His face will not be seen again

Some of you who've been reading this for awhile may remember a character I know I've mentioned once or twice – a man about town I used to refer to as "the Sweater," because he was always sweating. I just found out he died this week. He was two years younger than me.

This is not someone I was close to, or even knew very well. But I did know him, and I always hated how ambivalent I felt about him. On the one hand, he was interesting – and there's a sad shortage of what I would call "interesting" people in this town, people who would catch my attention in a crowd, whom I would watch and think about possibly getting to know. He did a lot of volunteering, like I do, and always seemed to be around, at any public event and even at weird private functions where I wouldn't expect to see anyone I knew. He also had a certain rough kind of charm, despite the sweating and the cigars. He was intelligent and unconventional and accomplished (in some things). He seemed like someone who might have become a friend.

But he never did. He had a creepy, drunken, angry and out of control side that always seemed to come to the forefront of any conversation or interaction I had with him, and usually sooner (rather than later). We might start out talking about dogs, and then dog breeding, and then suddenly he would have turned it into a leering inquisition into my reproductive status, and whether I might be interested in "mating" sometime.

It didn't take many of those conversations before I started avoiding him.

Over the last year or so though I had started feeling weird about that. Enough time had passed since he'd offended me that I started seeing him as neutral again, instead of as an icky, unpredictable oddball best steered clear of. Also, his health was clearly deteriorating. He was always out of breath, and sweating more than ever. He'd always been fat, but suddenly he was really fat – so fat his skin looked tight and shiny, as if it might split right open – so fat his arms always seemed to be floating out to his sides. His feet and legs (always in shorts) were starting to look dark and burned, maybe from the sun, or maybe from some kind of skin condition. Actually, after all the reading I did about diabetes last year I was assuming it was a sign of nerve damage or necrobiosis lipoidica (look it up); certainly his feet and lower legs looked ripe for amputation, even though he was still using them to walk around on.

Anyway, all of these factors combined to soften my attitude toward him, and the few times I saw him I did say hi, and even used his name, which seemed to please him. But I still kept my distance. I didn't want to take a chance at having my day disrupted by some off-color remark.

A few weeks ago I was with a friend at the cafe near my office when he sauntered by on his tight, swollen legs and worn-down flip-flops. I knew he'd been in jail for awhile, and was now living in his car with several large dogs. "I'm worried about him," I said. "He's going to die if he doesn't start taking better care of himself."

And now he has died, and I feel strangely guilty for not feeling something more than just plain old sad. I wish I hadn't predicted his death out loud, even though his decline was obvious to anyone who cared to see.

It's strange to think I won't be seeing him around anymore. He's been a strong and visible presence in town for as long as I've lived here.

And what could I have done for him, other than what I did, which was to say hello and smile and assert myself, even if it was only lightly, as a friendly presence in his life? You can't tell people what to do, how to take care of themselves. We all do the best we can. Acceptance and support are what helps people heal – or maybe not even heal, but just live. Not criticism, contempt or unsolicited advice.

Still. It makes me want to try a little harder to extend myself to people around me, who could maybe use an encouraging word from time to time. Really, who couldn't?

Liver and onions and beer, oh my!

I've been having so many random and (to me) very interesting thoughts lately, I've decided just to do a sort of round-up of the ridiculous today. And since Blogger now seems to be accepting photo uploads again, you're in luck – there are pictures!

1. Liver and onions Every once in awhile when Mr. A is away for several days I take advantage of the opportunity to stink up the house with one of my favorite meals: liver and onions. He thinks it's disgusting, but I – and the dogs – beg (yes, they literally beg) to differ. It's delicious! I get the regular beef liver, not the pale and insipid-looking calves' liver, which lacks the requisite deeply, bloody and oh-so-livery flavor we love.

Tonight while enjoying this classic dish (if liver and onions can be called a dish, and why can't it? It can!) I realized one reason why people might not realize how glorious it really is. The name is all wrong. If you make it like the name says – plain old liver, with plain old onions – it really is nothing special. What it should be called instead is "liver and onions and ketchup." It's the ketchup that makes it magic. Add on top of that a cold non-alcoholic lite beer, drunk straight from the bottle, and you have a meal fit for kings, dogs and frequently anemic red-haired and carb-restricted diabetics with a few pounds left to lose. (No onions for the dogs, of course – onions are toxic to canines!)

