The arrival of the king

I have an older brother who goes to school near my dad's house. As a result, he is rarely at my mom's house. Case in point: he came here today for the first time in a year.

Now, since Mom's darling, precious 21-year old baby hadn't been home in so long, she decided she wanted to make a special dinner for him. She was torn between the frozen lasagna from Costco and pot roast with mashed potatoes. I think she figured out that while frozen lasagna is nice, it's not special or fancy. So she chose the pot roast.

Since she was going to work in the morning, she asked me to put the meat in the slow cooker thing and turn it on for her. I said that would be fine. Then she decided she had to make him a cake. And by "she", she meant me. So she told me to make his cake.

I made the cake with my pal and we sat down to watch a movie. Then mom calls and tells me to peel the potatoes. I tell her I'm busy. She tells me to do it by seven o'clock. We get off the phone, and me and my pal go peel potatoes. I even chop them up and put them in a pot with water.

Then my mom calls and asks me if the potatoes are done cooking yet. Cooking? She didn't even tell me to put the stove on. I told her that no, I hadn't started them, and I wasn't going to. I wouldn't mind making dinner (I did it two days ago for my family) except that the only reason she was doing this was so dinner would be perfect for my brother. My mom never makes me a fancy meal when I come home. I think my first day home we had something like sandwiches or kitty litter or something.

Mom gets home and when the meal is put together, we sit down and eat. My stepdad and brother are talking about sports, and my mom is relentlessly babbling about the food:

"Wow, this looks just perfect, doesn't it?"

"Mmmmmm it's soo good"

"Isn't the pot roast so tender? Isn't it? It just falls right apart when you touch it with a fork!"

"Look at the gravy"

Does she expect us to join her? To give her an award for seeing the food and observing that yes, the meat is tender, because it was slowly cooked for 6 hours? To act as if she is pointing out something shocking even though they are things we can all see with our own eyes?

Usually when she does this, I think she's fishing for compliments. But since I made the dinner, I realized today that she's just a boring, boring woman.