back in palto

for the third time in five weeks - a new record for me, I think. This is the most I've visited my parents in seven years. They picked me up at SFO and immediately drove me to the Marina Supermarket in San Mateo (because only Chinese people keep their supermarkets open on Christmas) to buy groceries for dinner and for our upcoming road trip into the Sierras and into the desert. My mom calls my dad bian tou wang (the king of flat heads) and my dad wonders, vaguely racist, if my mom is a muo xi ge ren because no Chinese women he knows are pudgy. We buy freshly killed fish and winter bamboo shoots and sweet soymilk for the vegetarian lactose intolerants among us, then drive home with me in the back seat stuffing mushroom buttons and broccoli basted in beef effusions into my mouth. Richard's at home with sinoaustralo Aimee watching anime very, very loudly and simultaneously downloading three episodes of "Ultimate Fighter" onto his hard drive. The furniture here continues to be MIA, there are new vertebrate stuffed animals in the smallest bedroom, and my former bunk bed, formerly known as the former bunk bed denuded of its titular top, has now become the full-sized bed ingeniously assembled from the parts of the single bunk bed formerly known as the former bunk bed denuded of its titular top. So, yeah, I'm in Palo Alto, surrounded by family. Suddenly it seems like stickiness is not just an option but a mandate. Sha gua shi gua, ni de sheng li miannie bu neng gou xiang bie de shi ching.

Okay, time to take a weeklong nap. Bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye.