In Which the Welsh Cat's Wheat Alarms Our Heroine

21 November 2004

So...right. Lots of stuff, then.

Friday was the day I didn't expect at all. Took Sheri to the Urgent Care unexpectedly. She got the Good Drugs, so I'm waiting for a report on that. Ginger got a flat tire and didn't get here to spend girl time and make pepparkakor in the afternoon as planned, but she and Jim did make it for dinner and a nice evening visit, so all was well there, and pepparkakor dough keeps in the fridge. (Pepparkakor. Today. Really.)

C.J. and his sprained ankle got back from Eau Claire yesterday. He hops around on one foot at an alarming rate, especially on the stairs: thudthudthudthudthud. The ankle in question is still pretty swollen and painful. Sprains heal at such a variable rate that it's hard to say how long it'll be like this.

Went to a party last night and saw very many people. Even talked to some of them before having to go home again. I like cats, I really do. I just wish my immune system felt the same way. (The cat is not trying to kill you, sinuses! It isn't even attacking your sock! Stop trying to defend yourself against an assailant who isn't assailing!)

I've been reading contract work stuff. Mostly tolerable under the circumstances. One bit really amused me: Geoffrey Ashe quotes from an old Welsh law book, "Here is one [law] that lays down the fine to be paid for killing or stealing the cat who guards a royal barn: 'Its head is to be held downwards on a clean, level floor, and its tail is to be held upwards; and after that, wheat must be poured over it until the tip of its tail is hidden, and that is its value.'" Now, you tell me: if someone offered you a heap of wheat with a dead cat in the middle of it, how satisfied would you be with that restitution? "Mmmm, dead cat bread; thanks, thief and/or cat-slayer!"

Perhaps this is why I didn't pursue a career in the law. In case you were sitting around wondering.

Mark has agreed to in some way obtain pizza for dinner, whether by the labor of his own hands or by the labor of some other guy's hands. I don't really so much care, because there will be pizza, and I will not be the person obtaining it. I will be doing other things instead. Things that are on the list, as making a pizza is not.

My family will get here for Thanksgiving on Wednesday, and I'm trying to figure out how to time things like grocery shopping for their visit. We need food, and going on Wednesday is probably insanity. I'm not convinced Tuesday will be much better, but tomorrow seems awfully soon for things to be fresh, so Tuesday it will be. With a book in my purse in case it turns out to be necessary. Thrilling, I realize, but there will be rosemary buns and all sorts of other lovely things as a result, so the intermediate thrills aren't quite so required.

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