Miss y'all

I went to Tuscaloosa this week! I had lots of good times with people I adore. One very Southern thing we did (which I'd never done in the whole four years I lived there) was deep-fry food. You could call it deep-fried dinner. The menu:

Fried pickles

Fried zucchini

Fried chicken

Fried burritos

Fried Snickers (!)

It was all quite delicious and did not make me completely ill as I expected it to. A couple days later I was in Big Lots and saw a T-Fal deep fryer for $40. I let it pass me by for some reason.

I also saw Xia, who gave me a pipe cleaner bracelet and said all kinds of charming things, such as:

on riding a camel at the zoo:
"It was a bumpy ride!"

on our 134 CHOM visits:
"I don't remember. That must have been when I was younger."

on her new shorts:
"I don't want a shirt."

on throwing something away:
"That's the trash can."

X: Hey, Rachel. I can do all kinds of tricks on the playground at my school.
me: Really? Like what?
X: I don't know!

So we worked on headstands and somersaults and she will wow them next year.