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.