he sees you when you're sleeping

On my flight home last weekend I sat next to a French scientist carrying a textbook titled Comment utilizer votre nouvelle iPad. She wasn’t interested in talking about France or Marseille, which was too bad. She was interested in talking about Grenoble being the birthplace of white coal, which was complicated and involved the evaporation of charcoal. She said she was in Portland for a “science meeting.” I asked her how it went.

“Oh, you know how science meetings are."

(I don’t.)

“Isn’t it unusual," she continued, "how you travel to the other side of the world for a science meeting, but you’re with the same people from Australia that you met while studying whales in Antarctica last summer?”

(Yes, a lot of things about that are unusual.)

After trying to get information about whales out of her for a while, we came back to seeing friends on her trip. I suggested that the world was small, and as a scientist she confirmed it.

“Yes, the world is small. But we are all so spread out.”

This last bit was especially true because she had unfolded her flight blanket out so far it covered one of my knees. I didn’t mind at all, actually I loved it, because the plane was freezing.

save the planet

I'm glowing so much I can see in the dark.

Before you get a facial the person (spa person? spatrician?) sits with a clipboard and asks you loads of questions. Questions like "What skin products do you use?" and "What's your favorite part of the facial?"

"Probably when it's over," I answered, and regretted it immediately because it made me sound like a teenager describing a nosebleed. But I'd rather be the one with the clipboard asking loads of questions. Questions like "By skin products, do you mean products for my skin or products made of skin?"

You're not supposed to ask questions during a facial. Once I asked "What color is my face right now?" and the spatrician just laughed. So I had plenty of time to think about the answers to her clipboard questions, with time left over to think about what umbrellas would look like if wind went up instead of sideways, and what comebacks I would make to hypothetical insults, and what animals mixed together would create the perfect animal. Here are my answers.

I hardly use any products made of skin. I have one jacket that looks like leather, but it's actually black plastic. In fact, it doesn't even look like leather.

My favorite part of a facial is when it's over because there are some things I like best before and after they happen. Also on this list are square dancing, baking, and looking at a photo of a blue whale on the internet. I look forward to these activities, and I talk about them for days afterward. Sometimes I even blog about them. But during them, you have no idea what color your face is. And that's the worst.

The world's cutest animal would be a combination of a loris, panda, meerkat, and otter. It's really complicated and I don't have time to draw it right now, and when I do it will be so cute you may cry. This photo of a blue whale will give you CHILLS. If you send me a photo of you sitting down to prove you are sitting down, I will send it to you.

While we're on the subject of lies I tell

A lot of times people ask if I've had lunch and I say no even though I have, just so I can have lunch with them. The good part is that I don't have to eat dinner later, and the bad part is there is no bad part. It's a perfect system.

I hate salt water

My grandmother firmly believes in not throwing away a Kleenex until it's so soaked in fluid it's unrecognizable.

When I stayed at her house growing up she would fish through the trash for used ones "This one's only been blown in one or two times! Don't be wasteful, Brooke" and stuff them in my pockets, still wet. A lot of times I felt pretty sure they weren't even mine.

She also had a rule that if you cried you had to sit alone in the garage with the lights off. If I ever spend time in prison I will owe the ease with which I adapt completely to the time spent at my grandmother's house as a child.

Sometimes I think about throwing away a completely un-used Kleenex just to balance things out, in like a really well-adjusted way. Regular ones, not the kind with lotion. Throwing away Kleenex with lotion is the kind of thing that gets you put in jail.



This is me and my grandmother. We look alike. She wears a locket with a photo of her at age 5 and me at age 5, because I guess at age 5 we looked even more alike.

Your heart pumps 48 Diet Cokes of blood a minute

Once I asked a friend if he was good at css and he responded with “I don’t know, I’ve never tried it!” This was my attitude I approached my first yoga class last week.

And I told the teacher that I had never done yoga before but it was sort of a lie. I had done it twice - once my sister and I tried going to a yoga class and left a few scary seconds in, and once I saw a yoga position printed on the back of a cereal box and tried it, while eating cereal, which is pretty advanced. I felt like these two brushes with yoga would be my secret weapon. Oh sure I’ve never done yoga before, BAM, dog posse. I mean dog pose. Things were going to go great.

