SPOKANE

Well, I haven’t updated this in a while, and I suppose it’s time. I’ve been spending a lot of time taking care of other things—trying to get paid for contract work, or looking for a job in London—and the rest of my time has been spent either laughing with my sister and niece until we can’t move, or moping around because I’m depressed.

That sounds silly, but it’s true. I love my sister and my niece, and I love spending time with them. If this were just a short vacation/visit, it would be all laughter, but I want to be in London, and I’ve tried so hard to move there, and I can’t seem to find a way to do it. And it sounds really dumb, but I’m really depressed about it.

I mean, let’s face it, things aren’t so bad. I’m with my family, having fun. And I have enough to eat, and it’s no longer just the rice I had in my cupboard in London. And I’ve interviewed for a really well-paying job here in Spokane. You’d think I’d be deliriously happy.

Anyway, here’s what I’ve been up to, in the form of random and unrelated paragraphs:

Since planting the toilet full of flowers and strawberries, which is looking fantastic, by the way, Natalie came home from the writers’ conference, which was awful as can be expected. I was able to find my way to and from the airport with no trouble at all. When I got there to pick up Natalie on the way home, it turned out that the airline had lost her luggage, but it was eventually delivered to our house.

Natalie’s car isn’t exactly the nicest car in the world, but it has a standard transmission and therefore I had a fabulous time driving it. I love to drive, and I haven’t gotten to drive since I left the US, so this was great fun. You’d think I’d have spent the entire time she was gone driving around, but I didn’t get back in the car even once.

I have spent a good deal of time just sitting around eating things and reading books. Although I generally would highly recommend this activity, it’s going to have to stop soon if I want to fit into my trousers.

I’ve looked for this book that I had started in London and didn’t finish (Matthew was also reading it, and I was just an evil person who was stealing the book he was reading) but have been unsuccessful so far. I have discovered, however, that in the bookstores here, the employees listen to Country/Western music, which frightens me.

There are more cowboys per capita here than I care to think about. It’s a very strange place.

There is a fast-food chain here that sells a hamburger that has a hotdog sliced up on top of the hamburger. I am strangely fascinated, and will probably have to go and get one. Of course, I was also strangely fascinated by the people selling hotdogs on the street in London, but never managed to get one of those either. Oh! I just realized that I never went through with my plan to get chips in a bag, either. Darn!

Anyway, someone in this household has this awful sticky ball thing. It’s a ball made of that sticky material that stretches out, you know, and they make toys that creep down walls and things out of it. This is continually being tossed at one of the members of this household by another, or hidden in belongings so that the unsuspecting victim will put her hand in it and scream.

A pillbug infestation has been discovered in the basement, and after many trials, Natalie and Charity were forced to admit defeat. So yesterday, at my insistence, we went out and purchased two lizards. They are just about the cutest things ever, and we have put them hot on the trail of the bugs. I will keep you updated on how this goes.

By the way, it’s not just eating and reading that I seem to be doing compulsively. I have also been spending money (not that I have loads of it) and I cannot sleep. It occurs to me that this is probably depression.

The other night, we went to visit some writer/academic types, friends of Natalie’s, for a barbecue at this ranch. On the way, we picked up this Chinese writer whose name I cannot spell, but it’s pronounced Han-Jiao, so I am going to spell it like that for now.

As we were driving, Natalie forgot that Han-Jiao was in the car, and she belched quite loudly and impressively. Then, embarrassed, she said, "Oh, I forgot we had a guest," and we all tried to pretend nothing had happened.

Unfortunately, all I could think of was, "Oh, don’t worry, Natalie, in China that’s considered a compliment." I have heard and/or said this many times, and all I could think of is what a horribly offensive thing it would be to say right at that moment, and the more I thought about it, the more I couldn’t help myself, and I ended up laughing to myself and not being able to explain to anyone.

