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the best post about cat pee you've read today

I wish this could be one of those Choose Your Own Adventure books, because then I could say that I'm going to talk about my day at skool, and ask you if you would rather hear about the open flames and the world's least flattering garment™, or the cat pee.

Let's say that you chose the cat pee, because I think statistically people tend to choose the second option.

I was in my first class, and I thought I smelled something weird. Something kind of like cat pee. The territory-marking kind. Sometimes bad kitties like to come in through the cat door and eat Clyde's tuna, and one of them peed in her basket a while back. Stupid cat. So it smelled like that. And it was coming from...my bookbag.

When I started skool, I bought a really cute pink corduroy bookbag, which had been sitting empty on the floor in the dining room for the past couple of weeks. Clyde seemed to enjoy sleeping on it at first, because it's always better to sleep on something which is incrementally higher than the floor. Well, apparently it got marked, and I was in too big a hurry to notice when I was packing it up this morning. So, now I don't have a bookbag, because, well, cat pee.

I kind of wonder how it is that I didn't notice this, but the truth is, I've kind of been sleepwalking through the ol' life this week. There could have been a giant three-horned ape in the dining room, and I probably would have just hung my keys on it.

Now I have to go throw some Nature's Miracle around.

If you picked the first option...I was a torch bearer at tonight's eucharist. Yes, they let me carry an open flame around people in flowing, flammable robes. The bare minimum for a quality eucharist is 'everyone got fed, no one got hurt,' so I hope the equivalent for torch bearing is 'no one caught on fire.' Because if you raise that a tiny bit, to say, 'the torch bearer knew what she was doing and sat in her seat and didn't fidget with her stupid alb,' then we might have a problem.

Ach. The alb. I have been an Episcopalian for a while now, and somehow I managed to avoid putting on an alb in all that time. The alb is the white robe that people who are serving at the altar wear at churches that aren't St. Ned's, where we don't really do vestments much. Some churches put everyone who goes near the altar in an alb, so the torch-folk have to wear them during school liturgies.

There is a big closet full of albs in the chapel sacristy, in a variety of sizes that somehow manage to fit no one well. I decided to go with 'slightly too long, drapes weird over the chest.' To get an idea of just how unflattering this thing is on someone with boobage, think white turtleneck. White turtleneck a couple sizes too big, since it hangs straight down from the chest. I had been idly wondering if there are maternity albs for clerics who are great with child, but since the standard model makes one look pregnant anyway, I guess it's not really an issue. Cinching it at the waist with a rope belt (cincture) is an option, but it doesn't really help the effect. The cincture has to be tied a certain way that I've never learned, so I have that to look forward to.

The deacon at tonight's eucharist had on a custom-made, more fitted alb that was actually rather flattering, so I may have to bite that really expensive bullet at some point. There are no good patterns for them or I would think about sewing it myself. Having your own alb that fits means you're a grownup.

My teachers have given me a couple of extra weeks to get my work in, so it looks like I may not have to take any official incompletes if I can crank out some papers. This is a huge relief.

It also means that this is getting a bit closer to being The Christmas That Sort of Wasn't, since I will be working on skool stuff until Christmas. My fabulous vintage aluminum tree is waiting to be put up, and I'm hoping to get to that tomorrow. I hope I can get all of my presents finished, but realistically there might be a few Epiphany presents given this year.
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