Week from Where?

27 September 2001

I have discovered what the problem with yesterday was. It was the birthday of a writer whose name is known, in this household, as "the F-word." We don't ban it, of course; we don't ban any words in this house, although some of their applications are quite frowned upon. But we will be mildly shocked if one of our guests uses it casually in conversation. (Ahem. Michelle.)

I can just picture the Half-Grown Em coming home from school (the Em is the daughter I'm going to have someday, in case you didn't know that), saying, "We've been assigned The Sound and the Fury. The teacher says F--" "Don't use that language around me, young lady!" "But I was only quoting my teacher! And it says it on the front of the book!"

Maybe we'll home-school her.

Anyway. Yesterday, just to add to my joy in this week, I went to the pharmacy to pick up the Pill. They had sent them back. "You what?" I asked. "We sent it back this morning. We can special-order it back again within five days." Well, we leave for Minneapolis six days from now. So I said, "Are you sure? Because if not, we'll have to call my doctor and see if she can prescribe something equivalent." "No, no, we're sure." Well, it turns out I got a phone call last night and can go pick them up tomorrow. But I didn't know that at the time, and as I was driving home, upset and annoyed, a taxi swerved across three lanes without so much as a turn signal, almost making me hit both it and a motorcyclist. I'm very nervous around bikers on the road. They make me feel like a sport utility vehicle. If I hit another car going a reasonable side-street speed, we may be injured, but we will be alive. But if I hit a biker, God only knows what will happen. So I feel particularly cautious around them, and nearly having one plow into the passenger's side of the hood of my car does not make me a happier camper at all.

Mark is sick. It will be a miracle if I don't get sick, too. I haven't been eating particularly well -- I've been trying, don't get me wrong, but nothing has been going down particularly easily. So I've been drinking juice and milk to keep me caloried enough, and have been trying to figure out what will sound good. Anyway, I'm like the canary in the mines, as many of you have figured out: if there's a communicable disease floating around, I'll catch it. It didn't used to be like this. I spent one month of my eighth grade year sick, but before that, pretty much nothing.

Ah well. Mark is staying home from work. I'm heading up to have lunch with David this afternoon. (Mark is not sick enough that he needs my care constantly, or that there's much of anything I can do for him.) Timprov was pretty down last night, but a walk and some crappy food made him feel good enough to hang out and watch "Enterprise" with Mark and me. (It was not as much of a disappointment as it could have been, and I liked Porthos very much.)

So. Have a good Yom Kippur, folks. Got stuff to atone for? Now's your chance. It's a good holiday: there's something you're supposed to be doing. I think that's one problem with a lot of the secular holidays: except for Thanksgiving, they don't have so much prescribed theme for what they're supposed to be about.

Of course, lots of people treat religious holidays that way, too.

Anyway. Last night I was reading a book of Norse myths, looking for details for the skalds in the Not The Moose Book and for two short stories I'm doing. And I kept coming upon delightful bits like, "[Loki] had a colt in tow. This horse was rather unusual in that he had eight legs. He was a grey and Loki called him Sleipnir." I read that aloud. "That's so Scandinavian," said Timprov. "Most of us would go so far as to say 'unique.' Not the Scandinavians. 'Rather unusual.'"

Well, it could be worse.

I also got a kick out of the idea that Tyr, the war-god who also handles the law, has in his near ancestry a screaming nine-hundred-headed monster. Sounds pretty apropos, as a metaphor.

And one of my favorite lines in the Lokasenna, where Loki is taunting the rest of the gods, is where he says, "'Enough, Freyja! You're a foul witch with a string of evil works to your name. The bright gods caught you in bed with your own brother and then, Freyja, you farted.'" Um. Perhaps it's just me. But the juxtaposition of "You break the incest taboo!" and "You have gas!" just seemed rather odd. It seems like the one is enough. It would be like saying, "You molest children, and you don't clean your toenails often enough!" Well, okay, but....

The Norse myths are so weird. Reason #12 why I'm going to have a good book here.

Oh, and speaking of which, I got the remaining bit written at the beginning, so now I basically need to type things up before I can send Reprogramming out, or at least the first section thereof. I can do that in the next week. No problem.

Right now, I'm just trying to let things be, take them as they come. Some people manage to live like that. I'm not so good at it. But with a lot of things, other people need to make their own decisions, and the world just needs to keep working. It won't help if I fuss about how to Fix Things when I can't. So. For a day or two, at least, I'm hoping to keep a measure of serenity. As my dad is fond of quoting, think it'll woik?

Yeah, you know the next line.

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