Class started with us all sitting cross-legged on the floor, silently, I can only assume everyone was remembering funny things that happened in middle school or thinking about different food pairings (peanut butter and greek yogurt?)(tried it when I got home, don’t recommend it). I hadn’t even made it to lunch food thoughts before the teacher came over and whispered that sitting cross-legged seemed to be too advanced for me. She suggested a modified pose that I would call “just sitting normally on the ground” and she called “Hero’s Pose.” 

Assuming she made that up on the spot to make me feel better about failing at sitting, I mentally already awarded her an A for Friendliness. And we were only a minute in.

“If you get overwhelmed, just go back to Hero’s Pose.” she recommended.

Then she told us to put our hands together, and then grab our minds and put them in between our palms. I stayed in Hero's Pose and kept my mind wherever it normally stays.

Holding our brains was the first of many bizarre feats of flexibility asked of us. The most common was to move our hearts. “Lift your heart as high as you can.” “Float your heart behind your shoulders.” I just moved my boobs whenever she said this. I don’t know what everyone else did, I thought looking at people might be bad yoga etiquette.

Things I did look at: the window where I could see the restaurant chefs making breakfast. The ceiling lights - one of them had a face in it. Or I may have been having yoga-induced hallucinations.

Toward what I assumed was the end, the teacher congratulated us on “A great warm-up!” and then things kept going, as people often do after warm-ups. And we powered through lots and lots more heart waving and Hero’s Pose and listening to a sound that I thought was a broken fan but halfway through class realized was a relaxation tape.

And then it turns out the last 15 minutes of yoga are a nap, so, being a hero really wasn’t that difficult after all.

Full disclosure I wrote this months ago and have not been back to yoga since. Sun salutations, suckers. Just kidding it really was fun.

What's the word for laughing but also feeling like the worst person?

Three messages from my mom after I got a new phone and changed my voicemail message to just the word "hi."

7:01 PM
Brooke!
Are you still there?
Did I lose you?
Can you hear me?
Brooke.
Ok I'm going to call back.

7:02 PM
Um.
Oh!
Wait.
Are you still there?
Well that is so weird...
I hear nothing, I can't hear you.

7:03 PM
(Laughter)
(Silence)
Shoot. Can you hear me?
Oh...
Hmmm.
Brooke?

Sorry Mom. My voicemail is fixed now.



How many times can I post this photo of my family throwing hand signs at a midwestern Applebees and still have it be hilarious? Seven times? Eight times?

A one-act play about how I make friends

Scene: The clock aisle in a Portland Fred Meyer grocery store. BROOKE is walking around trying to remember what she was going to buy (milk) and wondering why there are clocks in a grocery store, a MAN WITH ALLERGIES is dripping all over the clocks.

MAN WITH ALLERGIES sneezes

BROOKE: Bless you!

MAN WITH ALLERGIES: Is this clock $29.99?

BROOKE (continuing to not resemble a Fred Meyer employee in any way): I think so? Yes!

MAN WITH ALLERGIES: I can't believe these clocks are 30% off.

BROOKE: Pretty insane. Now's the time to buy one!

BROOKE waits for MAN WITH ALLERGIES to laugh

MAN WITH ALLERGIES walks away

BROOKE wonders if maybe she came here because she needed soy sauce. (wrong, still milk.)

Then Meatcat flies in on his skateboard

I don't remember how I ended up on this part of the internet but I'm glad I did, even though it gave me some pretty intense sensory overload.

Birthday cake you can eat with a spoon? Kraft Macaroni and Cheese popcorn powder? Is the Kraft "What's new!" page better than Wikipedia's page of discontinued cereals? 

While we're at it: Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Crackers! (their friends and their legal team call them KD Crackers)

The Canwich!

Ice cream ramen!

And then my friend pointed out that Jello-flavored birthday cake is not the first birthday cake you can eat with a spoon:

And probably not the last, thank goodness.