2. Summer reading. Someone asked what I've been reading lately and so I will report that I'm back to Alice Munro, whose oeuvre I still haven't exhausted even though I guess she's not putting out much new material lately (or possibly at all). Right now I'm reading a story collection called "The Love of a Good Woman," which contains the following very arresting paragraph:

There are people who carry decency and optimism around with them, who seem to cleanse every atmosphere they settle in, and you can't tell such people things, it is too disruptive ... It used to be older people who claimed this protection from you, but now it seemed more and more to be younger people, and someone like Eve had to try not to reveal how she was stranded in between. Her whole life liable to be seen as some sort of unseemly thrashing around, a radical mistake.

At this point in the story the main character, Eve, has just returned her young grandchildren to her daughter after an afternoon of unintentional adventures during which what started out as a light-hearted and spontaneous turn off the road came very close (or felt like it might be about to come very close) to going horribly, hideously wrong. The sense of uneasiness, of having escaped something without being quite clear exactly what it was, the nebulous guilt and wondering if the grandchildren will mention it to their mother ....

Oh blah. You just have to read it. "Her whole life liable to be seen as some sort of unseemly thrashing around ..." A feeling, a vague worry I know so well.

3. TV yoga. I just learned that our cable package includes an on-demand channel that has a dozen or so occasionally updated yoga and Pilates programs you can watch whenever you want. Most of them are only about ten minutes long, so I've been stringing them together into nice little custom workouts of varying lengths, to be performed on either end of my dogwalks, bike rides and other forms of exercise. I'm enjoying this very much.

4. More gardening. I got a sweet 100 tomato, a sugar baby watermelon and more of those tiny delicious Alpine strawberry plants. It's going to be a delicious summer.

5. Dog shave. I gave Tater a day off on Saturday to rest and recover from his trauma at the vet, and then on Sunday we gave him a bath and shaved him down. We took a whole shopping bag full of hair off him and he looks great – sleek, sweet and slippery as a seal. We found several foxtails already worked halfway under his skin, so our timing was perfect. Plus, every hair that ended up in that bag is a hair that will not end up on the floor. Or in my bed. Or between the pages of books, or on my t-shirt, or in the soup, or in any other place. Hooray! I do love his long silky beautiful hair (it was one of the reasons I picked him, and our next dog will have the same kind of hair – I'm addicted to it!), but it's nice for a few months out of the year to have a little break from cleaning it up all the time.

So here he is before the haircut, hiding next to the picnic table. Click for the big picture; you can actually see cookie we bribed him with, and the whites of his eyes as he glances at me over his shoulder as if to say, "Do we really have to do this TODAY?"

And here's the after, with a pile of hair and a pair of scissors included for scale. It really is a great big pile of hair, right?

6. American Idol. Speaking of addiction – I got hooked on this show last year totally by chance, and this year I've been mesmerized by it all over again. It's on in the background right now (I can't stand to actually watch the whole thing, I just love to follow the action) and in just a few minutes, maybe even before I finish writing this post, they will announce the winner for this year. It's been especially interesting to me this year because there were two Mormon contestants, and now it looks like one of them is going to win. If he does, I wonder what he'll do in two years when it's time to go on his mission?

7. Blueberry season. Just as in winter there is a time when I start checking the produce aisle almost every day to see if the satsumas are in yet, in summer there's a time when I start looking for local blueberries. Well, today was the day! They're back, and they're only a buck and change for the little package – not eight dollars like the ones from Chile were just a couple of months ago (not that I ever buy berries out of season, of course – that would be so un-green of me).

8. Silver clogs. Another obsession I haven't quite decided to satisfy yet ... I'm still just fantasizing over pictures online.

For example, these. I love the little flowers and have been intensely tempted to get them even though the closest they have to my size is about two sizes too big. Maybe with socks ...?

Or these. I love the high heel, and the fact that the strap can be worn in two different positions – over the top, or back behind the heel. Plus, they're Swedish!

I have to give props to Julie here as the fabulous person who got me started on the metallic clogs thing, with this picture (the second one down – click it for the big version in which the shoes are clearly visible) in one of her Monday fashion posts. I highly recommend these posts if you're not already aware of them; we chicks-in-the-sticks really rely on our friends on the ground in hip places to keep us informed of what's being worn in the upper echelons of real street fashion and Writermama never fails to deliver in this regard. Thanks, Julie!

Realistically, silver shoes are something I will probably end up Not getting. I know myself well enough to know that if I did get them, that would be about all I'd do with them – get them, but not wear them. Silver is a color I love to look at, but not to wear. Those second ones come in metallic bronze so I might get those, though my worry is that they'll be 1) too narrow, 2) too uncomfortable, or 3) both.

Still, that's what returns are for, right?

