and lined Buttsy's cage w/it.

Apes