10 million things in Portland: the great outdoors edition

I like Portland. Some people have never been. Visit Portland! Here are five of the ten million reasons you should.


Two different people who do not know each other told me that they’ve found a naked man following them around Forest Park but I’ve been there many times and this has never happened to me. I have seen a wedding, and a picnic, and once there was a weird smell and someone said it was sulphur. Maybe those people were talking about sulphur. Maybe it was a metaphor.



Are you incredibly excited by roses? Neither am I. Neither is anyone. But, Portland has a rose garden. Possibly because Portland’s nickname is “City of Roses” or possibly it’s a front for a black-market fertilizer operation.



Just a city block covered in cement with a giant fountain in the center, and a few inches of collected slush from human/fountain residue. One of my friends says Jamison Square Park is “the best birth control ever” but he isn’t a doctor. If you asked a doctor about Jamison Square park they would probably take your blood pressure. Doctors love doing that.



The river might be my favorite great outdoors area. Not the river in the center of Portland, another one. This river is just infested with trees and nature and you can go swimming in it and get carried off in the current and lose your sunglasses and cut your feet but who cares, because swimming in a river is amazing. My friend was in a movie once that was shot at this river and all the actors were naked the entire time. Lots of nudity in this post. I guess that’s a common theme in the great outdoors.



Laurelhurst park has an off-leash dog park, and often men in dresses dance around in the open areas, holding small pieces of wood. Once when I walked through it there was a businessman standing in the middle of a patch of grass, holding a push-broom and staring at me. The leaves are amazing right now.

The tooth fairy isn't real.

I woke up this morning with a half-dollar in my hand and a vague sense of fear.

I'm not talking about half of a dollar bill, or two quarters. I was lying in bed, in my pajamas, holding a really large coin with JFK's profile. I have never seen a half-dollar before this morning, and I don't think I knew they existed. I have seen a Sacajawea coin, but this is not a Sacajawea coin. Enough about Sacajawea coins, and back to this mystery half-dollar. Here are all the possible explanations I can think of.

1. I'm finally collecting money for the wisdom teeth I had removed eight years ago.

2. After months of practice I've become a complete expert in lucid dreaming and brought back this money from another dimension.

3. A stranger put a half dollar in their pocket and put their jeans in the washing machine where the half dollar fell out and stayed there until I did my laundry and then it went into my clothes and stuck to my body. This one seems both the most physically possible (because it doesn't require magic like the others do) but also the least likely.

4. I sleepwalked and went shopping.

5. Time-travel. Either into the future or the past. It seems like a possibility worth adding.

6. Someone broke into my apartment and is living in it and paying a very small amount of rent. I checked the shower and the fridge. I didn't check under the bed. I was too scared.

There is probably actually a really normal explanation for this and when I find out what it is it will be my duty to let the internet know. A lot of other strange things that have happened that turned out to have perfectly normal explanations.

Age 18: Finding a cartoon about myself as a superhero, drawn by a stranger, hidden in a bush on campus. (Someone in my dorm had started drawing a cartoon about me in class. This explanation is not that normal. The others will get better.)

Age 8: A miniature screw that fell from the sky. (It fell out of my glasses.)

Age 14: My band teacher wearing a shirt with the name of my dad's company. (He got it at a thrift store.)

Age 12: A tube of glitter lip gloss with a note that said "Hi Brooke" on my desk in Physical Science. (I had complimented the girl next to me on her lip gloss, so she bought me some.)

Age 25: A box with my name appeared on my doorstep. (I had ordered something online.)

Koalas are in season

When I was five, my family lived in Australia, which isn't important at all. What is important is that my mother purchased the most legendary sweater ever to grace that continent: an over-sized navy blue number soaked in white koalas. Here is a picture:

(Facebombed with my face to protect their privacy, and because it makes them look like energetic show dogs.)



Like any good sweater, the koala sweater has caused twenty years of emotional turmoil: at five I loved the softness and beauty of the koalas, at fifteen I pretended not to know her when she wore it in public, and at twenty five I have to convince her not to donate it on a daily basis. Never get rid of the koala sweater, Mom. I can't think of an article of clothing that better represents my mother, or the great country of Australia.

