The Liver of Ibbi-Sin

Extispicy is the study of animal entrails to divine the future. In ancient Mesopotamia, the liver was the most important organ - so important that there are clay models of livers made as teaching tools for would-be augurs, a sort of "here's what the liver looked like, and here's what happened" manual. One of the livers reads "this is the liver of Ibbi-Sin, who died from the bite of a shoe."

One cannot help but wonder what the "bite of a shoe" may have been. Did a scorpion get Ibbi-Sin? Was he, perhaps, a diabetic, killed by an infected blister? In a way, I'm glad I don't know - of all the accidents I've had, I've never been bitten by a shoe.

But perhaps I should have been consulting the livers, because I cut my thumb on a cabbage. That's right, a cabbage. A decorative cabbage, to be specific, and the cut is one of those unpleasant ones that slips under the fingernail and hurts like crazy.

So far the bite of the cabbage has not been terribly dangerous for me, but it proved fatal to my Sock Madness ambitions. I've been knocked out in Round Three, with just a sock and a half finished when my division filled. Knitting hasn't been very much fun lately, and neither has any other sort of handiwork, which is a problem as I try to complete a project for the Hogwarts swap.

That, combined with my ocelot accident, and a bad cold that won't go away, has made this a somewhat distressing week. Yes, the spots really were the result of knocking a can of spray paint into the track of the garage door. The bad part is that when you tilt a can of spray paint on its side and break off the nozzle, it's not a nicely mixed paint that sprays out uncontrollably. Instead, you get only the colorant, which has acted rather more like a dye than a paint. I'm very, very, glad that there are still weeks to go before the wedding. And I wonder if there's any divinatory practice to warn of cabbages and spray paint.

Wedding planning created the week's bright spot - on Saturday, my mother, my friend Karen, and I traveled down to Cincinnati for a bridal shower, hosted by Aaron's family. So now I have all sorts of kitchen goodies that I can't wait to use, and a collection of family recipes that I'm going to put to good use right away. I also have my bouquet for the rehearsal, beautifully assembled by Aaron's sister, Megan. She's a complete expert at this wedding thing, and is going to have so many people owing her major wedding favors when her time comes.

It's hard to believe there are just over two months to go. I'd better get some wedding knitting done!