Waking up flowers

The dough dozed, ready to be stretched and rolled into hua juan, or flower rolls. My grandmother’s nails clinked against the metal bowl as her fingers hugged up the sticky white mound.

Plumes of flour dusted the air as she pounded the mound into the wooden pastry board. Her rough, veined hands smoothed the dough into a bright lump, like a newborn baby cradled in leather. The rolling pin rumbled as my grandmother’s skinny arms brewed a storm of wood against wood, flattening out the dough into a soft sheet.

Unlike my mother, who sneezed at the sight of flour, my grandmother pushed on with silent satisfaction. Her slippers shuffled in and out of the pantry, and she held a careful grip on the bottle of oil. Clear gold pooled onto the dough, and my grandmother folded the corners in and out to give each edge a chance to dip in, until the entire sheet shined. She rubbed in ground spices and she sighed to breathe in their scent.

The light dimmed outside, sharpening my grandmother’s uneven silhouette in the doorway. I don’t know why she needed such a huge knife to cut through such a thin layer of dough, but eventually the sheet separated out into strips.

Outside the rain prevented my grandmother from tending her green onions and chives, but in the kitchen, she could always grow a different sort of garden. One by one, each spongy white ribbon that striped across the board was folded into snug flowers. They bloomed with spices instead of pollen and their oily surfaces gleamed.

My grandmother turned on the stove and tucked the flower rolls into a metal tower. They fell back to sleep in a bed of steam.

Making sushi

My mother and I were on a roll, pun absolutely intended.

To say we were making sushi would be an insult to seafood. Our finished rolls puffed out near their middles like eels ready to give birth. We struggled to chop them without exploding them, as flakes of dried seaweed peppered our fingers and vinegar tickled our noses.

We'd guessed that the gist of sushi-making involved stuffing various edible objects into seaweed and rice and slicing it all up into colorful, oceanic hockey pucks. Hunger and impatience prevented us from bothering to eHow or wikiHow anything. Eggs? Yes we liked them, roll 'em in. Shrimp? Yup, yup. Avocado? Pan-Asian restaurants had it in theirs, so why not?

I couldn't call us complete amateurs. We had some previous experience rolling up food, such as when we regularly made spring rolls on lazy Saturday afternoons. I'd loved the silkiness of their wrappers while they billowed in warm water.

On the other hand with sushi, my fingers stuck to everything. I left behind grains of rice and specks of seaweed everywhere I touched, like post-it reminders of the giant clean up we'd have to do after lunch.

"That's the last one," my mother said, leaning in to pluck each slice off the cutting board. She beamed with pride. Our sushi didn't unravel, and the rainbow platters we spread them out on complemented their veggie insides.

"Wait." I pulled out my phone. "I've got to take a picture."

My mother then proceeded to spend the next ten minutes carefully inching the platters this way and that, because if it wasn't perfect, it wasn't worth memorializing.

"It's fine," I said, clenching my teeth and my growling stomach.

"Alright, alright." My mother wiped her hands on her apron and stepped back as I snapped the photo. I showed it to her, and she nodded in approval. "Very good. Now, eat."

Let's go to Disney World

Disney World

The hum of my computer 

and slow August air

muffle the sound of adventure too much.

So,

let's go to disney world, I say
I pull up a screenshot of airline website:
One Way
MSP -> MCO
2 Passengers
First/Business
the flight leaves at 5:35 PM, I say
it's 5:33 right now, I say
COME ON DIANE, I say

I wait for the elusive 

Facebook message check mark 

to appear.

crap, she says
crap crap crap, she says
it's gone, she says

shit, I say
DIANE U KILL ME, I say

Because thankfully
growing up hasn't erased our fantasies
of those very real

2 minute vacation plans.

A tired, hungry cry for help

Hash browns

DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT 

FEELS LIKE WHEN EVEN THE 

POTATOES HAVE 

BETRAYED YOU AT 12 AM

When I tried to make a friend feel better about social media popularity

Tumblr

well it's ok we all had 29 followers at some point
just because
well you know
that
is how
counting works

Patrick Roche - "21" (CUPSI 2014)

I found this incredible.

Snail 2

Oh by the way here's a video of my snail:

Snail

In early April, I was pretty flustered with the end of high school, college choices, senior project, etc. So when a freshman asked me if I wanted a snail, I got beyond excited and said yes to not just one, but two. Yay for spontaneous pet acquirement. 

Note: I am terrified of slimy and crawly things. Worms, slugs, spiders = ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

So why two snails? I wanted them as a challenge. Much like how I went down a three stories high fire pole as a challenge (see previous blog post). Being myself can be a continuous surprise because I always sign up for activities on a whim. 

A day later, I gave one snail, Stanley, to a friend. Clementine stayed with me, and we had loads of fun as it pooped and ate and pooped and ate throughout the day. 

One week later, it (snails don't care about gender) died. So I set it aside, messaged several close friends, made some of them cry, put together a memorial YouTube video, and returned to bury it outside. 

However, it had moved from its deathbed. So it wasn't as dead as expected. 

Today, it spends a lot of time wandering around looking pretty cute for a slimy creature. And occasionally pretending to be dead.

Snail 

No toe left behind

Mouth hugging lettuce

Antennae pivoting
Not dead

How to Tell Your Friends About How You Almost Died During a College Visit

Texting, email, and messaging have turned paragraphs of information into digestible bursts of consciousness. 

Here is something I recently wrote to a friend. 

Yeah. I sat on top of this building. At night. In the rain.

Hey

have I told you my story of what I did last weekend

so I sort of mentioned earlier how I jumped off a building

which is a technically a lie

because I jumped off a DECK not a building

right because decks are not buildings, they are just connected to buildings

so there is this house that has this 3 stories high fire pole in their backyard

because why not

and well instead of taking the stairs 

cool people take the fire pole

and I was like yay

but

friction on my hands made it really hard to actually SLIDE down the firepole

so I was like this is not going to work

so I was like I'll just let go a little

well I lied, because I let go A LOT 

but I survived

also I walked on top of a domed building at 2 am

but don't worry

because the dome was built so that the slope on the outer part was steeper than the inside part of the circle

and I didn't really walk, I sort of butt-climbed

Because butt climbing = less chance of falling off

well yeah so 

tl;dr fear of heights got nothing on me

Waiting for coffee is beautiful

Accidental Poem of the Day

So this morning I sat with Mr. John W. (the high school senior who occassionally writes things and wears salmon colored pants and glasses and his last name rhymes with mill felm) and we concluded that group projects are basically the victimization of those who do work by those who don't.

What we shouldn't say to group partners but we think anyways
You don't do any work
Wow, you jerk.
It's so parasitic.