A Burst of Domesticity

Do you think about the feeling of folding warm laundry? About how it feels to smooth out the wrinkles in your clothes and sheets and towels? About letting the warmth seep into the bones of your fingers and breathing in the clean smell of home? About the victory you experience when you realize all your socks have escaped the clutches of the sock-eating laundry monster?

It's a good feeling.

Or grocery shopping. Think about grocery shopping, especially as a college student: you've stopped eating cereal because you ran out of milk, and you had to make a sandwich with the end pieces of your bread, and you haven't cooked green things in a long time, and there are no bananas within reach —and then Giant. Wegman's. Costco.

There are grapes in my fridge right now, GRAPES.

You'd be hard-pressed to make me any happier in this moment.

Typical Conversations #21

It's been more than a year since I last added to this series, but I just found one old unpublished transcript and realized it was time to begin again.

--
MOM: Scattergories. 'C', for vegetables. Go.
ME: Cucumber.
MOM: Carrots.
ME: Cilantro.
MOM: Cabbage.
ME: Corn.

*long pause*

MOM: Any more?
ME: Cauliflower.
MOM: That's a good one.

*another pause*

ME: CANNED VEGETABLES
MOM: Hahahahahahahaha no. Okay, now 'A.'
ME: Arugula.
MOM: Avocado.

*pause*

ME: I can't think of any more! Apples! Aaarrranges!
MOM: Those are FRUITS Davina

Typical Conversations #20

ME: You know they make fake meat out of tofu.
JEREMY: Really?? I didn't know they could make fake chicken into tofu!
NATHAN: Of course! They call it 'Buddha'.
A pause. 
ME: What?
JEREMY: Yes.

Typical Conversations #19

ME: Dad, rinsing dishes is not the same as actually washing them.
DAD: (indignant) Do you know how Jesus washed His disciples' feet?
MOM: ...I don't think he rinsed them.

Typical Conversations #14 and #15

GRANDFATHER: Do you have any raisins?
ME (busy with something): I don't know.

A pause.

GRANDFATHER: *sigh* ... *sigh* ... *sigh* ... *sigh* ... *sigh*
ME: What are you doing?
GRANDFATHER: I'm sighing until somebody finds me raisins.

~ * ~

MOM (very loudly from the window): NINA NINA COME HERE IS THAT A DOG A CAT OR A SHEEP? I CAN'T TELL!

Typical Conversations #11 and #12

DAN: (screeches from bathroom) There's a spider in here!!
MOM: Haha. Did you hear that? He has to deal with a spider.
DAD: Let's see what he does.
ME: (yelling from other room) SQUISH IT WITH YOUR FINGERS.
DAN: (another screech, louder)

Silence.

DAN: (coming out of bathroom) I emerge victorious.

~•~

STEVIE: Can I have a knife?
ME: Here.
STEVIE: Thanks. I was just thinking, like, I have this pork chop and no knife...
ME: You could have just torn at it with your teeth.
MOM: Yeah, just hold it in your hands and go nawnawnawr. Like eating a squirrel.

OMELET

Nathan and I made omelets for ourselves on Wednesday.
Ingredients: eggs, "Mexican Blend" shredded cheese, diced barbeque chicken, and some green salad stuff we found in the fridge.
Seems like it should have gone well, right?

It turns out we are not that great at the whole cooking part.

Had too much salt (mine)

Had no salt at all (Nathan's)

---

However, despite the, uh, less-than-perfect presentation and salt discrepancy, they ended up tasting pretty good.

I'm left alone...

WITH TWO MEN TO TAKE CARE OF. Well, just one now, but that's beside the point.

Mommy and Jeremy left for Boston early on Saturday morning, and until today, both my dad and Nathan were home--which meant that I had to be domestic and clean the house and cook for them and stuff.
I'm not very domestic naturally. I will confess that it felt (feels) odd to me. Mom is the kind of mom who does everything while hardly talking about it, and Jeremy is the sensitive brother who takes care of almost everything else that Mom might have missed. So...I'm the spoiled youngest child who usually just sort of sits there and expects to be served. Most of the time, I take initiative to do something if I'm absolutely sure that no one else might just maybe in the near future do it instead of me. Otherwise, I only do stuff that I'm explicitly told to.
Bad, I know. I have to change that mentality. (Pray for me in this area. My family will love you.)
However inexperienced I may be, this weekend went pretty well. We ate a lot of leftovers, but there was some successful cooking involved. The kitchen hasn't caught on fire. In fact, it's quite clean right now, because I was provided with this nice little checklist of daily chores that I have dutifully followed. Never mind that I lost it on Saturday afternoon and freaked out for a few hours before Nathan found it again.
I've even done laundry by myself, which I never do, which is kind of pathetic. If you feel inclined to scoff at me right now, feel free. 
But besides all that, my brother and father make great company. Dad has watched like four different documentaries in this weekend alone: something on Yellowstone, something about Martin Luther, something about the history of jazz, and another one that I forget. It may actually have been a movie. I watched some of them with him. That was fun.
Nathan and I went out to practice frisbee on Saturday, when the ground was soaking wet. Lovely. He made me practice lay-out catches (I CAN'T DO THEM RIGHT), then practice sprinting, then practice long, accurate throws. That was fun too.
Other than those highlights, we mostly wandered around the house, occasionally bothering each other.

We also had brownies and ice cream.

"Davina," says Nathan, "I want you to scoop the ice cream with this."

↓

That didn't work out so well...

We also watched two episodes of 24: Season 2.
I like it.


Unfortunately, I'm really alone this afternoon, as Nathan is back in the city, and Dad's at work. Fortunately, Kelly is coming here in less than an hour to break my loneliness.

Well, I should probably go put in another load of laundry. Bye.

Yan Yan!

I opened my Yan Yan today (THANK YOU ELLIE).

The sticker on the top is an additional gift from Ellie.

There are "fun words" on the cracker sticks inside. 

Here are a few:

Note the animal illustrations.

There was also a cow that said MUUUUUU, but Mom ate it before it occurred to me to take pictures.