Fucking...

It was a harrowing end to the holiday. The Cousin Who Will Not Be Named decided that to drive home after a bottle and a half of wine would not be safe. Clearly not understanding the danger she put herself in by opting to stay.

At seven she scooped up my uncle's skittish dog and started to cuddle it and coo repeatedly, "She comes to no one else but me. She loves me best" as the poor things soul drained from its eyes.

At eight she smacked my dad in the back of his head and got a severe talking-to that shut her up until eight forty--

--when she bounded into the computer room where Alex and I were lurking, spilled her don Ramon, and leapt into Alex's lap for what I obligingly timed to be seventeen minutes. And he sat, good man, and comitted himself to one of his store of benign expressions, and played Mario Cart, and looked at her not at all, and endured the screaming and whisker-pulling and desperate pleas for attention--an unlikely Santa to her spoiled brat.

At ten thirty we had a reprieve when the accent she'd affected since her five day trip to Spain finally breathed its last.

And then there was this morning, when she yawned mightily from the back room and called into the quiet: "Guys? How do you spell lusive? As in lusive dreaming."