Imagine my shock and sheer joy when I saw this girl on the street the other day, and she said I could take her picture. (Face cropped because her face looked like an energetic show dog and it was creeping me out.)



THAT IS DEFINITELY THE SAME SWEATER.

The world is like one awesome Australian department store littered with marsupials. Just when you think you may have to go the entire day without seeing a stranger dressed in your mom's favorite sweater, a tender mercy like a sweater miracle comes along and proves you wrong. Thank you Mom, for teaching me that koalas will always come back in style.

Sandwich Math, and the other best things about night

If you like confusing feelings that remind you of being a teenager or thinking about the number infinity or wondering what would happen if you mixed nail polish and nail polish remover and if you can do that experiment in your apartment without losing your deposit, you should go to Whole Foods for lunch and order a half-sandwich.

Because a "half-sandwich" at Whole Foods is made with two slices of regular bread, and getting an entire sandwich for the price of half seems like a great deal. But a half sandwich costs $4.50 which seems like not a great deal. Great deal or not a great deal? Confusing feelings like this can lead to indigestion and there's only one cure for indigestion: sandwich math.

My parents are mathematicians and my sister owns an abacus. I wanted to find out if it was cheaper to make a sandwich at home.

Step One: solve for cost of sandwich.

Here is a drawing of the equation, because food is my fourth-favorite thing to draw:

Here are my top five favorite things to draw:

Step Two: go to Fred Meyer at night and find the price of all the ingredients, which happens to be my fifth-favorite PG thing to do at night.

While I was traveling from bread to cheese I noticed that a loaf of regular bread costs about a dollar and has twice as many slices as gluten-free bread. Gluten-free bread is really expensive. That kind of bummed me out but I cheered up fast because hey, I'm price checking food at the grocery store.

At this point I was pretty confident that the Whole Foods sandwich would be cheaper. But I wasn't sure! Is the suspense killing you?! I bought some eggs.

Then I went home and added it all up while listening to Oh Yoko and playing a complicated kind of scrabble with a stranger on my phone. I hate scrabble. I lost badly. But that was the only bad news because look at this:

Making your own sandwiches is TWO TIMES CHEAPER (capitalization for emphasis). This is insane. At this price I could eat two sandwiches (is this why it's called a half-sandwich?), or one sandwich wrapped in origami paper and covered in stickers from Powell's. 

If times get tough or I need to save money to buy an electric keyboard, I might start making sandwiches with tortillas instead of bread, which will lover the price of a sandwich to $1.60, the same price as the same sandwich made on regular bread. If you can eat regular bread you're getting an amazing deal when you make a sandwich. 

Brooke's favorite food age 7-9: cold hot dog wrapped in a tortilla.

Five least favorite things to draw. (it's a matching game!)

Five least-favorite things at night. (it's scary!)

I didn't include the price of mustard. Has anyone ever heard a funny cut the mustard joke? Besides "Has anyone ever heard a 'cut the mustard' joke that cut the mustard?" That one is hilarious.

I ruined three notebooks this afternoon.

It rained really hard in Portland today.

The sort of rain where when you come inside you need to change your shoes and your pants, and also your socks, and also your underwear.

I took it as a challenge to get as soaked as possible, and walked around for an hour in the sort of rain where after a while the raindrops aren't making you any wetter, you're just spinning your rain wheels and you might as well be swimming.

And when I came inside I took my gray Converses off and they were so dark I thought they were my black ones.

Some deep thoughts here.

Other thoughts include thoughts about small warm places, like forts, and caves with deers in them, and the Borrowers, and why all of the places I like that are small and warm are things I liked when I was small. When I was small my family would get extremely competitive about snow fort building, we saw a documentary on people living in Antarctica and used their technique of blowing up a dozen garbage bags and piling snow over them, then popping the bags to make a fort more fit for survivalists than suburbists. The forts never collapsed on me, but I have memories of one collapsing on me because I've seen so many movies where forts collapse. Sometimes I wonder how many of my memories are real and how many are made up and whether I've ever seen snow in my life.

