I stayed home sick from work today. Hell to pay may result, since I don't have any sick leave to take yet, but I've decided for once to be unapologetic about taking care of myself. Usually if I wake up feeling sick I spend an hour arguing with myself about whether I'm really sick enough not to go to work, and decide in the negative only to go to work and be miserable, contagious, and useless. Frequently it involves remorse about being out of the office when someone might need me, or guilt at what persists in feeling like shirking, or apprehension about what will happen vis-a-vis my pay or sick leave balances. It's late for a New Year's resolution, but perhaps a New Job resolution is in order: I will remember that it is possible for me to occasionally have a legitimate need to not be at work.
(Also, I will split my infinitives if I damn well please.)
The dream that I had during my afternoon of fitful sleep punctuated by waking up groping for tissues was this: I was in the middle of making a peach cobbler when I was attacked by a giant panda, which bit me on the elbow. I was annoyed, because earlier that same day I had been bitten on the back of the neck by a different giant panda. I stomped back down the scrubby hillside on which my panda encounter had occurred, returned to the outdoor half-kitchen in which I had been making my cobbler, and announced irritably that I wasn't going to bother making cobblers for people if pandas were going to keep biting me. Then I went and got on a flying boat.
Posted by dianna at July 20, 2007 07:35 PMPerhaps they weren't trying to bite you, they were trying to bite the cobblers. But because they're so big and lumbery and fuzzy-wuzzy they weren't being terribly accurate about it.
That said, whether you're sick or not, I'd bite you for a cobbler.
Posted by: katie at July 20, 2007 08:35 PMOK, this is oddly viral. Last night I had a nightmare that vividly illustrated why it's not a good idea to have a lobster for a pet, when a simple game of fetch ended with it pinching me and biting me and a well-meaning idiot used my own thumb to gouge out one of its eyes in the mistaken belief that this would make it stop hurting me.
Posted by: katie at July 21, 2007 07:54 AMA lobster? Dude, I know that you are horribly allergic to things that are actually cute and fuzzy, but I think that turning to things that are sharp, chitinous, and generally murderous is not the solution here.
Wait, so what happened when someone used your thumb to gouge out its eye? And who was this well-meaning idiot?
I think that this adorable and innocent-looking red panda is largely responsible for my giant panda biting dream. I mean, you can see how menacing and violent it is, right? Great big claws and mlaaaarrrgghh eating noises as it chomps someone's head right off? Oh my god I want one for a pet.
Posted by: Dianna at July 21, 2007 09:52 AMWell, the well-meaning idiot was Mom, actually, but I didn't want to say. I think it might actually have been their pet, and I thought it had broken its leg jumping into the air to catch the ball during the game of fetch, so I was trying to see and it was squirming. But then what happened was the eyeball went squish, which was horrible enough, and then it started pinching and biting me a lot harder.
Holy hell, that is the cutest panda picture! Is that a grownup red panda? It looks like a baby! It's so cute! And its tongue is sticking out!
I can definitely see why you would associate this fuzzy thing with biting and grouchiness.
Posted by: katie at July 21, 2007 12:01 PMI can see the headlines now.
CHITINOUS MURDERER TERRORIZES CITY
Posted by: Ping at July 21, 2007 02:54 PMOh god -- which city? Is there such a thing as a Pacific lobster? I don't think I've ever heard of river lobsters, so I'm probably fine, but if you guys start hearing rumors of arthropod murderous rampages it might be a good time to come visit me.
I highly, HIGHLY recommend the Flickr Red Panda Photo Pool. HIGHLY. Also there was a panda torpedo posted on Cute Overload that almost made me explode.
Posted by: Dianna at July 21, 2007 04:58 PM