Family Weirdness

My family is weird. That is something long-established.

We were at the Cheesecake Factory and I was talking to my mom about a few weird things that some normal families do.

1. Parents not drinking coffee. As long as I can remember, the coffee ritual has been an important one in my family. When I was two I spilled hot espresso on my hand when I was sitting on my mom's lap. Back when I still woke up at seven, I would come downstairs and wait until my parents had finished with their coffee and only then would we eat. I had no idea it was even possible for adults not to drink coffee until I was maybe eleven.

2. Not taking leftovers home after eating out. I have eaten with a few families who do this and, while I'm not saying it's bad, it makes me ridiculously uncomfortable. My mom pointed out that most of those families are not descendants of Holocaust survivors or children of wars. It is worth mentioning that the amount we waste in our household is enormous compared with what my grandmother throws away in her house. It's a dismal thing to say, but it's true. War makes people think differently. My great aunt once told me that children of the war are not people who want much for themselves, they are people who want much for their children.

3. Not always having a parent home most of the time. My parents work in fields in which it is usually not terrible to call in sick or need to stay home with sick children, and often they are not far away. Each afternoon, there will always be a parent home - not always during the school day or evening, but they will always be able to transport us from place to place.

So there you have it, three things that I find strange about normal people coupled with analysis. Have a lovely normal (weird) life!

Impossible Life

We went out for dinner (our excuse was that I have finally done my placement test and have most of my schedule for the coming year sorted out) - it was an Ethiopian/Eritrean restaurant. The food was delicious; we ate it by picking it up with pieces of pancake-like bread. It's fun to eat with your hands and have it be proper.

The restaurant is in Cambridge, around the area where we lived until I was about five or six. It's a little strange being around there because I feel a strange familiarity, yet also a disconnect - it's the first place I knew, but I don't really know it as well anymore. Almost like déjà-vu. I know the way the streets connect but I no longer know the contents. I know the skeleton, but not the sinew.

And as we stepped out of the little, low-lit restaurant, my world was full of impossibles: the air was impossibly muggy; the lights of Mass Ave impossibly bright; the crescent-but-fading-to-gibbous moon looking impossibly close; the sky impossibly, deeply blue, as it is when twilight begins fading to night; parts of the place, like the grass in front of City Hall and the Post Office, impossibly familiar, so familiar that it's like I never left, and yet so many places so impossibly different and strange.

Suddenly I was struck by the impossibility of my world; the infinite paths that could have been taken. The precariousness of everything. It is all impossible. As the Doctor says, we're all stories. "We're all stories in the end." That's how impossible we are.

Strange Favorite

My favorite knife needs to be sharpened.

See, we have these three big knives. Two are long; one has a rounder blade. Two have thicker blades, while the last one has a thinner one.

My favorite one is the one with the round, thicker blade.

I'm classy. I have knife favorites.

(Or, you know, I could be a serial killer. Whatever.)

In which I seem to be crazier than usual

So, here I sit by my computer with languages jumbled in my head along with the blog post that started writing itself as I was setting the table for a dinner that my dad is out shopping for while my brother is watching Jeopardy downstairs and I am eating cereal (because, you know, cereal is awesome).

One of the strangest run on sentences I've ever written.

I went out and bought a few books today - The Hobbit and Fahrenheit 451 because they are classics that must be read and Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, and Paper Towns by John Green because they are awesome and hopefully someday they shall be classics that must be read.

I started re-reading Looking for Alaska because when I read it I hadn't read any of his other books yet and besides I was all depressedly screwed-up (or anyway, more depressedly screwed-up than I am now) and probably read it slightly differently.

People, you have to read this book. And all of John's books. But heck, if you haven't read any of them, stop reading this blog post now and go to your bookstore or library or website of choice and get it somehow. Break-in may be necessary if it's past closing time. But even if you get chucked in jail for a bit, you know, you'll have read the book.

And I know it's controversial and whatever, which sort of startled me when I first read it (prepare for extreme profanity), I've become someone who swears more often now (though thankfully enough I don't smoke) so that part doesn't bother me that much.

I can so relate to these characters. Oh my freaking Rowling, just read it.