Shui Xian (Narcissus)

Currently I am drying myself off with a towel because I am soaking wet. And fully clothed. I'll start from the beginning.

Today I went to Chinatown with my grandparents. It's Chinese New Year Weekend, but the festivites are already over. I bought a little gazebo-looking thing and a fisherman for my fish tank. We had dim sum in a restaurant callede Mei Sum, where my grandparents tried to force me to eat duck feet, singing that "you don't know what you're missing" song. Just as we were leaving, my grandma spotted some weird, shriveled brown things in a box outside a store. Once I read the sign, I realized they were narcissus roots. I didn't recognize them because they are usually shiny and white. These were a little ratty-looking, with the appearence of things that should have been bought a long time ago. Most people but these about a month before Chinese New Year so that they will have bloomed right on the holiday. These were the only ones we had seen in Chinatown today. On an impulse, I said "Let's grow them," so we bought three bulbs for a dollar each. Once we got home, my grandparents stayed for a few minutes to show me how to take off the outside layers. Once we hade cut off some of the shriveled stuff, they looked more like how they probably looked a month ago. I set them in a plastice container with some rocks from my yard with strict instructions to put them in full sunlight. They look like of pathetic at the moment, but I'm pretty proud of them.



Sometimes I get this overwhelming urge to rescue things. Like I want to buy the most sickly and pathetic-looking fish at the store so that I can take care of it and watch it get better. That's kind of how it was today. These roots were kind of gross-looking and they've been sitting outside in a box for more than a month, and that only made me want them more.

Anyway, back to the reason my jeans are soaked and I'm sneezing a lot.

After leaving my roots outside in their plastic container for a few hours, I decided to change the water. This is the kind of compulsion that comes with the rescuing thing. Like I'll feed that sad fish a lot more than normal and watch it carefully as it hovers uncertainly behind the plants for hours. So I turned on the hose to change the water outside, and I accidentaly dopped the hose on the ground. It have a nozzle on it, and of course it landed handle-down. A strong spray of water shot straight up and directly into my face because I was standing right over it. I screamed and started laughing, and ran away from it. Immediately I realized how dumb this was, because I'd eventually have to go back over to it to turn it off and get even more soaked. So I was standing there in front of my house, laughing at myself. A cat stretched out on the roof across the street, also laughing at me, I'm sure.

I went inside and thundered up the stairs, gasping out the story to my mom. She's used to me doing moronic things like this to myself and only handed me a towel and warned me not to drip on the floor.