Ugh

I slept really badly last night, worse than I can remember sleeping in a long time. It might have been the pot of Russian tea I had during dinner, or maybe it was just the heat. I tossed and turned for a long time, pulled the kitties up one at a time to sleep with me (usually a sure-fire method for relaxation), got up and wrote, got up again and drew… then I slept for several hours and woke up again after dawn, and couldn’t get back to sleep for a long time. I don’t know how long I actually slept, but right now I feel like I do after I’ve gotten three hours.

Which is dreadful, because there was a lot I wanted to do today, a lot of writing and drawing and thinking. I’m still going to try to do all those things, but I’m definitely not in the expansive, creative mood I had hoped for.

Here’s something to leave you with, though. The most recent issue of Gastronomica has a very funny side-by-side chart of etiquette rules through the ages. Here are a couple of gems:

1922:

One inexorable rule of etiquette is that you must talk to your next door neighbor at a dinner table…
At dinner once, Mrs Toplofty, finding herself next to a man she quite openly despised, said to him with apparent placidity: “I shall not talk to you because I don’t care to. But for the sake of my hostess I shall say my multiplication tables. Twice one are two, twice two are four–” and she continued on through the tables, making him alternate them with her.

sixteenth century (this one makes me laugh so hard):

When thou hast blowne thy nose, use not to open thy handkercheif, to glare uppon thy snot, as if thou hadst pearles and Rubies fallen from thy braynes.

Stay cool, everyone, and remember there are no pearls and rubies in thy snot!

[This post was imported on 4/10/14 from my old blog at satsumabug.livejournal.com.]