Little man, you've had a busy day

It's 10.30am, and so far today I have:

baked bread
boiled kidney beans
chunked & browned beef
chopped and sizzled onions & garlic
added beef, beans, tomatoes, stock, extra-hot chilli powder, hot smoked paprika, a dozen whole Thai red birds-eye chillies, half a dozen dried habaneros and a chipotle. Oh, and bay leaves and cumin for some harmonic notes
herbed, salted and sliced some pork rinds
set the chilli and the pork rinds in a very low oven to mull all day
stripped bed and run a load of laundry
made a packed lunch (cold ham, warm bread, hot mustard. Tomatoes. And a flask of coffee and a chocolate biscuit)
drunk coffee and read book

It will come as no surprise to anyone that I have thoroughly enjoyed my morning. I'm really looking forward to my future career as a houseboy.

Now I have to creep like snail unwillingly to library, and do that thing that, y'know, people pay me for, a little, every now and then. Le sigh.

UKL on a great American novel

She sat under a bush and drank champagne. With John Steinbeck.

Somebody send for a waaahmbulance

Ow. Owity-ow owww...

This was not in my gameplan. It wasn't even on my horizon, that my back should suddenly be deeply, seriously sore.

Okay, the chairs at the Lit & Phil are not exactly ergonomic - but I sit on them for hours, day after day, with no problem. So why today of all days, huh? Because I spent an hour or so cooking beforehand? But I cook also on a daily basis, tho' not ordinarily before I go to the library. Urgh, aargh.

Anyway. Here it is. I have battled through 1500 words and come home. I'll do what more I can, but extravagant goals may be beyond me. Really I just want to go to bed - but I have stripped the bed. And making the bed is always, inherently, inveterately ouchie (it's a duvet, bare inches above the floor: lots of bending), so I am not inclined to face that until I must.

In an obviously-related question, I've been wondering for a while: when the instructions on a box of pills say "take with water", is that just as an aid to swallowing, or does the water actually feature in the internal processing of the pill? Point being that I can and do swallow pills dry, and I am wondering if I am limiting their functionality by doing that. Or by swallowing them with orange juice instead, as I did this morning, or with wine, as I shall do any moment now...

Hmmph

Apparently, I don't want to work any more today.

I draw this conclusion from the, um, 94 words I've written in the last who-knows-how-long. I would say "fair enough", but that it is blatantly unfair; but then, as Jay has been saying today, fairness was never in the contract.

Anyway. I quit. My official excuse is an officially scary form from US immigration, that I have to print and sign. *is scared*

(They have rather cutely broken my city down to "New Castle on Tyne". I am not going to correct them. What's to correct? There's nothing wrong there. Space is not at a premium.)

Who's a clever boy, then?

Mac can hear the sound of a bed being made from kilometres away. Kilometres, I tell you. It's no use thinking "In six months we'll be in CA, he'll be out and about all over the neighbourhood, I'll seize my chance while he's gone." He'll hear it happen, and he'll be there. To help. It is his favourite chore. He can get inside the duvet cover! He can get beneath the bedsheet! If he really works at it, he can get beneath the mattress! He can pounce! He can roll around and tangle everything! ect ect ect.

In other but related news, there must be more pillowcases in this house somewhere. There must be lots, or many. I wonder where I put them...?