sako

Being at home has this remarkably soporific effect, which is due as much to Seattle's notion of what constitutes appropriate winter weather as it does the much lazier pace of my mother's house.

It's raining. This cannot possibly be a shock to anyone. Oh well.

Thus far it's my sister who's been the hilarious one in this latest trip home. She has always been prone to coming out with the most random thoughts at the most unexpected moments (a trait, I might add, that I do not at all share, being at all times logical and eminently rational with my utterances) but the long periods of isolation that she's spent in Yosemite and now in Las Vegas -- it's impossible to get actual darkness there, she tells me; Seattle at 4 pm is about as bright as the darkest time in Vegas -- has somehow tipped her off the deep end. She acts perfectly reasonable, but then the most amazing things come out of her mouth and render the rest of us inarticulate for a few minutes while she flaps her arms at us and yells. I would transcribe some of it for you, but I've gone and forgotten the gist of all of it, barring the lingering memory that it was hilarious.

"Mom and me went to the Japanese market and bought you guys snacks," she told us brightly on the drive from the airport. "Because we know you like snacks."

"Aw. Thanks."

"And then we ate them."

She seems to be operating under the delusion that it's the thought that counts, even if the thought doesn't actually translate into action. The thought of giving someone something is all very well and good, unless you actually don't bother to get the thing, say. She lives a different lifestyle, as her stories of dumpster parties in Yosemite make glaringly obvious.

"This is actually for John," she said, opening a packet of crackers to pour them out onto the table. (John being her boyfriend, currently in Las Vegas.) "Except, oops, we're eating them, so he won't get them."

"Poor John," my husband ventured.

"That's okay," she said comfortably. "I'll tell him that we ate them so he'll know that he almost got the crackers and didn't."