When we got to the barbecue, everyone was introduced, and I went through the usual "Oh, you’re Natalie’s sister" evaluation. People always treat me a certain way when they find this out. Some people are a little star-struck by my sister, and they treat me a certain way. Some people are just her friends, and they kind of look at me for clues to where she came from. There was a bit of a mixture of both at this party.

There was this one woman who I couldn’t figure out whether to like or to really hate. She spent most of dinner talking about what foods she won’t eat—she’s a vegetarian. Then she went into what her children will and won’t eat, and this is the sort of thing that always endears a person to me.

Anyway, at one point during the meal, the hostess, who was being a bit of a wifey-mothery type that evening, turned to Han-Jiao and tried to pull him into the conversation by saying, "So, Han-Jiao, what did your mother try to get you to eat when you were young?"

Han-Jiao looked a little bit uncomfortable at first, but then talked to us about the fact that when he was a boy, he had to leave his home when he was seven years old because his mother had five children and could not feed them, so he had to leave and hunt for food on his own; whatever he could hunt or steal. He talked about finding a tree with big roots in the mountain, and covering himself with leaves, and about waking up covered in snow and feeling like the snow had taken care of him; putting a blanket on him.

I decided that I like Han-Jiao very much.

It also reminded me a little bit about myself and my friend B. We have talked about this before—about how things have happened in our lives that made us feel different from other people. How they would sit around and say things like, "You know how when you’re sixteen and nobody expects you to do anything, and you’re irresponsible," or whatever, and we just try to pretend we’re like everyone else, and hope that they don’t ask us too many questions.

Anyway, it was really interesting to listen to Han-Jiao, and from what I’ve heard he is a really amazingly talented writer. It looks like he is going to be forced to go back to China, because of visa reasons, and if that happens he will no longer be able to write. I couldn’t help but think that my problems are really minor in comparison.

He said that he didn’t have any preference for doctrines or philosophies, really—that communism was good and that democracy was good, but people were bad. That human rights are more important than anything else, and that sometimes he thinks that things are worse here in the US when it comes to human rights than they are in China.

Eventually dinner was over, and Natalie and Charity and I kept trying to find a polite way to suggest that they serve the pie, which caused much laughter among the three of us. Eventually pie was had by all, and we were very exhausted and ended up going home and taking Han-Jiao home as well.

I’ve been getting up at 4 am to watch World Cup games, and can I just say yippee Brazil? I am very happy about that. I really didn’t want Germany to win.

Yesterday we drove around—Natalie and I have to stop at a Garage Sale pretty much every time we get into the car, but we still haven’t found anything exciting other than the baby monitor.

Did I mention the baby monitor here? Basically, Natalie found a baby monitor at a garage sale the other day, and it was really cheap, so she bought it for Charity. We had this splendid idea—we were going to put the receiver under Charity’s bed, and then we were going to wait until she was trying to sleep, and then we were going to make spooky noises into it.

Unfortunately, Charity found the receiver under her bed, which spoiled our perfect plan.

But anyway, yesterday when we were driving around, we saw many wonderful things. We went to a Japanese garden which was far too full of people, all of whom we scorned with great loathing. Then we drove through a neighborhood which had many, many couches on porches, which was fascinating to me. Then we saw a whole family of quail crossing the road—quail have these funky little feathers on the tops of their heads, and I don’t think they are very bright. But this family was two adults and something like a dozen little babies, and they were all crossing the road running very fast, and it was just about the cutest thing ever.

Then we finally got to our destination, which was this absolutely beautiful river with a swinging bridge across it, which Charity and I had to cross and swing on, much to the consternation of the other bridge visitors. Too bad.

And then eventually we came home, stopping first at Wal-Mart. Oh, and there is this really obnoxious thing called "Hoop Fest" going on here, which evidently involves many basketballs and hoops, and far too many people blocking off far too many streets and causing far too much traffic.

Gah!

All right, now I’m going to go back to job hunting. I’ll keep you posted if anything exciting happens, or if I manage to stop eating for more than fifteen minutes at a time.