Nothing like a Holiday family argument

This Thanksgiving, I spent it with my parents and my youngest brother was in and out during the afternoon. To make a longish and personal story short, a situation happened where my brother got into an argument with my mother and when I told him to shut up, he got riled up enough to begin coming at me, but our father stepped in front of him to stop this. My youngest brother is nine years younger than me, and I tend to be more at arm’s length with him simply because of my disagreement with situations happening. Now, I have done a lot to also help him throughout the years: filled out job applications, taken online quizzes for job applications, and this is the first time he has done this physical action, and it has changed how I see him. Will we ever truly mend the situation? I am not sure. While I still love him as a sibling, I am also very wary of him and this will always remain in my mind.

The unshared medical situation

Just a few weeks ago, my doctor sprung on me that a medical situation which I had speculated was happening, was actually true. So far, I have only shared this information with two people: one of my best friends and my middle brother. The reason I can restraining from sharing it with my parents is due to my mother’s already dealing with her own medical issues and now my youngest brother has the same situation I have which I fear would tip the cup into an emotional deluge which might break her, so I hold the burden. It is my health and currently I am maintaining it with good medical care so why add more onto my parents? I don’t believe that’s selfish of me because there really isn’t anything they can do at this time so I will carry it and continue to care for it with a select amount of folks knowing.

The ugliest rolls I’ve made

After watching several YouTube videos and researching recipe blogs, I battened down the hatches, purchased all the ingredients for some fresh spring rolls and got to making a few. There were some mishaps with the rice paper wrappers becoming too sticky to work with or simply breaking before they made it into the water. It was my first time dealing with them, so I learned pretty quickly that I needed to learn more. Oh well.

It was time to learn from my errors. I had a total of five spring rolls with a bunch of the thin vermicelli noodles (I made more than I needed), freshly cut lettuce, cooked shrimp, a few leaves of mint and lots of prayers. I totally forgot to put more veggies in but now I know for the next batch with what I learned from these. Of the five, two were sheer hideous lumps because I did not roll them up well enough and one had the bottom end of a shrimp just waving into the open air. Though the first two were ugly, they (and the other three) were danged good, taste wise. Well, the other three were not individually wrapped so the rice paper wrapping got a bit tough, but I ate them regardless, a day later.

I will say those that the peanut dipping sauce I created was absolutely banging, which was courtesy of two online videos I followed. I still have half of the bin of wrappers waiting for me to toss together the ingredients once more. I am giving it a little bit of time before I venture down that road but now I kind of know what to expect… though that does not spell success in any shape or form.