This evening my mom and I took my grandma to a nearby greenhouse to get flowers. I brought my camera, because I have an unabashed flower obsession, but I ended up spending most of my time following my grandma around between the rows and rows of plants. 

With her white hair and her yellow jacket, she reminded me of a dandelion. 

h. 

I have thrown out my entire adolescence. It was mostly craft supplies. I am cleaning out my old bedroom, and also thinking about traveling and recipes and gardens. 

I came home to find that everyone in my family had, to varying degrees of personal commitment, given up grains and sugars. For my brother, this has been a several-year-long lifestyle choice. For my parents, it's a weight-loss thing. I've been going along with it because it turns out I will try just about anything if I can treat it as some sort of experiment. I don't actually miss sugar very much - after about two weeks without it, I visited my grandma and ate a few squares of Cadbury milk chocolate, and I was surprised by how sweet it tasted. Sugar is sweet.

A few days ago, though, I had half a piece of chocolate pie and it was actually pretty delicious, and also I felt kind of rebellious. Which means, it looks as though you can make me weirder than I already am, and that is by removing sugar from my diet and thereby effectively turning pie into my own personal equivalent of, like, drugs.

The one excellent part about this is that suddenly I can wake up in the mornings like it ain't no thang. It is so weird - when I go to work I get up at 6 am, and I am cheerful about it. I don't have to be at work until 9:30, and it only takes me half an hour to get there, but I like to give myself time in the mornings to, you know, ease into being alive. Normally, I would have a difficult time resisting the possibility of more sleep, but suddenly, I rise with the sun and I kind of love it. I make breakfast and coffee, and I read until it's time to go, at which point I am sufficiently accustomed to existing in the world and life is good. 

I do, however, really miss sandwiches. 

But, I think about recipes. I've been reading them for fun. (My love for food blogs has always been disproportionate to the amount I cook.) Neither of my parents are really into cooking - I mean, they do it, but for them it's always been a very utilitarian thing. But cooking makes me happy. (Well, baking makes me happy, really.) The thing is, nothing I am good at making can actually be eaten by anyone in my family anymore, so I have been looking for new recipes. Mostly, I have been looking for Things that Resemble Grains but Aren't. My most recent obsession is baking crackers made with almond flour. They are delicious, and I've made a batch almost every day for the past week. 

I know that library school doesn't miss me, and I don't miss it, either. The thought of never going back has crossed my mind more than once. I know I couldn't leave it unfinished, but in my least brave moments I don't want to return. I wish I were kidding. The realization snuck up like a bad storm, but once I said the words out loud I knew I meant them. I hope it's just post-first-year shock, and I hope I feel differently by August, but right now it's all stomach churning dread. I feel entirely lost, and I hate myself for it. So I read recipes, and I think about going to Paris, and I throw out everything in my bedroom and hope that in four months I am less messy.  

Tomorrow my mom and I will buy plants for the garden. My mom has been talking about planting lilac bushes, and I am thrilled about this. They are my favourite. Also, poppies. But I would like to know what the thing is with petunias. I feel like every single person in this town plants petunias, and they're perfectly nice flowers but they are not the only flowers in the world so why? Is it a small town thing? A senior citizen thing? Does everybody do this, and is there some secret about the seemingly universal appeal of petunias that I am unaware of? 

Really, I would like to know. 

h.