Last year in LA the rain was a special occasion and people put on Bean Boots at any sign of moisture, and in this sentence a sign of moisture includes an especially good lotion. Here in Portland, fall asleep during the rain and you won't miss anything - it's going to rain again tomorrow, they say. How great is that. I want to high-five everyone else walking around in wet underwear because WE ARE SO LUCKY GUYS.

I'm going to write this down and put it in a waterproof container and look at it in six months to remind me, when it's still raining, that it rained really hard in Portland today, and I loved it.

I've never seen free kombucha

Flu shots were free at work today, which is an exciting first sentence because apparently flu shots are very polarizing. Everyone I talked to told me flu shots make you sick. I've never turned down anything free so I was in. 

The best part was my flu shot didn't hurt at all, but as soon it was over the nurse told me she needed to re-do it. The worst part was what she said after that:

"Sorry - that was my first time!" 

I quickly shielded myself as she gently shook a cardboard box full of needles. 

"That was my first time I ever messed up, is what I meant to say. Ever."

I wasn't convinced but I let her give me a second flu shot. It hurt. 

At least now if I get sick I'll know it isn't because of western medicine, but because my office hired the local middles school librarian to inject us with a mixture of Kool Aid and ground-up tylenol. That stuff will make you sick. Flu shots are perfectly safe.

Ham cubed

Day 11 in corporate housing was also the first day I looked for plates, because it was the first day I needed one. I'll give you a minute to applaud my home-making skills.

The reason

The

Thanks guys.

The reason I hadn't needed any dishes in a week and a half was that you don't need dishes for skim milk or olives. But Day 11 things got all Towanalynne (cooking show host, if you haven't heard of her) and I was ready to slice an apple, and I was stoked to find out my apartment came with a ton of plates. It's also equipped with a buttload of knives (sometimes buttload is just immature and sometimes it's hilarious). None of the knives were any good and I'm an expert on the subject because I tried all eleven.



I realized a photo of eleven knives was a little dark so I spelled out "LOVE" in an attempt to make it less aggressive. A pretty successful attempt. And the photo's out of focus, but that only makes it artsy! I really cannot lose today.

Now is probably the time to try winged eyeliner.

Here are some more cooking tips while we're at it: when you get free dinner for working late at night, order a salad with ham cubes and a side of potatoes. Meal one: lettuce from the salad, meal two: the side of potatoes, meal three: the ham cubes from the salad! They stay good forever. You haven't lived until you've eaten a a cardboard carton of ham cubes for lunch. Sometimes life doesn't require plates I guess.

Hey this is Brooke leave a message

In the last seven days I’ve done two voice-overs for commercials. And no neither of them were paid or intended for a very large audience and yes I work in an industry that requires a lot of voice-overs, but. It seems pretty safe to call this a flourishing career as a voice actor. There are a lot of things that are funny about the fact that I’m incredibly famous now, and only one of that I hate my voice so much I always make my sister record my answering machine message. She would be an amazing voice actor.

I put the two w's next to the k in awkward.

Want to see the most unnatural someone can be on camera? I knew it! Our friend has a YouTube show and filmed an episode with us, then edited my hopelessly camera-shy ramblings into what sounds like near-English, at times. It's so short it will take longer to explain than to watch so just watch EXTREME CRAFT CHALLENGE:

What's in what's out

Collars are the new stripes. But you've probably already heard.

