A Daddy and His Girl

Two of my family have been neglected on my blog lately. One almost completely left out, in fact. I've been feeling guilty about it for awhile actually. Tonight, though, opportunity presented itself and inspiration flashed. Steve and Mary have an interesting relationship. They are about as different as can be, yet they share a couple of long standing jokes and a love of word play. Yes, my analytical, mathematical husband loves puns. He comes up with some beauties, let me tell you. Last night it was an especially bad one involving hummus and humorous. Anyway, Mary also loves words. She makes her own up. Ever since she learned to talk, she's been creating grammatically correct, meaning-filled nonsense words. Needless to say Roald Dahl is her hero. Her whole life, Steve's been teasing her that he's going to make a dictionary of Mary's words. Whenever she comes up with a new one (which is several times a day), he comments that it's going in the dictionary. Mary's response is always the same. It's a loud screechy grunt sound accompanied by yelling that he's not allowed to make a dictionary of her words. Another favorite joke of mine that they share is the gypsies. Somehow, sometime ago, Steve came up with the gypsies who live on Third Street. You've heard of them, right? Well, according to him, they're always looking for little girls to take in trade. At least once a day, Steve tells Mary to get in the car, they're going down to find the gypsies on Third Street so he can trade her. This usually gets the same screechy-grunt as the dictionary comment. Tonight was different, though. It went something like this:

Daddy: Go get your homework book and you can read to me in this chair.
Mary: Okay.
Daddy: You know I'd never trade you to the gypsies, right?
Mary: You wouldn't?
Daddy: No, you're priceless.
Mary: Oh. Daddy, what's priceless?
Daddy: That means there's nothing in the world I would trade for you. Not any amount of money is enough.
Mary: Thank you, Daddy.

I'll tell you what's priceless: being wife and mom to this daddy and his girl.