Alternate

Well, Friendsgiving happened anyway! We had all that food, so we suggested Sunday brunch, and just about everyone showed, the five who we most expect for anything, really. Better than demanding anyone drive in the storm that was Friday.

I made crepes, N added grapes and nuts into hers, over the lemon curd, which I tried and love now. Dylan's chicken chili reheated well. There was salad and fruit, cheese and nuts. Panettone, too. We talked history and books and science and a great miscellany of subjects. Warm and friendly and delightful, with lots of tea and mulled cider and a dash of sake. Lots of hugs and laughter.

This is the best I've felt emotionally in a very long time. Especially welcome on the Sunday afternoon of a stretch of days off, when it so easily becomes the Long Dark Teatime of the Soul*. Not today, I think I shall sleep well tonight, and find the energy to do my job well this week. I'm well nourished, contented, easy in myself.

Zeppo on the other hand... poor cat. The cleaning up unsettled him, and all the people freaked him out, he didn't even come out for TreatTime ™, took him nearly an hour to venture out and get that. Eleanor on the other paw, was all over everyone, gleefully flirting and being stroked. Zeppo needs time, and that is what he shall have.

Bon Hiver!

*In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn't cope with, and that terrible listlessness which starts to set in at about 2:55, when you know that you've had all the baths you can usefully have that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the papers you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o'clock, and you will enter the long dark teatime of the soul.

D. Adams