Mouse bags

Mom forgot her mouse bags at my apartment.

She bought some new blankets to cover the furnature not too long ago and they came packaged in some square vinyl bags that were the perfect shopping bag size. Probably subconsciously that was a marketing ploy, just like those jars of mustard that turn into drinking glasses when you wash them out.

So now when I go out and see my parents there's usually a bag waiting for me with stuff like a jug of milk or some cabbage rolls. All was going well until I started forgetting to bring the bags back and now mom's pissed off. She phones me and says "Erin, bring back the mouse bags when you come."

And this is where our in-house vocabulary ceases to make sense to anyone but us.

After my great-grandmother got married and moved out, her parents used to visit her fairly often. They both walked separate routes to get to her house, and each would bring a bag of something. Her father would bring a small portion of a kind of large tapioca similar to what you'd find in bubble tea and say "don't tell your mother." Her mother usually brought some sugar and a dead mouse for the cat and said "don't tell your father."

But this is common knowledge, no?

I begin to worry when people I know who don't speak English as their first language begin to pick up the words I use for things.