Oh. My. Lord. And. Taylor.
Well, it used to work better closer to Christmas Day, when Lord & Taylor were int eh Christmas biz for real. But these days, it could just be Oh. My. Lord. And Lords. Leaping.
Not Leaping Lounge Lizards. Not Leaping Licorice. Leaping Lords.
Honest.
They were waiting for me when I got back from court. Along with another Nine Ladies dancing, eight maids a milking, seven swans -- with pool, six geese laying -- with eggs, five GOOOOO--LLLLLLD RIIINGS (Yippee!!! Lawyers cost money), four calling birds--this time with I Phones, three French hens -- wearing little berets, two turtle doves, and a pear tree, with the partridge. Of course.
These guys looked a little like they were coming out of an old Lord and Taylor catalog, circa 1955, complete with boots, jeans, checked shirts, various gallon sized hats, and a few even were chewing on a piece of straw from the impromptu corral set up in the building courtyard.
It seemed someone had broken the lock on the garage, and the cows were last seen on Lake Shore Drive. This was not good, as the one constructive piece of legal work done today was a permit from the court to sell the cows to a dairy company in the suburbs. I couldn't very well do that without the cows.
I left four of the milking maids with the cows in the courtyard, and the ten leaping lords got their boots in gear as we headed to the lake.
Everyone probably remembers the clown at the circus that comes behind the elephants with a rolling garbage can and a shovel to clean up. Well, I was that clown. Wearing 3 inch heels. But, if I didn't clean up, it was not going to take the intellect of Hansel and Gretel to figure out there were cows in my building that had ventured out toward Lake Michigan. I picked up as much as I could, keeping the lords in their checkered shirts in sight.
We put the calling birds' I-Phones to good use, and used the walkie talkie feature to help us rustle the cows back to home. It only took us an hour, and everyone was back at my building, with I Phones playing Aaron Copeland's Rodeo, so the Lords could demonstrate their leaping abilities. Martha Graham, eat your heart out.
Anyway, that night we ordered in pizzas, got a few salads together, found the pears and two of the Milking Maids showed off their skills at making pear tarts. It was a lovely evening.
Finally, around midnight, I gathered all the gold rings together, and stuck them into my wall safe in the bedroom closet. They were amazing rings, and had what looked like runes on the edges. One quick computer search later and I lined up an expert at the University of Chicago to help me translate them.
The last thing I did before crawling into bed, exhausted, was to search the I Phones for the subscriber name. I didn't have any luck, but the Nordic god process server had apparently fallen in love with a Milking Maid, and he told me he would check it out first thing before court in the morning.
Oh geez. Morning. Court. Again.
Maybe the delivery company would come through. If not, I needed Columbo to find who's been buying cows at the rate of eight a day. Or, maybe Miss Marple could figure out who had sent the milking maids, because none of them had a name for the guy that hired them. The Lords, dressed though they were in full cattle with hat duds, also were like all Lords of the Manor. Plummy voices and not an idea in their heads about who had sent them. From the UK, no less. They were, in fact, real Lords, each a member of the allegedly nobler house of Parliament.
I just hung my head in a whopping wave of tired and decided I couldn't do anything except go to sleep. As I turned to head into my bedroom, I slipped in something. At least, I couldn't get held in contempt for it, and I swore a few choice words about the abilities of farm animals to take the city right out of a person.
Good Night All, and Happy Christmas.
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