10 million things in Portland: sushi edition

I like Portland. Most people have never been. Visit Portland! Here are four of ten million reasons you should.


aka Sushi Land =
Dollar Sushi is so cheap it comes around on a little conveyor belt and you can be in and out in ten minutes. Disclaimer: I usually get pretty sick after eating here. But I still eat here all the time!! That really says more about me than it does Dollar Sushi.



aka forgot the name of the restaurant =
Expensive Sushi is really steep, but really good? Or so everyone said. Really fresh - so fresh it tastes like eating water, but water is free. I don’t know what really good things taste like, I don’t have the palate for it. In my opinion you’ll get more enjoyment out of just sucking on money. This places is pretty fancy and probably doesn’t accept wet bills, so bring dry money and bring lots of it.



aka Sushi Hana =
French Fry Sushi. Read that again or actually I’ll just write it again: French Fry Sushi. This is a restaurant where you can get sushi with french fries in it. There is a pretty strong possibility that they only made it for us because we were friends with the chef, but still try because, oh my goodness.



aka Sansai =
Normal Sushi make you throw up or broke, doesn’t contain french fries, does contain fish. It’s fine. Here’s the one bad thing about it: how sure are you that you’re pronouncing it right? You’re not that sure.

I didn't even get to tell you about the place where your sushi is served on a small wood boat you don't get to keep - or a new place I just heard about that is really expensive AND really good. Maybe they'll be included in the next 10 million things! Probably not though.

What can make me feel this way

The song my coworkers and friends and coworker friends have to hear me sing endlessly and loudly eyes closed tapping on other people's desks all week usually depends on what the grocery store plays on Monday. The grocery store was good to us this week.

Day 1 is the hardest

I don’t usually give away much personal information here but get ready for a confession: there have been maybe twelve days in the last year when I didn’t eat an entire medium-sized bag of almond M&Ms. Second confession: that was a lie. I’ve gone four days. I know exactly which four they were.

Sometimes people ask if not having a good sense of smell affects my sense of taste, and all I can really answer is I don’t know? But if it does, that might explain why I can stomach things like mayonnaise pizza and cream cheese sandwiches, and why I love Sriracha, and why I LOVE ALMOND M&MS. And why when I’m adding sugar to my drink at Starbucks I always pretend to slip and accidentally pour three times a normal amount in, and no one’s falling for it anymore.

My doctor says milk chocolate affects your running abilities, my mom says my bones are shrinking, and my dentist says candy is bad for your teeth whether you floss or not and they’re probably all wrong, but I think I should eat less sugar.

So in my lowest moment I called my sister Drew, who just went thirty days without sugar and ended her thirty days with a small root beer float she shared with my mom. Besides that pathetic re-entry to sugar, I’m impressed with her, and I wanted her advice.

“What day are you on?” she asked.

I guess I’m starting right now - I’m on day one.

“Ohhhhhhh...” she winced audibly. “Day one is the hardest.”




This is a waffle with butter, maple syrup, Nutella, whip cream, chocolate syrup, caramel syrup, mini marshmallows, sprinkles, and powdered sugar. It's gluten-free so you know it's healthy. Also Nutella is made with real hazelnuts.

10 million things in Portland: ice cream edition

I like Portland. Some people have never been. Visit Portland! Here are five of the ten million reasons you should.


L - R
Salt & Straw is FANCY and everyone LOVES IT so the lines are usually two hours long. Two hours is a pretty long time to wait for ice cream, but if you do it you can get cheese-flavored ice cream, or ice cream with flowers or gingerbread men or salt or some other crazy things. I’m only good at complaining about the lines at Salt and Straw when I’m far away. When you get close you can smell it and then it changes to “Youguysyouguysyouguys let’s go get in that line.” Sorry guys.



L - R 
I think Cool Moon is the BEST because it is the cheapest and there are no lines, and sometimes they have good flavors. Sometimes not, whatever. Cool Moon has curry-flavored ice cream. It’s not good, but it’s there. Sometimes I accidentally call it Blue Moon, which is a bar in Portland. Sometimes I accidentally call it Moon which is a rock orbiting our planet just kidding that would be way off and is not even funny or logical onto the next review.



L - R
Fifty Licks has some weird flavors, mostly bad-weird. It’s a matter of choosing the least-offensive thing on the menu, or the one without onions or quail eggs. Whichever of those is least offensive to you.



L - R
Ruby Jewel showed up on my radar so recently that I've only been once, but here goes. Like every other ice cream place on this list, the flavors at Ruby Jewel are small batch, so you never know what they're going to have. They advertise ice cream cookie sandwiches, which I assumed I couldn't eat, until I noticed the cookies are gluten-free. Of course the cookies are gluten-free. My friend Chelsea has a Ruby Jewel frequent PINTS card, but ten get one free, and has already earned two free ones.

