Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Oh, the embarrassment

So you know how people say "that's nothing to sneeze at?" Well, I wish they wouldn't.

I blame the priest, anyway. Anyone but me. Because there are some things that are involuntary, particularly if you have a cold coming on.

To cut a long story short, I sneezed in the ashes on Ash Wednesday. You show me a symbol of repentance and mortality? I'll sneeze on it.

But I hold that it was a perfectly sensible reaction to having ashes dribbled on my nose when I was already feeling a bit sneezy. And now my cross is all wobbly. By wobbly, I mean smeared across my forehead, because when you sneeze, your head moves. Oh, the shame.

Saturday, February 21, 2009

We need gods that want libations

So here's what I'm thinking. Monotheism, for all its benefits, is really lacking that "I gave you food at your shrine so you owe me" aspect that some forms of polytheism seem to pick up. (I'm ignoring some of the attitudes toward Catholic saints for this).

Take, for example, flat pack furniture. There is nothing that is so frustrating as the construction of the thing. There is no room in the world that is the right size for building the stuff; there are countless bits to lose. Some of the bits come - or rather don't come - prelost. You either need tools that you don't have or the allen wrench starts to erode ten minutes into the job. The parts are mislabeled or not labeled. The instructions go missing. It is a miserable task.

And that's where I think we need polytheism again. If I could take a $20 bottle of wine into the backyard, poor it on the ground, say "Oh god of flat pack, ease my work," and the thing would go well, I would be happy. As it is, with one god, I don't feel that I can waste his time. Something must be done.

(Translation of this post: Leo and I are building cupboards for the back room, and the thing weighs 200 pounds, was missing some hardware, is making us drill our own holes for the handles, and is taking forever to make.)

Thursday, February 12, 2009

A question of etiquette

If you, by some trick of fate, managed to write the 30 vague and insipid Christmas cards to people who work with your husband and then forgot to mail them because you were too busy and then didn't unearth them again until, say, February (hypothetically) what should you do? Here are the options, as I see them:

1) Mail them with a post-it stuck in each one decrying your oversight.

2) Bin them and do it again next year. (The writing, not the forgetting)

3) Call this year a wash and save the cards for next year.

4) Develop an ideological objection to Christmas cards in general, and send e-cards next year to help the environment.

5) Waste time writing a blog post about it instead of actually doing anything.

Thoughts?