the silence of the sheep

in june i switched from working fulltime to working halftime, to start doing my renegade school thing. so now i'm at work sometimes in the morning and sometimes in the afternoon. so yesterday i missed our monthly cake time which is actually a really good thing at my work 'cause we get cakes from cafe madeleine which is like pastry valhalla.

so my coworker saved me a piece of lemon cake which is my favorite thing, anything lemon, and which i ate half of and then realized that i was pretty sure the lemon moussey frosting had gelatin in it. and i don't eat meat (other than seafood) for reasons which i don't usually go into much because for one, i don't really care what other people chose to do; and two, when people disagree with you it's a lose-lose, you either capitulate or you come across as really preachy defending your reasoning.

so about a year after i stopped eating meat i stopped eating gelatin as well and so i realized that this cake probably had gelatin and then i just stared at it and sighed for awhile, because it was delicious and so lemony. then i went to the kitchen and threw it away and the office boy (favorite quote of the week, he yesterday while directing people around during our fire drill wailed "i went to cornell, and now i'm a fire marshal!") saw me and ridiculed me for just wasting it and so i did what i never do and said something silly about principles and about not participating in a system that i disagree with, to which he had some scathing response involving derisive references to berkeley and sheep.

and he's been making baa-baaing noises at me. all afternoon.
every time i walk by his desk i hear "baa...baa" floating after me.
i pretend offense but really we both know i find it hilarious.