* What are you reading?

– The latest missive from our favorite diva.

* What is your aunt up to? Has she gotten any better? Grown up yet? Signs of maturity? Still nattering on about completely unimportant things?

– How can you say such things? She is the very embodiment good sense.

* She wanted to give us a coconut plantation for our wedding.

– Well, everyone loves coconuts and what did YOUR aunt give us? Stocks and a juicer.

* Which we use every day.

– That’s not the point.

* She came to visit once with 14 corgis and 2 maids. When we lived in a two bedroom apartment.

– You know, the  judgmental part of you is simply so unattractive. And you know she has never said a word against you.

* She arches her eyebrows and sighs when I walk in the room.

– You tried to give her decaf coffee and bran muffins for breakfast once.

* And she retaliated by drinking five, FIVE, bottles of champagne and…

– Do you really want to start a fight over my favorite, cherished, revered, dearest, sweetest auntie?

* No, of course not, why don’t you just go ahead and tell me about what she’s up to, I will listen with full attention (and a prayer she isn’t planning on visiting soon).

– What was that?

* Nothing, darling, just clearing my throat to get ready to listen attentively. 

– Well, she just went on vacation to Australia and saw all sorts of cultural sights. She is getting really sensible. All settled down.

* Honestly, she is turning prudent?

– Quite rational!

* I don’t believe it, she is such a daft thing, a few pies short of a picnic.

– Now, now, she kept flipping her feather boa in your face by accident.

* I am allergic to feathers, a fact I mentioned several times and the incessant flipping meant that I had to leave the opera.

– You were bored anyways. 

* So I went home and two hours later I get a message that she took you to the Bahamas for a week.

– Tosca made her feel sad, she needed some cheering up!

* She brought four rich, eligible bachelors who majored in your specialty to our engagement party.

– She was worried that there might be more women than men.

* She told me that she brought them because she was worried that I had no friends, although 18 friends from college did manage to make it, plus five friends from high school and three from..

– Well, how was she to know? You never mentioned them before.

* Because every time I open my mouth around her, she interrupts.

– Darling, she’s social!

* Once when I asked her, “How are you?” She answered, “Shhh, not so much with the talking, you’re ornamental…”

– That’s a complement! She thinks you are handsome!

* Her statement was, “you’re ornamental like a plastic fern.”

– Everyone loves ferns!

* And now you are telling me that she went to Autralia and saw cultural sights?

– Yes, she’s turned over a whole new leaf. Very reasonable.

* She’s still not going around in those silly high heels?

– Just because she called your Birkenstocks “peasant stompers”…

* And she isn’t going off on some boring tirade on food, remember when she wrote five pages about the mistakes at the afternoon tea at the Ritz?

– No, no, this part is about a geology museum, very educational.

* Tell me one educational fact.

– Darling, how can I read if you keep interrupting me?

* Well, it sounds like she has finally grown-up, here let me read it.

– Oh would you look at that gorgoeus weather outside, let’s go for a walk.

* So, your aunt is unchanged.

– Do you want to go for a nice walk and hold my hand and maybe we can end up at an ice cream parlour or would you like me to remind you that the front hallway needs painting?

* Your aunt is my favorite person in the whole world. Let me just put on my walking shoes.