Once Upon a Time and Some Nasty Watercress

This is my apology for being gone so long. I have brought you a hedgehog.

So I realize its been a few days since I've blogged. Er, a few weeks actually. But thats not important! The important part is realizing that i'm back now and that putting down the pitchforks and disbanding the angry rioters is the wisest course of action. Please?

Good then. So now that you've settled down I feel I owe you something big to make up for my blog silence. And, just to let you know, I have been quite busy these past few weeks. Here are some of the things that I have been doing instead of writing:

- Went to McDonalds for some late-night taters with a group of friends dressed in full, swashbuckling pirate regalia.

- Ate a bell pepper for the first time in about 7 years.

- Spent a Chemestry class taking a equation word problem about a balloon and made it into a tragic drama full of sweeping human emotion evolving a little boy and his blue balloon that ultimately ended in its popping. (The balloon, not the boy.) Thank goodness my teacher has a good sense of humor.

- Ran about 54 or so miles. Not all at once of course.

- Opened blank blog posts, lost interest, and closed them again.

- Went to choose my 17th birthday cake, as usual couldn't decide which one to get, and thus got two birthday cakes. Sometimes it really pays to sit on the fence. And to be the Birthday Commander.

Since i'm getting back to this whole writing groove and I owe you for all those miserable hours of having no new Hannah Hoo to read, I shall tell you a brief impromptu story. Right here. No forethought. Here goes.

Once Upon a Time...

There lived a little girl who loved to explore and hated the taste of watercress. Naturally when her parents loaded their herd of wild children into the dusty pick-up truck for their weekly Sunday Brunch at Grandma's house, Quincy dreaded the inevitable egg salad sandwhich that would be served. Sure enough, the moment the children peeled themselves off the cracked vinyl an army's worth of crunchy egg salad on soggy bread was shoved towards them.

Shuddering, Quincy mulled over a chunk of bread and discreetly deposited the egg salad sandwhich into the closest hiding place; her sister Alice's decorative umbrella folded under the table. Amidst the layers of voices and fluttering of children it was a simple matter for Quincy to escape. She felt like a spy creeping down the moany hardwood halls on the toes of her mary janes. Holding her breath easily in the too-small floral church dress, Quincy slithered around decorative doilies and up stairs until no one could hear her running through the halls and undiscovered rooms.

Sure to check for trapdoors under throw rugs and rooms behind bookcases, Quincy ascended from one level of the house to the next. Mostly all she found was boringly legal and ordinary; a splintery pencil, a wayward roller. But she finally found a taste of adventure in the attic.

Obviously the attic hadn't been visited by humans for several years. Quincy felt like a snowman in a snowglobe of dust. Every move she made resurrected a ghostly wave of white particles that puffed her chocolate hair white and paused on her eyelashes. Like most little girls, however, Quincy cared not. All she wanted was to find an adventure. And that she did.

In the attic, behind the file boxes, under the spare curtains, inside an antique dress form, Quincy discovered a clam shell. When she plucked it from the starchy cotton of the dress form's innards it overflowed in her small hands. There was something about it that made Quincy sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that she had found something special. Maybe the way the marbled surface of the shell had the faintest glimmer at the edges, like the essence on a butterfly's wings. Or how it smelled not of mothballs or baby powder like everything else but like raw, crumbly sea salt.

Quincy set the shell on a trunk and tucked her skirts under her knees. Her stomach shivered in anticipation and she ceremoniously gripped the edges of the shell and opened it. The room was filled with silence and even the dust held it's collective breath.

The shell slid open like praying hands unfolding.

Quincy gasped and stared into the sky.

Not the sky outside the attic window, but inside, framed within the shell. Not a painting either but a real piece of sky, sun rise on one end of the expanse and stars on the other. It seemed as if someone had trapped the entire sky in one sea shell, every last bit spread out and alive. A kite moved, airplanes drew their trails, stars went  about their destined courses and occasionally fell. Quincy was in complete awe. She sat their turning the shell this way and that and finding new details at first hidden. The only thing that could draw her from her trance was a muffled scream from the front yard and Alice's voice, apparently after opening her umbrella surprise, screaming, "QUINCY JANE! GET YOUR SORRY PANTALOONS HERE THIS VERY INSTANT!"

Quincy reluctantly shut the shell and tucked it back into the dress form. Maybe Sunday Brunch wouldn't be so bad next week after all. Even with the watercress.

Right-o...so that wasn't much of a real story but it was all I could think of at the moment. And its getting super late and I feel ill. So farewell, sorry for the wait, and read you next time! Oh, and sorry it took so long to get the pictures. I DO have a life. Sometimes.

Goldfish Balloons,

-Hannah Hoo