Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

Earlier this afternoon, I picked up julian_tiger to snuggle him. After a minute, he decided he wanted to get down; somehow, in the course of this, his claw pricked my shoulder.

This happens moderately often, and is not a big deal: a minute or two later and we've both forgotten all about it.

This time, it still hurt after a few minutes, so I asked cattitude for a kiss-make-better, which he did. Maybe ten minutes after that, I noticed that it was itching significantly, and decided to put camphor* on it. To do so, I took my shirt off and looked in the bathroom mirror so I'd know where to apply it.

There were two significant raised, pink blotches on my shoulder. Cattitude confirmed that they hadn't been there when he kissed it. I applied camphor, as planned, and went looking for an antihistamine. When I found we didn't have any, Cattitude offered to go out and get some. He was all set to walk to the pharmacy--most of a kilometer--in the cold, but I pointed out that the store downstairs might have it. They did. He came back with two of those single-dose foil packets, each containing two Benadryl pills. I took one pill, taped the packet closed, and went on to a game of Scrabble.

The welts are basically gone, and my shoulder no longer itches. I have no idea what, if anything, this means--but it seems worth having a record of.

*Brand name Camphophenique; that and calamine lotion were the topical anti-itch things of my childhood, and at the time I preferred the calamine.

I appear to be seriously allergic to something in eleanor's apartment--my best guess is that Sevi, the cat who I am allergic to (and who in theory lives elsewhere) has gotten enough dander into the place to cause me problems even if I carefully don't touch her. I had to leave Ellie's birthday party after about 45 minutes, having barely had a chance to talk to her or anyone else (beyond burbling about Julian to volund).

However, the party did get me and cattitude downtown; I treated him to dinner at Faan [sic], an "Asian fusion" restaurant on Sixth Avenue between 8th and 9th Streets (next to the papaya place--the last time I was in that space it was Charlie Mom Noodle Shop) that r_ness recommended. Thanks for the suggestion/information! We both ordered entrees off the specials menu: Cattitude had red snapper with cheese, nori, hoisin, and what I guessed might be shredded jicama; I had duck with lichees (and a few asparagus spears). We were each very pleased with our own dish, though less impressed with the other's. Appetizers were a "New York roll" maki sushi of salmon skin, scallion, and cucumber--it practically had my name on it--and toasted sesame seeds on the outside. If I'd designed it, I'd have used tobiko instead of the sesame, and I would have been wrong. The toasted sesame worked just right there. Besides, there was plenty of tobiko on the other appetizer, a pleasant fancied-up variant of Crab Rangoon (well, fancied-up, and then de-fancied by the use of "crab stick" instead of actual crab), and on Cattitude's fish.

Before dinner, I went to the gym and then down to St. Mark's Place to buy some socks: three pairs in boring black, one in slightly weird tie-dye. And before that we checked out the new Greenmarket in our neighborhood (Isham between Seaman and Park Terrace West, Saturdays only), but by the time we got there almost everything was sold out. So we chatted about that, Inwood, and thence eagles, DDT, and related matters with one of the vendors, before someone grabbed her to introduce her to a restaurant owner. Next week, she said, she'll bring more cherries and more apples, having seen how eager Inwood is to buy them.

( gym stuff: not a great workout )