1.

There were two boxers in our back yard. Not the type you see on TV in a ring wearing gloves, yelling, “Adrianne!” No. These were dogs.

At first, though, I thought I saw a deer. My son and I watched a video documentary in the living room last Wednesday or Thursday afternoon. Interruption happened with a yowl from our cat, Westley, causing us to look at the back deck, where at first glimpse it seemed Westley had repelled a small deer, a fawn sans spots. Only, it was too small. In fact it was a puppyish boxer, yelping and scared. Closer inspection of the yard showed a full-grown male boxer patrolling frantically. And the huge neighbor dogs — invisible due to their places across wooden fences — were up in arms (of course, they don’t have arms; they do bellow with great hugeness, however, and I’m always glad they can’t leap their respective enclosures). The boxers had somehow managed to pierce our fenced border. I didn’t know what might happen next.

After repeated, indecisive openings/closings/openings of our sliding glass door I inhaled and stepped onto the deck. Grownup boxer had started marking around the yard, near the tomatoes, the grape plant, etc. I recalled my training days with our mostly Miniature Pinscher and said, gruffly, “NNno!”

You have to take initiative, act the alpha part, I remembered.

Mr. Boxer paused.

“Go home!” I commanded.

Mr. Boxer’s look seemed to say, “Whaddayamean?”

I moved to the back corner, where two of the neighbors’ fences almost meet. There is a section of unfinished cyclone covering the gap, and I supposed the dogs had dug in the soft dirt beneath it, though there wasn’t a definite trough. No question about it when the little boxer (female, maybe) came and perched on its haunches looking sorrowfully as if to say, “Please, may I go home now?”

Uh, oh, here came Mr. Boxer. I had wished to avoid cornering him or acting as though I threatened his young friend. He approached between us, not threateningly, I thought. But I sure didn’t try to pet him.

“You must go home!” I said, pointing. I repeated my Darth Vader imitation several more times.

Mr. Boxer started digging under that covered gap.

My tone changed to encouragement. “Good dog! Keep going, you can do it!” The little boxer trembled and watched. Mr. Boxer got stuck halfway, but persevered, and finally was in his own yard.

“Yay! Now, little one, go on.”

The little one looked dubious. I tried to lift the cyclone patch. It isn’t very flexible, and its metal points must jab awfully on one’s back when one is trying to wriggle beneath it, which is why the little boxer hesitated, but at last the little dog worked and I lifted fencing and pushed rear, and the little boxer was through. Mr. Boxer greeted the youngster with a smile, I think.

Westley the cat had remained all this while on the deck, his fur fluffed and his gaze wary. You could just see him daring Mr. Boxer to approach. “Bring it,” he seemed to say. When all was calm again, he remained on guard (though in more languid pose) the rest of the afternoon.

2.

Saturday evening I donned my bicycle helmet and followed Tim along the bike path. My first two-wheeled ride in longer than I admitted. All summer I’ve been saying I’ll get out and about, and still I hadn’t done it. Really had been a while, because there was a new little bridge and several nice benches along the path that hadn’t been there last time I was.

Evening heat made the breeze merely cajole sweaty skin. There was open blacktop ahead, and a cushy bike seat beneath. It was great.

Then Tim hesitated. He wasn’t sure which way to turn off the path to get to the church for Vigil. I was behind him. He decided one way, came back, and when he next turned toward a sidewalk, I turned, not thinking about the small patch of gravel we crossed until, whatdoyouknow, my bike and I had tipped over.

Tim continued on. “Hey!” I called. Bleh. Dusty, dusty. My husband at last looked back. “I think it’s this way,” he said.

“I fell down!”

There were parents and kids at a play structure, and I was sure they were being entertained.

I don’t recall if Tim said anything more, but he waited for me to catch up. Then he rode on, and I followed, calling, “Yeah, just bleeding back here, don’t worry.”

My ankle wound was the size of a BB. Still, Tim’s back riding away was small comfort.

Later, after I led the way home in moonlight in the cooler breeze of a world lit by river and riders’ small headlights, I expressed to Tim my main problem at the accident scene.

“You’re very competent at times like that,” I said, “but your bedside manner is terrible.” I explained that the script for next time we go riding and I overturn calls for him to drop his bike, gasp, shout, “Snookums!” and rush to my side, inquiring demonstratively if I will be okay. Then I can say I’m fine and go on with dignity.

3.

I’m not sure there’s any connection between these recent stories. I am reminded there can be good reason our big old cat reacts bravely to certain stimuli. (I’ve no clue if a burglar would receive his full ire, but Westley might spit at him, at least, before stalking over to the couch to watch him nab things.)

I also appreciate my competent husband, who will always keep cool in a crisis, and who will never call me Snookums, and that is really fine, but he will smile when I dust myself off and explain things, and he’s the one in the moonlight who follows me home.

One of the women who volunteer in my office had commented, months ago, about that loose-looking piece of ceiling. “Don’t you worry that might fall on your head?” she wondered.

“Oh, I think it just looks loose but really isn’t,” I replied. After all, the people before me had been working here for years, and nothing ever fell on them. At least not that they told me.

I’m sure the philosophical, political, and even theological implications I could express, if I took the time to scour them, would be various.

