sixty percent chance of rain

ouch. I reek of disinfectant and i’m covered in enough cat hair to constitute, as jaymie decided, a cashmere sweater. And I scrubbed no less than ten cages, twelve mats, and who knows how many litterboxes today. mmmn, the sweet smell of cat poo.

being proper italians, la famille had to have at least seven fishies on the christmas eve supper menu, though I think there were probably many more than that( shoot for twelve, fourteen if you count shrimp three ways) but considering that we normally have about forty people that’s hardly a lot of food. but still, when you go, you smell que les fruits de la mer.

ummmm lets see

- two versions of stuffed calamari
- shrimpy and white fagioli something
- sardines in tomato sauce (antipasto)
- smoked baby clams and mussels, I think, and anchovies with capers (also antipasto)
- other stuff in the antipasto
- shrimp and scallops with alfredo linguine
- some sort of disgusting soup
- asparagus with parmesan
- octopus with yummy stuff on it
-bread & butter
- lots of other whatsit

and for dessert:
-pizzele
-coffee
-ricotta cake/ pie (?)
-baked alaska for my lovely brother’s birthday (christmas eve)
-biscotti

yeah, lots of food. lots and lots of food.

you know what? her name is crisps.

terry gave me a little blue sock-bunny for christmas. it’s of a stuff like tights, bound up with thread to make a bunny face ( three stitches form three lobes, nose and each cheeky thing). Then there’s two sock- covered wire ears. apparently she got it in thailand. it’s very small.
but when I came home and mum came in after me (by an hour) she saw it and reminded me of the little paper or sock-animals on long twisted papery wands that I used to get when I was little at the fair. they look similar. but what she said was ” ‘member those little animals on sticks that you used to get?” to which I replied ” doesn’t that make it sound a bit cruel?” sounds like ritual sacrifice, in fact.

and it has a fur ruff around its neck. a bit weird, but still quite cute. makes me want to make one.

for two consecutive days , one person (prolly not the same) visited le blogge. then (get this) TWO people came, same day. check it out, I’m famous!

noxious…..virulent, unwholesome, pernicious, deleterious, harmful.

truculent…..fierce, nasty, rude, harsh, scating, simply not nice.

repose…..rest, tranquility, peace, sleep, dignified calmness ads of composure

facile…..doing something with ease, possibly superficially,  unconstrained, complasiant, easily influenced. I am easily influenced.

Today vas another superb clay day; saturdays are the little kids classes. Brought my books to Bethy so that she could flip through them before handing them back mundy, (next class). I dunno if she’ll get through them, there must be 20 pounds worth of book in that pile. ouch.

We’ve developed a new thing: I’ll teach the littlies with her most of the time and that’ll pay for most of my other classes or some such. I’d been helping before in spite and, as she pointed out it’s not necessarily sensical for mum and dad to pay for all my classes in that case.

the girls are pretty sweet, though, about seven or six I think….the oldest at 8 or something as of yesterday. strangely they sound exactly like the ladies at a church fair (shudder) and repeat each thing brought up in conversation an exhausting number of times before putting it down, which can get very old very fast, something like this:

(in high pitched, warbly little voices)

Natalie: I don’t think Hannah’s gonna come today…

whatsherface: Noo….I don’t think so either.

other girl: Hannah’s 30 minutes late. She’s really late!

whatsherface: Hanna’s 30 miutes late…I don’t think she’s going to come.

Natalie: ohhh….she’s really late, isn’t she….

other girl: I don’t think hannah’s going to come today…

Or, when you say a word that they don’t know, they occasionally quietly repeat it to themselves. so for example: I’ll be like “hey, hannah, you mignt want to use a pin tool on that. It’ll keep the little shards from getting all over.” and I’ll turn towards the shelf and rifle through pin tools for the right one. Hannah follows me and goes “pin tool….”

if you are the baby of a black and an asian, you are blasian. if you’re 1/2 white &1/2 black, you’re whack! if you’re the baby of a black and a blasian, you’re bla blasian. thanks, sarah love.

while walking home from school…. it’s really damp out. you have to understand, my hair consists of this mop of curls, almost einstein-esque in his later days, but better kept. so I’m trotting along with my bookbag down the mudded-over sidewalk, nodding at sopping knot of them at frequent intervals to keep curls out of my eyes and looking like i’m disagreeing with the little voices in my head. some joan d’arc here.

and now my pants are still all wet…

After unlocking the door, I had to bring this little boxwood christmas tree (you know what boxwood is…) up to chez grandmere as a token of the holiday season (right next door up a now muddy muddy hill) as bidden by the maternal unit. just now mum has called and asked if I would pleasey bring it up and, in response to my already have…, she was quite full of disbelief that I would actually do something that she asked me tooo (” oh! really? wow.”).

But you see, while I was up there, I also got to play with Crispykins, the eccentricly named and eccentric-in-general-but-sweetly- dispositioned kitty. She’s moved past her days of drawing blood while being petted and now begins purring whenever I’m within a 10 foot radius of her. She likes to be rubbed on the tummy and, when I do, purrs at a similar decibel as a rocket taking off. So sweet. Not that I’m a cat person. quite the opposite….but I’ll make an exception for a few.

And now (drumrolllll) I’m to make biscotti. or something like that. Because, the little voices told me so.