Million dollar dog

Foxtail season is here, and it arrived this year with a bang – the sound of my jaw hitting the floor at the vet's office when I went to pick up my darling yesterday and learned that the total would be a whopping eight hundred dollars. True, I did also get just about everything else done that has been needing to get done for the last year or so (in addition to removing the foxtail from his sinuses we had his teeth cleaned and a little dental surgery performed, plus feet, butt, heartworm testing and meds, not to mention three different kinds of anesthesia, post-operative pain relief and not one but two kinds of antibiotic treatments) – so all in all I guess it shouldn't have been such a surprise.

Still. Eight hundred bucks. That hurt.

He's worth it, though. I know I must've said this before but I'll say it again: My feelings for this dog are the most clear and uncomplicated feelings I've never had about anyone in my life, and I've never had a millisecond of regret or a single second thought about him. That kind of clarity is so rare for me; usually I see so many different angles on every relationship.

We went for a long walk tonight and it was glorious. It got suddenly so hot this week, so unimaginably and unbearably hot (after just last week having to wear my winter long johns again and put an extra blanket on the bed), that I haven't done much of any kind of exercise for five days. Tonight as the sun went down though the air finally started to cool a bit and since the moon was out and the mosquitos were not, we walked up and down the road until it got too dark to see (no street lights out here).

What else? I'm still busier than I like to be at work, but I don't expect that will last much more than a few more weeks. We went to the community garden this morning and picked up three new varieties of tomato plants to try – Mortgage Lifter, Anna's Noir and Black Prince – plus a jalapeño, some red onion starts, a yarrow and a few more strawberry plants. I also went by my old garden plot and took some starts from a favorite old salvia of mine that is still growing there. I don't know what it's called but it gets about 6 feet tall and has the most beautiful sky-blue flowers – kind of unusual, and reasonably drought-tolerant, which is a must for any ornamental plant we grow on the property, since water's so scarce and expensive these days.

On week three of the leg-waxing experiment I finally broke down and waxed them again, on my own at home this time. The little hairs that were too short to get caught in the wax the first time were finally long enough to both drive me insane AND get caught in today's application of wax, which I applied rather messily while standing on a mat of old newspapers with my leg up under the spotlight above the kitchen sink. The results ... I can't tell yet, but I think they should be about as good as the salon. It is a very hot and sticky proposition to wax your own legs though, so if I do continue to go this route I might end up going back to the nice lady who did them last time.

I also forgot to mention that during week two, there was a period of several days during which my legs were itching so badly I thought I might scratch myself to death in my sleep before those little ingrown hairs finished growing out. If it happens again I might have to give up on waxing altogether. I am a little bit hair-obsessed, but I also have a very low tolerance for itching of any kind, especially when the whole point is supposed to be increased comfort and ease.

And finally: Yesterday I was walking up and down the aisles of the grocery store looking for the cottage cheese (the doctor-recommended meal for dogs coming out from under anesthesia, which makes them groggy and nauseous) when suddenly I heard a familiar song on the PA ... The Hustle! I don't know why but that song makes me so happy, and it was all I could do to stop myself from breaking out into a little dance right there in bulk foods. I kept walking, and when I turned a corner I saw two people dancing – and then in the next aisle, another person was getting down to the music! And then a little girl! And then – me! It was a great little community moment right there in the dairy aisle.

Mistakes were made

Mistakes were made, and I'm mostly just glad that the biggest ones weren't made by me. I did make a few though, chief of which was the assumption that people who respond to an email with "Looks great! Go for it!" have actually READ the thing I'm asking them to approve. Turns out – not so much.

The events of this week have made me so, so, SO SO SO VERY GLAD I did not quit my job to take the job I almost took last month. You may recall I'm still doing some work for the second organization on the side, and even just a few hours a week has been enough to reveal that it's even more shambolic than I had realized – shambolic being a word I just learned while trying to look up the difference between "unorganized" and "disorganized."

It's good that I keep copies of everything. I have emails that clearly show where the oversights occurred, and that might will be useful in helping people understand what happened (and that it was not all my fault). It doesn't solve the real problem, though, which is that this project was already behind schedule before I even became involved, and figuring out what went wrong or even getting a partial credit from the printer cannot change the fact that the success of the thing was largely dependent on the timing – which there is no way to fix. It's too late and that's all there is to it.

And it is satisfying in a way to find an email that shows the mistake that was being yelled about today was actually caused by the person who did the yelling ... But I'm not looking forward to telling her that. I'll have to be very straightforward and diplomatic to be able to explain what happened without appearing to be pointing fingers, or shirking responsibility for my mistakes (even though this one was not mine).

