I Don't Know What to Think Anymore

Notes on the Issaquah Brewhouse: For the women’s restroom, would you choose the door marked “barley” or the door marked “hops?”

It snowed again on Saturday, and the most remarkable thing happened. I was walking along and I happened to look down at my coat, where I saw what I assumed to be a piece of plastic confetti in the shape of your stereotypical snowflake. Everyone knows snowflakes don’t really look like they do in the pictures, with the symmetry and the points and all that, right? Right?? They’re just lumps. My whole life I thought, Sure, no two snowflakes are alike, because they’re all lumps of frozen water, that get frozen in random, asymmetrical and unpredictable shapes. I don’t know if it’s the climate around here or what, because that’s the only kind of snowflake I’ve ever seen. Even in London and Glasgow, that’s what it was. I assumed a stereotypical snowflake was just a myth, like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster. When I saw this anomaly on my jacket, I picked it up, fully expecting it to be fake. When it melted in my hand, I think my brain exploded. The world of conflict and suffering came to a grinding halt around me. You mean to tell me, snowflakes actually look like snowflakes?

I may never be the same again.

No Sense of Adventure

I just did something totally Jackass. As in the show/movies, which I loathe. It snowed here yesterday, a lot (like, three inches), and then it melted today, and then refroze. Last night, my dad and I went sledding with the local kiddies.

My dad has these old sleds from when he was a kid, like the type you see in movies about the 40s or 50s, with wooden slats for the seat and metal runners. We raced each other a few times.
What with the snow on the ground, we didn’t move very fast or very far, so when everything iced over tonight, we figured we should try sledding again. Pops went down first, in his bike helmet with a headlamp in front and a flashing red light in the back.

I'm not so great with the action
shots, though my camera
impressed me

Somehow, I had the foresight to wait until he had gone all the way down before I headed down. We both might have died if we’d tried to go at the same time. The flashing light on the back of his head distracted me so that I didn’t realize right away that he was sending out sparks. When he was all the way down the hill and halfway to the lake, I shoved off. I hate, hate the feeling of being out of control, so sledding down a hill of ice probably wasn’t a great idea. I mean, I hate skiing, what made me think this would be fun? I sent out some sparks of my own, going nearly 30 miles an hour, and the sled showed no signs of slowing. As I veered toward a pole, Amy’s spleen-rupturing sledding accident flashed through my mind. I managed to straighten out, and after a prolonged period of careening and veering, I chickened out and threw myself forward, not intending to slide across the snow on my stomach in front of a stranger’s house, but all’s well that ends well. Pops and I agreed one run was all we needed to get sledding out of our systems for the year. My heart is still pounding, though that might be from dragging the sled back up the hill. Man, I’m out of shape.

Looks like she's painting her toenails