My Mom tends to overuse words. In high school everything was a ‘struggle’ until one day in a shining moment of self-assertiveness I asked her to please stop using that word. I believe my request left her speechless for approximately three minutes until she ran through her mental thesaurus and came up with something equally as annoying.

I love you Mom.

Since she’s gotten old she’s starting making up words – she uses the word ‘Chockablock’ like it’s her job – as in “I don’t know if we can get the leftover turkey in the fridge that thing is chockablock full.” This drives me crazy; it (spoiler alert) drives everybody crazy.

Recently I instituted a rule where the word in banned in our house – this (of course) forces my husband to run around the house yelling at me “chockablock, chockablock, chockablock!” It’s very reminiscent of Miracle Max and his hatred of Prince Humperdinck.

Lucy, of course, thinks this is great and sometimes also gets in to the action and also runs around yelling chockablock for no apparent reason. And all of this is good and harmless except that I forgot to tell her it’s a game we only play with Mommy and Daddy.

Fast forward to last week when my parents were visiting and Nana says to Lucy “Your room is chockablock full of toys” and Lucy looks at her wide eyed and says “No Nana we aren’t allowed to say that in this house!”

Whops.

How do you explain to your Mom that her idiosyncrasies have become fodder for family fun time? With wine – that’s how.