Meanwhile I'm back to 40+ hours a week at my regular gig, at least for the next several weeks, so it suddenly doesn't make a lot of sense to be piling on the side projects again. Knowing this is only a small auxiliary source of income takes a lot of the pressure off – I'm not dependent on the money, so my main motivation is just to do my best work and help the group.

I guess that's why I'm feeling bad about this tonight. I want the project to go well, and it isn't. I'm doing all I can, and it isn't enough. They really need someone who can devote themselves full-time to the work, and that person ain't me. The only reason I'm still working with them at all is to try to help them through the interim until they find someone to hire ... and I was clear that I couldn't commit a lot of time.

This is an organization I've been involved with for more than ten years and I'm suddenly remembering all the friends who've worked for it for awhile, then quit citing burnout due to these same kinds of problems. Hrmm.

Well, we'll see what happens. Right now I have some press releases to write.

Jazz goes disco (+ hair)

That's what the guy told me when I walked into the one liquor store on the planet where I knew I could still get my guilty-pleasure beverage of the year – the elusive (but oh so worth the search) Diet Pepsi Jazz.

"They discoed it," he said. "We can't get it anymore."

So the thing I had feared would come to pass – has. It's gone forever. I knew it was coming, but I'm kind of glad I didn't know when ... I was able to enjoy my last sip ever, without the melancholy knowledge that I would never taste its cotton candy-like sickly-sweetness again. It's better that way. Because when you know it's the last time it's just ... weird.

I did a cursory search of the Web to see if I could find an online beverage store that might have a stash laid aside somewhere, but no luck so far. Sigh. I'm okay with it. It's not like I was drinking it anymore anyway – today was just kind of a fluke, like when you find yourself driving past an old flame's neighborhood – just by chance, nothing planned – and spontaneously decide to drop by, just to say hello, and then when you knock on the door a stranger answers, and he's moved, and he didn't tell you, and you realize ... I wasn't sure I was really over him but you know what? I am.

In other news of letting go, I finally went ahead and did the big CHOP today – five inches of hair is gone and I'm pretty sure it includes the last remnants of my ill-advised perm of 1996 ... Remember that? Man, I'll never do that again – anything chemical at all. My hair might not be perfect, but it's finally back to being 100% its real, unadulterated, unevenly wavy and with the occasional weird white one but pretty much A-OK with me, self.

One of the things I like about having plain old long hair is that Mr. A can cut it for me, which saves money I can then use on other hair-maintenance tasks like waxing and eyelash-dying, both of which I may be addicted to for the summer. It's been two weeks since I did both of those things and I have to say – I'm liking the results. There's definitely some new growth on the legs, but those are hairs that were too short to get caught in the wax and there's so little of it that I'm still satisfied with the condition of my legs even though I haven't done anything to them for two whole weeks now – and stubble and itchiness are two things I'm rabidly obsessive about, so that's saying a lot.

The eyelashes are a little different story. I had forgotten how fast eyelashes grow. Usually you don't notice a thing like that, but when new pale red lashes are growing in on top of existing jet black ones, it's pretty clear to see where the new ones are coming in. I'm okay with it still, though, and will probably have it done again before too long – only with a different color of dye next time.

This kind of information – this entire entry, in fact – is sort of silly to post, isn't it? I mean, who really cares about any of this except for me? And even I don't care all that much about it, except that it's nice in future years to be able to go back and search for a word like "perm" or "wax" and find where I wrote what I thought about the whole experience, and make better-informed decisions about whether I might like to do a thing like that again.

Wow – I just looked out the window and there's what I will call a cavalcade of lizards sporting about on top of a couple of big rocks at the back of the garden. Pushups, leaping, zipping around like mad – it's all happening. I might need to get out there and take a look at that in a minute.

P.S. Just for fun (I took this photo down though – sorry!) – here's one of me and the Taterman. He loves to sit under the desk while I'm working on the computer and was begging to be allowed in, even though I'm almost done writing and there really isn't much space for him in there. If you can ignore the dirty floor and the lack of any semblance of style in our kitchen (though I hear avocado-green appliances are making a comeback in certain circles) I think it's obvious he is the biggest sweetheart of a darling of a dog who ever lived.

P.S.2. I'm watching the YouTube of the so-called "goddess of mommy blogging" on the Today Show, and the narrator actually just said, "Blogging ... is cheaper than therapy!" Well, thank you very much, Kathie Lee. That was the tagline for the very first incarnation of this blog, starting in 1999! And actually – the erstwhile goddess herself just said that she started her blog in 2001 – two years after I started mine! Hrrmmm. It's not like I would want to be famous – far from it. But I guess I do take some pride in being an early adopter.

