All of the virtue, none of the fun

So here's what I've done with my weekend:

• Given blood


• Gone on to work at the bookstore afterwards, until midnight, which was a big mistake; allow me to inform you that they are not kidding when they say not to exert yourself after giving blood or you will regret it; I spent most of the night dizzy, in a cold sweat, fighting the urge to lie in a corner in a fetal position and moan helplessly


• Slept for a really long time


• Woke up to a frantic call from a friend to say that a family friend had died and would I sit for their daughter while they went to the funeral and wake this afternoon


• Curtailed my plans for a leisurely lunch with a book to picking up takeout and eating it on the way to my friend's


• Noted the enormous spider and huge and intricate web on my porch as I was leaving, with a promise to myself that I would take a picture of it when I got home, which of course it was not there when I got home


• Drew pictures, played make-believe, intermittently watched not enough bad children's television to know what was going on, and generally got ordered around by a sweet little three-year-old tartar-in-training, when all I really wanted to do was read the new book of short stories in my tote bag or watch some comfort movie of mine

Am currently feeling insufficiently rewarded for my saintly nature, and would probably feel much worse if the Battlestar Galactica season premiere (eta: and the huge, low-hanging harvest moon) hadn't been this weekend.

:::

Also, I have a question. Say you went to an Indian restaurant on a regular basis mostly to pick up takeout, and every time the waiter/cashier rang you up, he chatted with you, talked about nose rings or bollywood films or asked you why you never ate in the restaurant any more (you haven't because you've spent the past few months in financial straits), or asked you what you did for a living and whether you have a holiday weekend coming. And assume that you know perfectly well that you are the sort of person who has to actually be asked out on a date to understand that someone is trying to flirt with her or pick her up. And assume that as you were picking up your restaurant food this latest time it suddenly dawned on you that it might, just might, mind you, be that this man was trying to flirt with you, and that because it only just occurred to you and you are the densest person on the planet, he maybe has been trying to flirt for some time, and you just assumed he was being friendly. Would you think he really had been trying to flirt, or would you go on thinking he was just a very nice guy?

This question is purely hypothetical, of course.