Ladie and Gentlemen, the corn extruder

As expected, the country folk are really generous, especially with food. On memorable offering was a little burlap bag full of something very similar to Cheetos ® but larger and without any cheese. They were really good and readily available, although I wasn't sure how they were produced or why they were in a big bag. This was at the first rural house I saw. At the next farm home I visited, I got to see something similar. There was the loud noise of machinery nearby my student's pig farm. So we went down the road past all of the chickens and dogs running loose, turned right and saw a crowd of people gathered around the apparent source of the noise. It was a typical three wheel truck and in the center of the flatbed was a little grinding device. An old man was scooping or pouring corn into the funnel part of the machine and a stream of the foamy corn stuff was promptly coming out of the extruder part of the machine. I immediately thought it was brilliant. This particular machine produced really long hollow tubes of corn or rice that were slightly chewier than the first ones I tried. I think there are probably a variety of these machines that produce different versions of the same thing, essentially a tasty corn packing material thing. I decided to dub it the corn extruder. This one that I saw made really long oversized straws that everyone seemed to have bags of and they kept giving me really long ones to eat. But it was good.

The most unappreciated vacation ever

I thought up until this point that I would at least have two more classes with some of my students before they get paid to return to their hometowns to recruit more students for next year. But yesterday in class when I said I would see them next week, some said, "actually, teacher, we have no class next week."


so for the first time in my life I thought, "No! We can't have a week off! I need to see them one more time, please!" Isn't that the craziest thing you've ever heard? The dean confirmed that I don't teach next week. So how crazy is that? Have you ever spurned a vacation? Even in the days when I was paid by the hour and I needed hours, I still thought it worth it to have a week off once in a while, I only regretted not making money. But this time money didn't enter my consideration until hours later. I would work extra next week just to see all my students together again, even though I'm way behind on work and running out of time to do a lot of things and recently I even thought I wanted a vacation. Crazy, eh?

ok ok ok, dealing with reality

(I promise it's not me)
Suspend all reactions until after you read the captions. I really like this picture but it requires a mess load of explanation.
I have a good twin. (get it, hahaha, not really)
And she has been married to this man of average height for almost two years. And the day I return from China (July 1) is the day their daughter is expected to be born.
I found out about the kid in January.
So anyway, my sense of humor and my ability to write articulately or even coherently are all considerably off kilter to the the discovery that our mother has just found out about her first granddaughter. To understand the situation fully requires understanding what kind of family this is. To put is simply and nicely, our mother is really not well, (there are mental and emotional issues involved) . We've been on our own since we were seventeen or eighteen. So for me, it's really hard to even work towards any remotely healthy relationships with my biological parents, or even to connect them in any way to my life. Thus, I didn't want my mom to find out she was a gramma. I didn't think she deserved to know or to have that sense of pride, power or accomplishment. I feel a serious resentment about everything she's going to think or say about it. What I honestly (and evilly enough) feel is that a woman like my mom isn't fit to have grandchildren. The awareness of that thought has helped me realize a lot of things. This all happened in the past two hours, so it's like being a hit by a car and still feeling dizzy. By tomorrow I will feel more steady.