Sea cucumbers

I’ll bring this blog back for summer 2009, which I’m probably going to spend on my ass in the suburban part of the armpit of America. But here’s something that happened today that I’ll probably remember over the disheartening job applications, the frantic emailing, and the fighting with my parents over my summer and life plans. My appetite had come back after Nicaragua and I was eating basically nonstop starting 10pm, and I head downstairs around 12am to look for something gummy and containing high fructose corn syrup. At the bottom of my refrigerator (I’m in serious raid mode) there’s a gold box tilted upside down that looks promising. I turn it over and I’m mildly startled to see that the box is filled not with chocolate, but with black, spiny, ugly sea cucumbers.

And then I remembered that only last night something in the kitchen was stinking the whole house, and I was appalled and very vocal about it when I saw that these slug-like creatures were just chilling in a pot on the stove, soaking for eventual cooking. My dad was trying to act dismissive about it, but my mom had laughed and said in Chinese that they were my father’s darling sea cucumbers. Now they were lined to perfection, each row lying neatly over the next, the ugliest little things I ever saw inhabit a box of chocolates.