Chopsticks wisdom:

Fear is paying interest on a debt you may not owe.

I wish...

I wish it would stop being cold.
I know it's not that cold. I still don't like it.

I wish people from my high school/university would quit getting married. It's freaking me out.

I wish my scholarship would apply for itself. ...wait.

I wish I hadn't eaten popcorn for dinner. Or seen How Do You Know. How do you know it's gonna be an awful movie? Answer: you don't. Not for a while. You get drawn in by Paul Rudd and Reese Witherspoon, who (separately) have not steered you wrong in the past, and you spend the whole two hours wondering how this movie is going to pull itself together and then it doesn't.

I wish Facebook would stop showing me pictures of people I don't want to see. I am sure there is a way to block this, but I am too lazy to do anything but complain.

I wish Hogwarts was real. Wait, no. Then that would mean...nevermind.

I wish that the groundhog sees his damn shadow. Or whatever means no more winter.

I wish Brother would put more songs up.

I wish I could go back to Charleston without having to go back to class.

Happy Epiphany everyone!

flurries

I haven't written much because a lot has been happening this break. And when I say "a lot" I mean "a lot of knitting patterns." But I won't bore you. I have a story. A little snapshot of Christmas break in the DeBuys house.

In the afternoon of New Year's Eve, all is calm in the house. Mom and Dad are out shopping and returning heinous Christmas presents. Daniel is in the basement, playing Oblivion. Sean is downtown at Tech with his girlfriend. And Ryan and I are sitting, peaceably, in the living room watching the 4th season of The Office as I am knitting a scarf for my friend Mallory. All is calm. All is bright.
So of course you know some disturbance is coming.

Right as Michael Scott is threatening to throw himself off the roof of the building (onto a Moon Bounce castle) the lights flicker, the TV shuts off, and the refrigerator powers down.

The power is out. The afternoon is ruined.

 A quick call to Mom confirms that the electric bill has been paid, and then Ryan and I sit and look at each other, the question "Now what?" hanging unspoken on the air.

Daniel comes rushing up the stairs out of the dark basement. A surprisingly delayed reaction considering he was plugged into the Matrix and was most likely engulfed in darkness almost instantly.

Now we are all sitting in the living room, sadly at a loss for what to do. Then survival mode takes over.
"Daniel!" I scream, as he jumps off the couch, "whatever you do, DO NOT open the fridge! I mean it! Not even for a second! Ryan, check if the phone is working."
Ryan goes to the phone, and picks it up. "I think the batteries are low. Or it's out. It was probably an EMP. Your cell phone won't work either," (my brother is suggesting that the power is out due to an electromagnetic pulse, which he believes can be weaponized and used to "wipe out an entire city's powers of communication"). I remind him that I called mom on my cell phone already, and he looks a bit mollified.

Dad gets home and we discover that the power outage is most likely due to a car crash on the road by our house. Ryan and Daniel actually played outside. With a ball. Together. I even took the dog for a walk (while also observing the power outage around the neighborhood. I felt a bit like a spy. Because I am a nerd).

When Einstein and I got back to the house, Mom was home and we started lighting candles in preparation for the sun going down and what was reported to be a 4 hour outage. Awesome. I convinced Daniel to take a shower while light was still coming in the windows (score!) and Ryan told Dad about his EMP theory.

A few days before this, we all painted pottery with my aunt Colleen. Three of our family's pieces (that's an even 50%) had Saints colors or a fleur de lis. Or both. Anyway, they had finally been fired and picked up and we admired our pieces in the thin sunlight still streaming through the kitchen windows.

Daniel came downstairs, freshly clean, and Mom tells him to unwrap the other pieces carefully, so that we can take a picture to send to Colleen. I went upstairs to retrieve my (awesome pineapple) bowl from my room, and on the way back downstairs, I hear many things. Allow me to paint a word picture of this scene:

Mom: Careful, Daniel, careful-

Daniel: AHHHAHHGHHHH
Ryan: Daniel, WHAT? Ahhhahhhhh! Get it! AAHH!
Dad: WhAT! Daniel! NO DON'T TOUCH IT
[I am still coming down the stairs, faster now, and I see the dog chasing the cat out of the kitchen]
Mom: AH! OW Ow owowowow
(stomping, stomping)
Dad: Daniel! WHY did you do that?
Mom: I tried to warn him... OW, ooh, that was stupid. 
[Daniel, distraught, flees upstairs in a fit]

I finally round the corner to see white fluff suspended in the air, falling slowly like fat snow. My first thought, as I see Dad at the open sliding glass door, is that the cat has attacked some snowy white bird and let it into the house, and now its downy feathers are decorating our kitchen.

The actual story is even better:
Daniel, being careful to handle the potter delicately, and being instructed to "save the tissue paper" that wraps them, had cautiously peeled the paper away from the ceramic box he was unwrapping, and placed the large piece of tissue paper on the kitchen table, right next to the candles we had just lit. My mother, seeing this happen, tried to warn him, but was unable to stop the paper from catching on fire. Wanting to save the table, and our house, from going up in flames, she grabbed the flaming paper and threw it on the floor. This movement made the flame more intense, and ashes (like white fluffy snow flurries) floated around the clouds of stress as my parents stomped out the flames. They then turned on Daniel, who blamed himself for almost killing the family and ran upstairs in tears.

So, the results from this day: 

BAD- 

1. Daniel cried for a little bit until we assured him it wasn't really his fault
2. Mom burned her hand while saving the family (which she has shown me 47 times, because "you didn't believe me that I got burned but I did, look!")
3. and the power was out for a whopping 65 minutes.

GOOD- 

1. Daniel took a shower
2. Einstein took a walk
3. Ryan and Daniel played a game that didn't need controllers
4. the kitchen was swept (to clean up all the ash)
5. Mom got a battle scar, and...
6. I got another fun story to tell.

I think this one goes in the win column.

peach iced tea

neuroses: 
whenever I buy a soda at a vending machine I have a mild panic episode between the time I put my money in the machine and when I punch the button for the soda I want. Even if I already know what kind of drink I want, I still freak a little bit before pushing the button. I'm always afraid some person will swoop in out of the shadows and punch the button for me.  They might pick something gross like Vault or grape Fanta.

In all my knitting and TV watching, I realized where this fear comes from: The Office.

people I love:

CaraBeth Heath

hiberknitting

and update on my existence so far this break:

I have been knitting. And watching television.
The end.

Of course there have been some family tussles, some exam stress (not mine this time!) and I did see Harry Potter again. Of course I did. Because the Groupon tickets were expiring.  And because it's Harry Potter. I mean, come on.

We're still not sure where we will be for Christmas. Here or New Orleans, New Orleans or here... There is still work to be done at my grandmother's house, so we will be back. But it is the day before the day before Christmas Eve, and we are still flip-flopping.

So MERRY CHRISTMAS! Hope I see you.

OFF, you trot!

Daniel is finally reading Harry Potter! This makes me happy on many levels, but mostly because I don't have to answer his tedious questions like "what's the spell for ____?" or "what's the name of that guy...?" or "isn't Hermione's mom a witch?"  I love that he loves Harry Potter, but after a while I just said "go to the source! Read the book already!"

So, yesterday he was reading about the sorting hat and the first Hogwarts feast and read out "Nitwit. Blubber. Oddment. Tweak." And then he asked me another question.

"Claire, what are trots?"

"What?" I asked, "how do you spell that?"

"T-R-O-T. Dumbledore said 'Off you trot'"

Oh, Daniel. When Dumbledore said "off you trot" as in "off you go" Daniel read it as "OFF, you trot!" as if "trot" were some magician's curse word.
Oh, dear.