A funny thing happened on my way to the slaughterhouse. . .

Actually nothing amusing happened on the way to the slaughterhouse, the novelty was in that I ended up there at all. Monday my friend Janae and I began a 4-mile a day morning walk routine that we had started last school year and let slide over the summer. When we finished up I mentioned we should go to lunch sometime, and Janae (who is not one to let grass grow beneath her feet) said "What's wrong with today?" So I picked her up at work (where she serves lunch at the middle school our children attend) and we had a good chat over prawns. After lunch I asked her if there was anywhere she wanted to go on the way back to her car, and she said actually, she needed to go pick up her pig, at the meat packer.

You see, two of Janae's kids raised pigs for 4-H this year, and when they were put up for auction at the county fair, Janae thought her son's pig was going for less than it should, so she bought it herself, and sent it to the meat packer.

The fact that I ended up on a long drive along a country road looking for a slaughterhouse when I should have been home waiting for my kids to come home from school, well, that's pretty normal in my relationship with Janae. Everyone should have a friend with more energy than they have themself, who involves them in adventures they wouldn't otherwise take part in, Janae is my friend like that. A hundred and ninety pounds of pork looked like a lot less than we thought it would---until we tried to put it in her freezer.

To thank me for my help, Janae gave me a piece of salmon from her freezer (dated 2001) which I then forgot and left in my car. I remembered it rather suddenly this morning. Sigh.