With fava beans and a nice Chianti

I went to Portland this weekend, to visit all the various members of the fam that live there. That includes my maternal grandmother, who turned 90 two weeks ago. She's still really healthy, but being 90, living for another year isn't guaranteed. So I thought at least a lunch would be nice, so I could see her for the last time in a looooong time, maybe forever. She's still a hilarious old lady (the only worthwhile kind). She requested Jack in the Box for lunch and told me, totally deadpan, that the reason her kids (my mom included) turned out so well is that she "beat them every Saturday night." Love that woman.

My sister Sophie, who is 11, is in a stage version of "Night of the Living Dead" that plays at 10:30 pm. Possibly one of the funniest things I have ever seen, and remember, I've been to a Christina Aguilera concert. Zombies in totally over-the-top latex wounds roam the audience, sitting on unsuspecting laps and crawling under the rows and generally drowning out the on-stage actors with screams and laughter. At the end, after the curtain call, all the zombies did the entire "Thriller" dance, and I nearly peed my pants. Luckily, Sophie didn't have to worry about being upstaged, because she got to lay on the stairs the whole time, acting sick, until the very end when she spontaneously eats her father's liver and stabs her mother in the neck with a butcher knife. She also tackles the male hero from behind and gives him a hicky. I think she had the best part in the whole thing. Except she looked just like the freaky little girl from The Ring, with dark hair everywhere and dark circles under her eyes, and that gave me some serious creeps.

Other than that, I didn't do a whole lot. My sisters (yes, there are TWO 11-year-olds) had a slumber party last night that reminded me why I've always said I'm not having children. I'd totally forgotten how all those adorable orphaned Chinese babies grow up into pre-adolescents.

Flew home today, and I'm fighting a totally unpleasant nausea caused by severe anxiety. I'm so nervous, people, you all have no freaking idea. They'll be lucky if I don't get off the plane and faint right there in the Bangkok airport. I'm excited, and interested, and more than a little proud of myself, but mostly I'm SCARED AS ALL HELL.

P.S. I totally forgot to talk about last Thursday night, officially known as Laura's Last Night Getting Drunk In Santa Cruz Probably, And You Better Be Sad Motherfucker. I got drunk. Lost my car keys, a lipgloss, and ALMOST lost my credit card TWICE. Good times. I saw this dude Pete that I dated for like, fifteen minutes, like, a year and a half ago. We didn't part on the greatest terms because even though we were JUST FRIENDS by this point, he got a new little girly who didn't like him having friends who just happened to be girls he'd dated. Anyway, Kelly and I went over to him and tried to be friendly and he was FRIGID. Didn't look at me for even a split second, and answered Kelly's questions in monosyllables (even when I was the one who asked them). This was especially immature of him, because he'd been friends with Kelly even before I dated him, and though she's my best friend, she had nothing to do with the whole no-longer-friends New Year's Eve debacle. (Too long and too stupid of a story to relate here.) But we got over it quickly, with the help of some free tequila shots and some $2 Jager shots. And no, I didn't do ANYTHING BAD, and Emilie, aren't you proud of me?