Red bean everything: the adverb game

There were 7 Koopalings and 9 sons of the dragon. Coincidence? I certainly don't believe so. My favorite S.O.D so far is Suanmi. He's easy to confuse with a lion and can be found guarding doors or at the bottom of incense burning receptacles do to the fact that he's a sucker for smoke and fire. After him, I guess I like Puloa, he typically adorns bells and  is known for his roar and love of noise. You can see him around Suanmi's neck, if you look closely.
I super dig that each of the nine sons have a job to do, whether it be protect against flooding or keeping homes safe. Even if they are just giving strength to worriers or liking music, I find fascinating the various ways humans have explained our world throughout history, and it's even more interesting when we endeavor to channel some sense of universal will for protection or betterment.

You see, I don't have the same appreciation or memory for history that Sebastien does, but there is a special place in my imagination for folk magic.
The other day I learned that where we live, Yuzhong, translates to "In the middle of Elms." This made me think of Yew trees which knew to be a wand type from the Potterverse. Thus, I started looking into the magical properties of elms and pulled Sebastien into the hunt to differentiate between Alder, Elder, Edritch and Eldridge. But surely the most wisened among our readership was quick to surmise that, yes, I was, as a result, late for class.

Oh my Glob, I love my apartment. It feels so rewarding to have a clean space and to be able to sit in a different room than Sebastien if I want to read a book curled up on the couch...because we have a couch now. And by so doing, I don't have to hear him jog his foot incessantly. Everybody wins! It's been way too long since we've had our own space and if feels so good to put as much food as we want in the fridge and hang our clothes out to dry with zero competition for those resources.  Related: I have two favorite candies, so far:

Sour plum in brown sugar

And another one that  can't find a picture of online that's kind of like prepackaged mini dunkaroos. I think I'm coming down with a bit of a cold, but we've been knee-deep in that good kind of busy. Maybe moving towards a little too busy now that we've been volunteered to plan the staff Christmas party. But at least our Halloween event went stupendously!

 We had over 100 students in attendance, a large portion being non English majors. We passed around huge bags of candy, gave a short cultural presentation on what one typically does on Halloween, and showed two films, "Sleepy Hollow" and "Zombieland", before giving away prizes during Sebastien's monster trivia game. (Chapsticks.)

On Saturday we went into Lanzhou to kick it with some Peace Corps peeps, but also invited along a Canadian exchange student who we were sure was cool enough to hang. I'd vouch for her, she would not screw up the heist. We had a lot of fun out at dinner and back at our private KTV room, and it is only right and proper therefore that the highlight of the evening should be singing Killing in the Name Of with a China 18 whom is the personal owner of a cool first name. Great times.

 But coming in at an uncomfortably close second in the category of all time weekend highs would definitely be waking up in a friend's apartment and getting a chance to wash my hands with warm water for the first time in 4 months.

November 3rd was a Sunday and kind of a bummer because it was the anniversary of my Dad's death. He's been dead a year but it keeps feeling a lot longer. I'm no wiz when it comes to that sort of data and  it had been a dog's age since we had a talk that wasn't about a hammer, such that, I almost forgot that back in the before times, we would spend hours on the phone between visits. He'd tell me about his latest yard sale or the last bike he rebuilt, and how his tin soldier collection was going and I'd share stories of my life with my  Step-dad, edited out to save his feelings. Looking over my shoulder through the lends of age, I doubt very much now that he would have cared or been hurt.

My father was the self-made sort. He could fix almost anything, but he dropped out of engineering school and always wore this shame like the sort of chip on his shoulder that the monkey on his back couldn't eat. Here in China, however, his experience would have counted for more.

My parents weren't happy together. My daddy slept on the couch for most of the marriage that I was cognizant for---that is, until my mother started to complain about the smell and he moved all his stuff to the basement, where he lived till he moved back to Chicago.
Though I love 'em, each in their own way were--the both of them--- poor examples of how to be a decent partner. Even so, my parents loved me.

Growing up, that was the hardest part to master about my feelings: the understanding that their adult relationship was separate from what I was allowed to feel for either of them. And anyway, he listened to my bad dreams and assured me my teddy would protect me from future nightmares. He taught me how to install drywall, when to use blueboard, how to fix a toilet and just why they call it a jigsaw. I didn't agree with his politics or some of his principles but he was a man of many maxims and I hear myself repeating them to others with an assurance born of inheritance: "measure twice, cut once," "any job big or small do it right or not at all", and my personal childhood truism, "promises were made to be broken."

Promises or no, his death day corresponds with the folk tradition here in China where one burns paper coats and paper money for the dead so that they will be well provided for in the afterlife. Only the oldest siblings may burn offerings; the younger siblings are allowed to kneel and touch their heads to the ground three times in a gesture of genuflected remembrance.

I'm not really the sort to try out other cultures traditions just for the hay of it and so I was still at square one when considering how to mourn him....

Am I suppose to be feeling something...?

Burn a candle? Listen to music? Lay on the couch all night and cry? As it happened, I was in the midst of another bout of giardia on the third, and I was in and out of the bathroom for much of the day. During that time the toilet's inner workings needed to be jostled and plied no less than three times. I caught myself humming a song with no tune and found myself smiling at his memory. I'm thankful that he never let my gender be a wall between what he thought I was smart enough to learn.

Sometimes during Christmas, when I just can't help it, I reimagine the afterlife that occupied my childhood, where god had princess Leia buns and everything was done in seipa tones--him and Zack are there sitting on a cloud strumming harps. Or maybe he's this very instant waiting around for his coat to catch on fire, pissed that there's no paper money for him even in the afterlife. In that context, it's easy for me to imagine him saying, "Excuse my French, but the fucking Chinese were right!"

I miss you Dad, but in a sort of quiet way I like to pretend isn't there. Don't get me wrong, I haven't forgotten you--my husband's computer broke the other day and I wasn't scared to take the back off to examine its guts or go down to the back market and bargain for the right screw driver in a foreign language. Thanks for being the kind of parent who handed me the reins, let me take apart my toys and help me put them back together. I think it must take courage to stand back and let your child live their life. So thank you for letting go of the seat so that I could wobble out into the world alone on my Schwinn, believing in my own two legs and the steadfastness of my grip. I promise to pay it forward

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