NotSheep

Well who knew my steam-letting-off exercise yesterday would strike so many chords? Lots of comments, for which I’m very grateful, because many of them made me laugh, and I needed that. Still do. I’m sick I thought I’d acquired the bug that got Henry and Jack last week and then Toby over the weekend, but then it started to look more like I had mastitis. I definitely have a clogged duct; even if I couldn’t feel it, I can actually see the lump and I can identify the exact duct because the milk coming out of it is visibly different. And feeling flu-y. Last time this happened was when Freddy was a baby, and I landed in hospital having a breast abscess cut out, and also got septicemia - so this is scary territory for me. Hence, after fighting my way through Beavers last night (did you know you can make a squirrel with teabags? well you can.) I headed to the local Emergency, to try to convince a doctor that yes, I did have mastitis and yes, I do know what I’m talking about, and yes, it is at the stage where antibiotics are justified. I haven’t had antibiotics in seven years (and that was the IV ones for the septicemia), so that gives you some idea of how I’m feeling.

After an hour in Emergency listening to the staff discuss their pay-bands and whether they’d get enough to live on for the rest of their lives if they took redundancy and who was making the next round of tea I finally saw a doctor. Told him what was wrong. He left (to get a nurse as a chaperone, because of course you couldn’t possibly predict that when a woman comes in and says she has mastitis that you might be looking at her boobs). He returned, I squeezed my nipple and produced clear evidence that I wasn’t a junkie looking for her next fix of flucloxacillin, and he produced a packet of 28 of them. To be honest, I don’t think he had a clue. I think he was just trying not to look lost and decided that I sounded like I knew what I was on about so he’d be better to just nod along, fake the clue thing and do what I said. I don’t care: it works for me.

Scratchy is staying home today; I was going to struggle through, but then the car wouldn’t start, so that was kind of a, uh, non-starter.

Anyway. Back to yesterday’s comments.

Surprisingly, the most widely-discussed mystery was not why I was wearing a belt. The big issues, in reverse order, were:

In third place, tied: cleaning up and curtains
In second place: laundry
And in first place… ta da: is the correct spelling “chili” or “chilli”

Sue said it’s chili with one l; now she’s usually got a handle on these things, so I was inclined to believe her. Then Mamadillo/Trogette said the same, because it “looks” right - again, I was with her, because that’s how I mostly figure out spellings. Alison agreed that one l is correct, on the somewhat spurious basis that it’s how the Red Hot Chili Peppers spell their name But then Mamadillo changed her mind because she found a recipe on the BBC website (except that this is the same BBC that often states that the law says parents are legally required to make sure their children attend school, so they’re, uh, not infallible.)

Being the pedantic type, I had to get to the bottom of this.

The History of Chili says it ain’t Mexican, but rather originated in Texas with Spanish immigrants. That would make it “chili”, because “chilli” in Spanish would be pronounced “chi-yi”. The Life and Times of Chili agrees, but adds that chili may have been influenced by a native American dish called pemmican and by Mexican spices. Wikipedia says the same. But I think the best page I found on chili is The Great Chili Con Carne Project - it even has a little pepper as its favicon, so it must be right It directly addresses the spelling issue, as well as describing the dish’s origins and offering several excellent-looking recipes, even if none of them is as easy as my recipe. Hm. You know how chili can make your nose run? Do you think it would work for blocked milk-ducts in the same way?

That’s enough digging, because it’s time for me to lie down and hide under the covers again, so I’m going with The Great Chili Con Carne Project: the dish is called chili, the peppers are chile peppers.

And we still haven’t found that other shoe.