I high-fived a stranger and they put a hex on me

Today in internet news: two of my really awesome friends have a podcast and they let me talk with them on it.

One important story I didn't get to was this: once when I was driving back from my first job, I was two hours from home in middle-of-nowhere Minnesota and got lost.

I pulled over to the side of this sketchy empty road to look for a map in my trunk, no luck. I tried to call my mom, but my pay-as-you-go phone hadn't been paid as I went and was out of minutes. I set the phone on top of my car (FORESHADOWING) and walked around the street a ways, looking for a mirage or spirit animal to guide me. Once I picked a direction I got back in the car, and drove away with my cell phone still on the roof and it flew off  into the forest never to be seen again until it appeared under one of our couch cushions six years later!!

That's the really good kind of story, where you're dragged through a lot of details and then the last dozen words so random and not logical and I just say "Look how big cell phones were in 2005!" and you sit there blinking and I say go listen to the podcast, it's a lot better. And I'm the last guest.

 

Left: new cell phone, Right: sneak-attack magic lost cell phone from 2005

What's a pirate's favorite beverage?

SECURITY BREACH yesterday I was trying to figure out what kind of spider had bit me and then before I had time to really think about what I was doing I was on WebMD debating whether to treat myself for scurvy or albinism.

WebMD asked me if I had visible parasites on my body, and if the pain was made worse when I touched it with a rose thorn, assuring me that there are people in the world with even worse judgement than I have. If you select "visible parasite" the app gives you the diagnosis: "You may have parasites." I love imagining someone reading that and then going "Parasites, you say!? You think these visible parasites might be caused by... parasites?! Well I don't want to go jumping to conclusions. I'll just keep rubbing this rose thorn on my skin."

Have you ever looked at about.com's user-submitted dermatology photo gallery? Don't. I'm not even going to link to it, for your own protection. But here are some pictures of me in a bikini.

Now I'm off to eat some oranges. That scurvy isn't going to take care of itself.

Why my first email address was brookestia@hotmail.com

Did you create an alter-ego goddess persona when you were 13? So did I.

A brief period of infatuation with Greek mythology and a desperate need to boost my self esteem got together and out of Zeus' head snuck Brookestia, Goddess of Fun.

In case you're not following, here is an excerpt from the beginning of an 8th-grade English paper:

"Brookestia is the coolest goddess on Mount Olympus but she doesn't brag, that's how cool she is." (Brookestia obviously had next to nothing in common with Brooke, who had to worry about people tying her shoelaces together during Wildlife Sciences and who didn't know how to open a pop can without getting blood in her Sprite.)

Legend had it that Brookestia unseated Norman, God of Boring (not the most popular god) and also totally swagged out his throne after she took it over. Her first miracle was the water slide.

In her notes my English teacher reccommentded I join the extra-curricular writing club or see the school counselor. I did both, because they sounded exciting. And exciting is fun, and fun is something Brookestia knows a lot about.

Yesterday the mail woman called me "hey little one"

More things I thought of while I was scanning: holding doors for people, the Olympics, socks.

The only thing I like getting compliments about

My sister's voicemail last night:

"So I was talking to Drew today, just teasing her and I was talking about teasing I said 'Well, what are sisters for?' and Drew said 'For being loving, and for being a peacemaker.' and I was like 'Woah, what sisters do you know?' And she said 'Brooke.'”

 

Also I saw a unicycling blue-haired man smoking a pipe.

Today I was walking down the street and put my arm out to see if it was raining and less than a second later was nearly run over by some sort of bike-taxi.

"You hailed me?"

Nice one, Portland.

It wasn't raining, in case the suspense was killing you.

So good you can almost eat it

This blog is mostly a recipe blog with a hundred random blog posts between each recipe. So here's what you've all been waiting for: last weekend I made a pizza where the crust was made of ground-up cauliflower instad of crust. Because I really love pizza, and I miss it a lot.

