the anniversary dinner

today (sept 1) is my parent's anniversary. to celebrate, my oldest younger brother came over for dinner. [the youngest younger brother is away at college.] i got the gift earlier in the day and i texted my brother, homie, asking him to pick up an anniversary card. when he got here, we came upstairs to my room to sign the card and i wrote "happy 28th anniversary! jk. [heart] danielle." my brother asks me, "what's the joke?" referrring to my inscription. i said, "you know, because i'm 28" implying that i am a bastard child. my brother looks at my quizzically and i say, as i realize, "i'm 27!" so, the joke started and ended with me. it just flopped and the really cute card he picked out was ruined.

so we give the gift and card to them (which no one got without an explanation) and start playing cards while we wait for dinner to be ready. [i am just now realizing that neither my brother nor i cooked for our parents - probably averted many a kitchen disaster!] we played whist, which, for those of you who don't know is a partner game. there are 2 teams of 2 people - so only 4 people can play. all of the cards in the deck are dealt so each person has 13 cards. each person looks at his / her cards and determines if the hand is "good" (a lot of high cards) or "bad" (low cards). depending upon your cards, you say if you want to play high or low. if any one person wants to play high, then the next round is played high - meaning that you want to have the highest card played so you can take the "trick." this is a very very simple explanation of the game. for this reading, all you need to know is that my brother and i were on a team and we lost

EVERY

ROUND

to our parents. it was quite embarrasing. they just had really really good hands.

so, at one point, they were both in the kitchen finishing dinner and my brother and i showed each other our hands. [i must take a second to explain that i RARELY cheat - i'm just not competitive enough to care to always win; but today was just ... horribly embarrasing. we arent THAT bad at whist.]

anyway, we discover that i had the ace, queen and a few other cards of diamonds and my brother had the king, jack and a few other diamonds. right there, that meant we could make at least 4 points if we were playing a "high" game [and you only need to get 7 points to win the round]. so, we decided that one of us should "grand" or opt to play a "high" game. well, we didn't have to grand because my father did (which means that he thought he had a pretty good hand). we weren't worried because we knew we could get at least 4 points between the two of us and we thought we could upset their goal of making a lot of points. so we play. it worked PERFECTLY - we got the four tricks of diamonds and then... down hill from there. i can't remember exactly what happened - it doesnt even matter - BUT we were smoked. they took every other point. not good.

we ended up losing that hand and enough of the other hands to lose to my parents 3-0. or, 0-3, i guess, since i have to say my score first. disgraceful.

the next hand, my brother laughs and i look at him and he says "we lost even when we cheated" and shook his head. my parents didn't hear, but it was really sad.