Dad's on a (humor) roll

I grabbed my phone to take with me--I hadn't looked at it all day--only to see that the battery was almost sapped. I can be pretty bad at keeping my phone charged, but this was beyond the usual sad state of affairs; the battery-sucking app that checks my work e-mail had somehow turned itself on and proceeded to suck the battery. I had to turn on the app to turn it off, and then got sucked into checking work e-mail (just since yesterday, when I'd last checked it intentionally) and reading a long message from the attorney on my project. Which in and of itself reduced the battery from 11 to 6 percent. We were in the car at that point.

A.: I hate not having a phone.
Dad, glibly: I can give you mine or mom's.
A.: Ha ha ha ha ha.
Mom: What? My phone works.
A.: But it doesn't do anything.
Dad: Her phone is a phone last. Your phone may as well be a doorstop, as far as she's concerned.
Mom: Then why did you offer yours?
Dad: I was being facetious.

***
We went to visit my grandmother's gravestone, then to see some family friends, and then to my cousin's bustling international food store. At the friends' house, mom got off on one of her vicarious soap operas: the friend's daughter who doesn't want babies because she'd rather pursue a singing career, even though she doesn't have a great voice. I can't speak for the friends, but I didn't want to hear it (again).

The cousin and I barely recognized each other. She and my mom had some epic falling-out when I was younger, and only dad kept in touch with her (she's his niece). It--the falling-out--was the source of one of those epiphanies I had in recent years, about mom's being an unreliable narrator (for lack of a better term). I wonder whom else she smeared over the years, when I didn't know better than take her word for it. But the cousin seems to have moved on, as I suppose you do when it's family and you know she can't help herself because that's just who she is.