The Adventures of Long Legs and Butterfly

As salaam alaikum,

Whoo! So...it's been a long week! I can't believe tomorrow is Friday so the week isn't over yet!

I've very much enjoyed the food I made this week. I'll have soup for probably another few days, so tomorrow I'll have to think about a non-soup entree to prepare. I'll probably do the barbecue chicken again, since I have a lot of barbecue sauce left over and all I need is to buy chicken. I'll make less chicken this time, though, so I don't get tired of it.

And the entree I think will be vegetarian this time. I think I'll be easy on myself and make fried rice or something. I have vegetables, so it's all set.

Also, alhamdulillah, the housing search is going along nicely. There's this second year student who lives in Brookline whose place I'll check out. As much as I'm not keen on moving back to the nowheresville that is the Longwood area, at least I'll be close to Trader Joes and Stop and Shop so I don't have to get my non-food necessities at CVS anymore. Although...Rubbermaid has come a long way since the old days of their plastic ware not being microwave safe, I tell you what...

Although, I am still cautious about heating plastic with my food...not only my distaste for melting (a specific phobia that is not as serious as it had been, but still existent...time was, I wouldn't be able to mention it here, even), but also because of the famed BPA. What's the use of eating organic if microwaving may kill nutrients in food and then the plastic you heat it in leaches chemicals?

Whatever. God looks out for us. A little chemical here, a little there...we return to Him in the end, as long as we intend the best for the bodies He gave us, at least I figure.




I may try my hand at a children's book at some point...or a pseudo-children's book. I got the idea earlier this week. For various reasons that will be kept confidential (but not so much in this partial disclosure), I had been freaking out this week. At the height of the freaking out, I sent B a kind of desperate email. I was afraid of how he was going to take it.

And, masha'Allah, he is so cool! I mean, not like in the popular way, but in the calm, collected way. I've cried in front of him at least twice, once because he said something really touching, and the other time...ehh, hormone soup. Hehe, serves four. Anyway, even with the freaking out email giving him permission to leave if he couldn't handle stuff (yes, it was like that), he took everything in stride, just like the day I cried to him about how much I loved my roommates and I wanted to give them a hug (yeah, that was definitely me being an estrogen bag, right there).

So he took it all in stride. It was no big deal, he had no reservations. It was business as usual. So after I found out that we were still okay, that he wouldn't be breaking up with me (soups on!), I was happy and wrote as my facebook status, "And so continue the adventures of long legs and butterfly."

And then I thought, hmm...that sounds like the name of a children's book.

Then I had a dream about my mother singing to me "The Itsy Bitsy Spider," that she used to do it when I was little and draw a little spider-in-motion by drawing a triangle superimposed over a star (so that the spider had eight legs). It was really cute, and in the dream, I said that I loved the Itsy Bitsy Spider.

I did like that song, but I liked Anansi the Spider more. Anansi was gangster. He was so witty and clever and I loved him.

So I imagined that the children's story would be about a Daddy Long Legs and a Butterfly. Long Legs is B because, hah, he has really long legs (and a short torso...when we sit next to each other, he's only a little taller than me, which is really funny to me, because he towers over me when we stand together). I'm Butterfly because that's what he always called me, even before we were official. Sometimes Mariposa, but butterfly.

And Long Legs and Butterfly would have adventures!

The illustrations would not be anthropomorphic, but the characters would be. Butterfly would be a free but sometimes frantic spirit who was giggly, good-natured but sometimes nervous to try new things. Long Legs would be the calm, collected voice of reason that helped guide Butterfly through the adventures. They would be best friends.

I just thought it would be really cute to write the story based on events in me and B's life...our own adventures. Base them on major things that happen in our lives and adapt them into children's stories about a spider, a butterfly and their other insect friends.

It would be something I would make for my children so, in a kind of sneaky, subliminal way, they'd get to know their parents.

...alternatively, I was thinking of making it a book of short stories, poetic prose if you will, about B and I, except it wouldn't be a children's book. Still, I would be Butterfly, and he would be Long Legs.

Hehe, my Long Legs. :) By proxy, hehe, if you will...