Words, cats, the usual

I crammed in two hundred words later Tuesday afternoon, and then cleaned up the kitchen. I hadn't expected there to be much to do, since nobody is really cooking, but there was a stealthy accumulation of spills and objects from the preparation of many snacklike meals, not to mention the usual fallout from the fact that nobody but me can tell for sure what state the dishwasher is in, and even if they could the system for putting upstairs dishes somewhere until they can be taken upstairs has broken down.

I only cussed out the kitchen once, however. I was greatly looking forward to cooking with Eric.

He arrived very promptly, and suffered me to take him around the yard and show him the tiny ferny shoots of common yarrow, the three-inch-tall, mutating from red to green leaves of the biggest clump of Appeldoorn tulips, the minute triangular tops of new iris leaves, the miniature pine-tree sprouts of winter aconite, the sparse blades of grass in the brown and gray lawn. He admired the rose hips on the white rose of York, and eventually decided to make an early attack on a sapling in the foundation of the house that he beat back last year.

Lydy was home, but didn't come out to say hello; it later turned out that she was taking a nap. Chumley and Fester mostly stayed with her, though Chumley, now seemingly quite recovered, did come lumbering out to look inquisitive.

We made seitan with five peppers, a recipe adapted from David's Five Peppers Pork. It's amazingly simple and fast, like many of his recipes, and quite tasty even with seitan. It was actually four peppers, because I didn't have any fresh hot peppers. We substituted sesame oil with chili, and that worked extremely well. I steamed some broccoli and some sugar snap peas as side dishes, and we still had the marvellous chewy brown rice from the Chinese grocery. It seems to exist midway between short- and long-grain versions, and is really delicious.

Dinner was very pleasant, even though we could not but talk of the war from time to time. David said something that made Lydy and me agree that he was impossible, but I am sorry to say I can't recall what it was. When I kept a journal in high school I got to the point where I could remember whole conversations verbatim, but I am not recovering this skill very well.

Eric went home on his bicycle to start his reading; I went upstairs and packed and gave Raphael a back rub. R was much absorbed in work and not inclined to conversation, so I ran downstairs to get the 9:19 bus, only to be arrested by a telephone call from Eric. "I've encountered the same word twice this week," he said, "and it's not in my dictionary." I went back upstairs and looked it up in the OED. I had actually never heard it before, which is fairly unusual. There are words for which I can't give a good definition and words I am wrong about the meaning of, but very rarely do I encounter one I simply have never heard of. Aporia. Wow.

We found it very useful over the next few days, too; it applies to many situations.

Eric was trying to simultaneously read the book he is assigned to report on in a few weeks and the essays that would be discussed in his seminar the following day. I read Chloe Cheshire until I was done, and then continued my reread of Dorothea Brande's book on becoming a writer.

Eric has a lot of difficulties pressing on him, and we talked about those a little. It's hard to be able to do nothing except extend a sympathetic ear.

Pamela

Another Wednesday

When I got home, I could smell coffee. I first wondered if Lydy had stayed home sick from work (David would never make coffee), but when I got upstairs I found Raphael up and very energetic. Having had trouble getting to sleep, zie had decided to just stay up and try to get onto a more rational schedule. We watched a tape of the latest "Buffy" (What the hell is wrong with them, what are they doing to Giles, the morons?) and had some very stimulating conversation about literature.

I did a bunch of laundry and dishes, and took my cat outside. He rolled on the sidewalk a lot, and ran almost too far up the neighbors' big mulberry. Sometimes he cracks me up. I was talking to him, and he was backing carefully down the tree, clearly coming right for my outstretched hand and glad of it. But when he got to a convenient crotch in the tree, he hissed at me and jumped down by himself. Lydy and I have surmised that having to interact with people while he is on his walks breaks his suspension of disbelief. That would explain a lot.

He got to stalk several oblivious squirrels. A crow yelled at us.

I went for my own walk just before sunset. I heard three or four cardinals singing, and admired the tidy well-raked lawns of my neighbors. I think people are stark crazy who have already taken the mulch out of their flowerbeds, though. It's going to be cold and snowy this weekend.

By the time I got home I was feeling unnaturally exhausted, and coughing a fair amount. I took some vitamin C and drank a lot of water and stared at my novel. Eric called early and we got some scheduling misapprehensions of mine straightened out. I had thought Minicon was a weekend earlier than it is. The results of this correction are entirely pleasant. It's good to have more time than you thought you had.

Raphael and I watched "The West Wing," which was fun; it's been a long time since we watched in real-time, as it were. I can't say I have missed the commercials at all, however.

I wrote four hundred words later in the evening, and called Eric back to tell him so. Raphael went to bed. I'm not used to needing to be quiet in the evenings, but I didn't knock anything over or break anything. I was feeling so tired myself that I went to bed at midnight. If I hadn't wished to keep my medication schedule right I'd have fallen over an hour earlier than that.

My cat slept on my feet. I got up at 10:30, feeling much more energetic but definitely lugging a mild (I hope) cold about with me. Ick. I got out the echinacea to add to the Vitamin C.

My cat will like all the napping, anyway, and there is nothing terribly strenuous to this degree of illness in sitting at the computer and glaring at one's novel.

Pamela