Cauliflower pizza sounds disgusting, and I was skeptical until I found rave reviews online:
"Doesn't taste nearly as bad as it sounds."
"Looks just like pizza."
"Tastes a LOT like pizza."

And my favorite:
"I could almost pick up pieces of it and eat them!"

A pizza you can almost eat?! Obviously I had to try it. Instead of linking to the recipe I'll just simplify it for you: probably don't make a pizza out of cauliflower. Sometimes things sound disgusting and taste great, but it's better to just play it safe and eat things that sound great and taste great.

But I loved it. It really did look exactly like a pizza, probably one of those 70-cent Party Pizzas you microwave instead of bake. And those taste a lot like pizza.

Pictures to break up the text! Here's me eating pizza with my sister:



I am 15 and she is 11.

Here are my other sisters, they're 13 but today they're 17:



My brother doesn't like photos but he does love pizza.

This is NOT the pizza I made but I wish it were because look at it:

Here's the time I made granola.

Ode to fitness classes with my little sister

I miss NO LIMITS! class at 5 am Saturday mornings I miss stripping class at 10 at night where we did kickboxing to "Gold Digger" and the teacher wore purple velour pants and hoop earrings and kept telling us to get sweatier I miss the Beginners Yoga class that was so hard we walked out and all the mirrors in the room made it look like we were walking out five times I miss Monday morning Step Aerobics with 10 middle-aged ladies and that one guy that doesn't even know why he's there I miss you.

Powered by tears

One of the hundreds of senior dogs I’m obsessed with got a haircut since the last time I looked at him and is still homeless and still alive and can one of you please adopt him it will be the best decision you ever made.

Maximum train

Remember when you got really into Twister one weekend and wrote L and R on your shoes so you’d be faster, and then you felt dumb because they were your favorite shoes? I’m glad I’m not the only one who did that.

Love interruption

On my twelve-block-walk home tonight I walked by two different couples who happened to be breaking up exactly when I passed them.

Some people might say this needs to happen three times before I can announce that I have a rare gift/curse that causes my very presence to make relationships disintegrate, but I’m feeling pretty confident so I’m going to go ahead and call it now.

As someone who can melt love by simply jaywalking across Davis let me tell you: breaking up in Portland is beautiful in the summer. If you decide to do it I recommend this line I heard:

“You feel like you don’t know me anymore, Katie? Well here’s something you can know: this is over.”

Things I love about getting older

Here's a tip: if you write something wrong try writing over it and if that doesn't work add dots around it.

 

Things I hate about getting older

Everywhere ever

Not sure why I’m making so many charts like this lately but I can tell you they’re extremely important and useful.

Important chart: the hair color of everyone I've ever lived with.

Don't even get me started on all the things this chart is useful for.

Three ways grocery stores should be organized

Shark Attack 6!

The summer movie no one has been waiting for, especially not Paige. If you can read any of the cards you have the vision of a water cheetah and if you can decipher or guess the plot you win a newborn water cheetah cub so fast on both land and sea no one can catch him, especially not Paige.

Smell you later

Girl push-ups

Doctors are the worst because they say things like "I don't like how your face looks" and you don't know whether you should tell them that you're probably going to grow into this nose or assume they mean you look kind of pale.

Doctor I saw for my sore throat: So does your chest hurt?

Me: Honestly, yes. But honestly, I don't think it has to do with my throat - I think it's because on Friday I did some push-ups.

Doctor: How many did you do?

Me: Eight. The "girl" kind. And then an hour later I did two more. Those last two may have been what did it. Or just all of them. Anyway, pretty sure it's because of the push-ups. My arms hurt too.

Doctor: Ok. I'm going to recommend you don't talk for a few days.

Surprise

I would like to open up a minute clinic where patients are treated in literally a minute. Quality would go downhill FAST. You would probably just roll a die or pick a random prescription out of a box. Or, I’d have one of those Halloween games where you reach your hand in and it says you’re touching eyeballs but it’s actually just peeled grapes, or amoxicillin, or used needles.

These pirates are criminals