Five teeth and a Claw

The day began with our usually benign neighbourhood cat, Cub, having an aggressive moment and making me bleed. A nice 5cm (2") lightly bleeding scratch across my right forearm. Then there were the five little red toothmarks a little closer to the wrist. No big deal. I stopped petting her and washed up and added some disinfectant for good measure. Later I came back and stroked her with the other arm, which she did not wound. I think she knew that then there'd be no more arms available to make her purr.

The day entailed no shoveling, as there was no precipitation, but the driveway is covered in ice...which our kids find wonderful fun. I just have to be careful walking to the mailbox. It was -5C (23F) most of the overcast day. Good for zipping up one's (purple) ski jacket and wearing (purple) gloves. That's a segue to the fact that I noticed, on my way to German class, that I was wearing not only those two purple items, but also a purple sweater, and carrying a purple backpack. Of course I Facebooked this on my iPhone in its purply pink case. Someone then alliteratively asked me to "post a purple pic" - which request I fulfilled by gathering up rather a large number of other purple things I have around the house and getting a shot of those:

At German class, I received a real treat. Picture this in your mind's ear:
You're sitting in class on the ground floor of your husband's office building, with a 7-month-pregnant student from the Czech Republich, a male one from Hungary, yourself from USA, and the Swiss-German teacher. In comes a new student you've never met before. From his cheerful, inquisitive speech, you discern immediately that he has a delightful francophone accent. Notice I don't say "French," since he could be from various countries (including southwest Switzerland, France, Belgium, and theoretically Canada or Africa, depending). It turns out he's Belgian, and he has this great way of speaking mostly German with a few English words thrown in, in a French accent. The icing on the cake, though, which I could not stop smiling about, was the way in which, every 4th word or so, he inserted, in English, "like." You know, like, the filler word that a lot of, like, young people, like, use. Except it sounds all the more out of place in a grown man's speech while he's speaking German. With a French accent. I can't even attempt to reproduce one of his sentences. It was really fun.

Had a nice lunch with my son as usual for Wednesdays, then took my daughter shopping for some clothing necessities. The way these kids keep growing... Since I don't like shopping and want to spend as little time as possible doing it, I tend to ask for help from the Guy who knows where everything is - and He granted us the favor and success I pleaded for on the way out there. But I wanted to use these special certificates (UBS Keyclub points) we'd gotten from our Swiss credit card company as rewards for using their card. I had 60CHF worth of them, valid only at certain stores. We found some needed items at one such store (Manor), and I was so pleased that the goods added up to only 60 centimes (like pennies) less than 60 Francs. Perfect, right? Except the store would not take the certificates to pay for an amount less than they were worth, since they could not give us change. I said they could keep the change, but they said the computer would not accept that. I asked if they sold anything for 60 centimes. They said maybe a pencil, downstairs? So we trooped downstairs and looked for something really cheap. We spotted a pen on sale for 1CHF. But then, even better, we found some Tippex (white-out correction fluid), that Emily actually wanted for schoolwork. 2.80CHF, but more worth it. Back upstairs, and we finally made our "purchase."

I have more to tell you, but it's way past time for bed. See you tomorrow, I hope!