So, things...

Things are starting, and it's freaking me out. I'll be teaching a college class for the first time this semester, and it's a little terrifying. I was wondering why I was having the beginning of the year teaching nightmares, and recently realized this is why. My brain was just mixed up and put middle-schoolers in the dreams instead of college students.

I'm also totally excited. So if any of my students are googling me and find this, know that I am totally excited and will be over the fear soon enough.

It was also an exciting day on the lake...a bunch of the family was out on the boat, and it was really hot. It might gross you out, but it was the hot kind of day where you sweat through your swimming suit in the most inopportune places. So we stopped to swim, which when well for a while. I dove in, and even got to swim with my nephew for a few minutes before he freaked out. My sister-in-law was about to jump in when she dropped the ladder on her foot and sliced her toe open.

I'm not sure if it's a well-known fact, but I'm not good with other people's blood, and wow, was there blood. It turns out the ladder sliced her toe right down the top, basically severing it into two parts. And the whole time this was going on, I was in the water, right below the back of the boat and the toe-blood. The poor girl was also in so much pain (and probably in shock) that she was coming in and out of consciousness. Let's just say it was an ordeal to get back to the house and up the stairs from the dock. My job, after getting back on the boat through the blood pool, was to keep my nephew from not freaking out because his mom was bleeding.

Anyway, she's okay, and doesn't need a prosethetic toe, as one of my brothers was joking. I have to say it did turn my stomach in knots though.

And now, more of Season 5 of The Wire. It's so good.

Summer doesn't really lend itself to writing, so here's the update. More hanging out at the lakes, and this week a few days for work at a county fair in rural SD. That was interesting...real farmers in Wranglers and boots, old creepy men, and a hot tub salesman who hand-wrote his signs.

Sometimes You Learn Something at the Grocery Store

Sometimes I learn things in weird ways. Like I occasionally have these strange but very instructive dreams, where when I wake up, I feel as though I've actually gained real insight into some kind of experience or situation. I can't really explain it, but I'm always thankful when I wake up and feel like I learned something. Very efficient.

Anyway, last night I learned things at the grocery store. I realized what I'm going to write is probably stuff that normal people know. However, I do not know a lot of things normal people here know, like how to take care of a lawn, run a lawn mower, or really anything else that has to do with the outdoors. I digress...let's just say I'd like to be more domestic than I am sometimes.

The biggest thing I learned is that you can buy just 1 piece of meat at the meat counter if you want. (I know...you already knew that) It may have to do with the fact that my family ate out for almost every one of my growing up meals, but for some reason it never dawned on me that you can buy just as much of something as you want at the meat counter. As a singleton and someone who doesn't especially love meat, I don't buy it a lot--the 12 pack of chicken breasts just doesn't seem very economical.

But I've had a bit of a grilling thing going on this summer. A couple weeks back I attempted a Korean BBQ recipe, after hearing from someone at my old church about this summer's picnic with the Korean church. The recipe I picked turned out good, so I saw a grilled pork with peaches recipe and thought I'd give it a try. But what to do with the 3 other pork chops in the package? Aha--the meat counter. I bought 1 pork chop, and the guy didn't even look at me funny. I also didn't waste any extra meat or have to spend an hour wrapping and freezing the other portions. Ingenious. And tasty.

The other thing I learned is that only Hispanics eat garbanzo beans. Seriously, not a chick pea to be found outside of the Hispanic foods section. I stared at the beans for probably 5 minutes, stumped by what I would use to make hummus if there were no chick peas...I saw every other kind of bean, including one called "red beans." Aren't most of them red? Anyway, then I was schooled by the midwestern grocery arrangement--only Hispanics eat chick peas. They also only eat imported chick peas. Who knew?