For now, I’ll simply reflect with gratitude. I can certainly come back to attend to work another day, but I must make an exception for the contingency that a ceiling tile happens to fall down and kill me; for in that case, I cannot attend.

The details on YouTube:
FineMoustaches — May 04, 2010 — By Phil Lord and Chris Miller
This was a fake commercial we made in 1998 for a series of educational shorts about action figures based on historical figures. Its educational value was somewhat suspect. It was never aired.

But not around this house.You gotta love forethought, right?

I’ll be finding these till I’m 60, at least. (The final 50 pic I threw in while munching on the hunt.)

All is well — the half-century reminder man also clipped me a rose, fresh as young love and ageless as 5000 mornings.

1. Comedian Eddie Izzard has been running marathons around the UK all summer. I mean, he has run one every day, six days a week. Amazing. You can read the story with a couple side interviews here.

I came to enjoy Izzard’s stand-up humor almost against my will. He’s irresistible, though, his imagination making connections everyplace as he rants about computers and describes queuing up at the supermarket. There’s cussing, yeah, his f-word is an adjective. But by the time I got sucked in to the videos of his my kids were watching, I’d become much more comfortable with our cultural, colorful word phenomenon than I used to be. I’d made some conscious decisions about what I think language is doing in different circumstances. Now, what a guy is doing in heels onstage may be another matter, maybe. But at least he had the good sense not to run in them. Go, Eddie!

2. A post, over on Fresca’s blog, about, um, Cheesus. It turns quite thoughtful regarding ignorant arrogance and, as often do things at her site, serves up a perspective free from blind obedience to one cultural/political side or another. But the opening and the close are at least as funny as Izzard’s best. You kinda have to see it.

I guess a good question of the week might be:
What sort of stuff brings out your best belly laughs, providing as good a workout as a London marathon in the rain?

After I’ve jogged on the treadmill my puttering in the utility room, no matter how I try to expedite it, is never fast enough for them. But finally this morning the three of us made it to the carpet, where I piled a mound of kitty kibbles (tuna flavor) in one corner for Westley and set under Brindy’s nose a peanut butter doggy treat. Then, as always, to their contented crunching sounds, I sat with my legs out, stretching.

If I don’t do things just this way, I get dog slobber from thigh to shin. The drool began years ago, in the days Brindy strained at her leash and harness as I puffed along the river path. My puppy dog loved accompanying me for a run, but even better, I think, was how I tasted back at home. “Don’t lick me!” became my stretching motto, as I tried to avoid her tongue. Sometimes I gave in and allowed it; on other occasions I tried to love Brindy up enough beforehand so that she left me to stretch, both of us content.

In days beyond learning what pavement can do to hips and knees, Brindy and I both stay off the streets, and so I get even sweatier running where it’s warm (Tim did set me up a wonderful fan, but still the drips occur). When Westley started noticing I was salted up nice on the rug, he’d bring his rough tongue to my knee, as well, while I tried to escape Brindy’s lickings and enjoy my stretches. So, finally, I thought of treating them.

They caught on quick. What was once an afterthought – mm, smell that salty human skin – has become the main deal: is she wearing shorts? oh, is that loud machine running with the overblaring music and that blowy thing turned on? then get ready – the yummies are coming!

According to our newspaper’s TV Week, the reasoning behind the change is “the network wants to bring in people who may not think of themselves as science fiction fans, but flock to movies such as ‘Twilight’ and ‘Star Trek.’”

Hm. It also says they want to appeal to more women and young people. Yeah, I guess guys like my dear hubby have been their staple. But I’m there, too. I liked, read, and watched sci fi stuff even before Tim and I viewed Star Wars for the eighteenth time. I don’t necessarily appreciate being lumped with fans of teen vampires (though I stuck with the teen vampire slayer, Buffy, until about season six on other channels). It’s nice to know Syfy will continue to produce intriguing fare such as Battlestar Galactica (need to catch up with that one, someday, and find out what all happened after season two).

Another big reason for Sci Fi’s change is the fact that Syfy “is a name we can trademark.” I see. Is it just me, though, or does the lettering remind one of…Strawberry Shortcake? They’re taking out Science’s “c”, anyway, so why not Sifi? Siifii? Oh, well. Enough pondering of such universal questions for one afternoon. Back to intellectual pursuits like reading bloggy friends’ posts and Facebook. Or was that MyFace? Blyfry?

Eureka, one of my hubby's current favorites on Syfy.

That’s the sound of a neighbor’s tree, big old maple that shaded your garden too much, but now never will again. Apparently it was hollow and had to be brought down at some point before a storm did it first. Only problem, the neighbor’s anchor line, the type that’s always held before – you’ve seen him topple a giant fir in the front, and you weren’t too concerned when he started this noisy, chain-sawing spring break project on Tuesday – that anchor line snapped a chunk of wood that had been set in concrete, according to your neighbor, and the thing whizzed past his ear, whilst the tree’s top section fell across his fence, crumpling your husband’s homemade wood shed.

It only grazed the house corner. You are glad.

You excuse yourself from the computer to grab one more fistful of semisweet chips from the cupboard, your fingers still slightly shaking. Your little old doggy, whose door to the yard has been blocked by the commotion, gets distressed and piddles on the carpet.

This, and at Brevity yesterday, this, an accurate story of rejection.

Understatement rules.