Dark Night

Christmas is coming

Monday John and I chatted about our holiday at lunch. "My grandparents came up, and Grandma fixed her famous barbeque," he said, patting his stomach. "I'd have brought some for lunch so you could try it, but we ate it all. It never lasts long." He laughed, and when I asked for recommendations, named a couple of Korean and Chinese restaurants that served authentic dishes. "In my experience, they're authentic. I can't speak for some cuisines, like Szechuan, because I don't like really spicy food."

"Me either," I said, and when he asked, told him about how I'd helped Grandpa make our Thanksgiving dinner.

"I love seven minute icing," he said covetously. "It's like a big soft marshmallow, only better. And if it's dry enough that it gets that delicate crust? That's the best." I laughed. It was usually too humid for that to happen around here. 

In French, our teacher reminded us that we'd be getting our registration for next semester the first week of December, and came over to where I was doing my self-study. "Delia, we don't really have a class for your level of knowledge, but if you'd like to continue with French, I'll see what I can do to make your learning more personalized and less solitary." I thanked her and remembered to text Mom when I got to my locker, asking her to look into changing my math class. Although trig was over this semester and we were moving on to pre-calc, I didn't want to suffer through my teacher for a whole other semester. I volunteered to switch any other class but earth science. When I checked my phone after school--we weren't allowed to have them in any of our classes--she'd left me a voicemail saying that she had made the request with one of the ladies who did the scheduling and that she'd let me know when she found out anything. I was in a cheerful mood when I popped in at home to drop off my books--I'd gotten my homework done in class--pack my dinner, and treated myself to some time at the skate park before work. One of the pages had quit, and I'd snapped up one of his shifts. I could have taken two, but I didn't want to be greedy.

Ms de Carvalho was teaching me more about book repair, getting into book binding a little. If a book was in otherwise good condition but losing pages, she showed me how to cut the pages--called a block when referring to all of them--out of the book, align the pages, and put the block into a jig which was a wooden board, two bolts on one side, and an L shaped metal thing that screwed down over the bolts and had holes at regular intervals on the side that rested against the pages. The she picked up a drill and drilled through about half the holes before handing it to me. It felt wonderfully transgressive somehow, and I finished putting the holes through the book. Then she carefully released the block and used a thick needle with linen thread to go through the holes  and across the back to stitch it all together. Then some glue, and she used a special tape on the spine of the book, working it under the endpapers, and set it aside for the glue to cure. That was kind of the highlight, and I went back to shelving shortly after. Returning an empty cart, I tripped and fell, hurting my wrist. On the way home, I stopped at the Walgreens and picked up some tape for my wrist--it was a little swollen--and a pink reusable ice pack. Starry would probably throw a fit for some reason if I used his.

"Are you sure you didn't hurt yourself at the skate park?" Mom asked when I got home and saw what I'd bought.

"If I'd been skateboarding, I would have been wearing my wrist guards," I said in exasperation. "But if you don't believe me, you can check with the library. They had me sit down with one of those instant ice packs and a librarian, who helped me fill out an incident report." They'd also offered to take me to an urgent care to have my wrist looked at, but it wasn't that bad. "Then they had me show them where I'd tripped. The carpet edge had come up a little. They put an orange cone on it and Facilities is going to come out tomorrow." The level of detail in my recitation calmed her down. "I don't know why you're so against me having a skateboard. I never ride without my equipment, and it's not like I do any dangerous tricks."