Okay. This is now officially the stupidest post I've written all year. Still. If I ever do go back to graduate school, I would love to do work on this topic. Although I'm sure somebody's already beat me to it by now.

Practicing radical self-care

I've been thinking a lot this last couple of weeks about what happened in my brain last month to cause me to plunge so rapidly into a state of extreme, almost paralyzing anxiety. The experience scared me. A lot. I guess I really had almost convinced myself that nothing like that would ever happen to me again – I was either "cured," or had somehow figured out how to control my stress well enough to prevent it from ever beating up on me like that again.

Now that I've been reminded that this really is something that happens to me sometimes, I've been going over and over this latest episode in my mind trying to figure out what made it different this time – why didn't I go all the way over the cliff?

My first thought is that it's simply because I was able to reel myself back in before the point of no return. Other times when I've gone clear to the bottom of the hole, the stress was not just for a few weeks while I made (and then re-made) an important decision – those were times when it went on and on for months or even years. Maybe this time it was as simple as resolving the situation sooner rather than later. Less stress = less anxiety = less buildup of freakout hormones and chemicals = easier to regain my equilibrium.

But there were other things I did this time that I haven't done before, and I want to remember what they are, because I really think they helped. I won't always be able to remove myself from a bad situation the way I did this time. Next time a crisis arises I don't want to wait a month before I'm willing to start acknowledging what's going on and taking steps to take care of myself.

Here's my list of things I can do as soon as I notice the signs.

1. Tell someone what's happening. Mr. A is always a good one to talk to about this stuff, because he really gets it, and he knows me. But I don't like dumping it all on him all the time. There are other people who understand, and others still who really kind of don't understand but do care and will listen without making me feel like a freak for making such a big deal out of what would look to most people like "nothing."

2. Address my dietary issues. This means no caffeine or sugar, period. Not that I'm doing a lot of them anyway, but when I'm sensitized to stress even very small amounts make a big difference. It also means eating wisely – forcing myself to eat a little something healthy every few hours whether I have any appetite or not, because crazy ups and downs in blood sugar feel a lot like panic attacks and I just don't need to be dealing with that when I'm already stressed.

3. Exercise as hard as I'm physically able to. This time, the first day that I really started to feel somewhat like myself again was the second day of running my ass off on the treadmill. I ran until I couldn't run anymore (which wasn't that long), and then I walked until I felt like I could start running again. I don't know if it was burning up the extra stress hormones, or making new anti-stress ones (endorphins?) but whatever it is, it makes a huge difference – really fast.

4. Deal with the stress immediately – don't wait. If I can get away from the situation altogether, this will always be my first choice, even if it's hard to explain to others who think "pushing through" fear is a character-building experience. It is – but that is not what's happening when I start to go into a downward spin like this. It's one thing to power through discomfort toward some worthy goal, and another to try to force yourself to continue running a marathon when one of your legs has just broken and the other one is also beginning to crack. In a situation like that the only thing that makes sense is to STOP and take care of the immediate issue.

If it's a situation I can't get away from, there are other ways to deal. Meditation, therapy, yoga, massage – all of these help. The point is to do something right away. The reason I waited so long this time is because I was afraid to admit to myself what was happening. I wanted it to be Not Happening and somehow it seemed like by Not Doing Anything I might be able to convince myself that it really wasn't happening. Silly.

I have a real problem with this item because it makes me feel guilty when I do "too much" to make things easy on myself. Some part of me believes I should be strong enough to not need to take such extreme measures as taking a day off work to rest, or even (god forbid) get a massage to try to work some of the tension out of my body. A part of me that I like a lot better knows that in fact I am not that strong, and not only that, but it really is okay to be nice to myself.

It's really important to listen to that part of me when things start to go south.

5. If there's something that I feel obsessively driven to Not Look At – look at that thing first. This one might not be so useful to other people, but it's good for me to remember because every time I've been through this kind of experience (at least so far) there has been some personal issue of monumental proportions that I've been trying to avoid looking at, and I think the stress of trying to force myself into denial is the main energy that drives me into depression.

As an example, I have these little cards with sayings on them that I consult sometimes when I'm feeling like I don't know what to do. I'll just pull out the deck and go through it card by card, pulling out the ones that speak to me, then just sit with each of them for awhile and let the words soak in. This time I pulled about six cards. One of them, though, even though I picked it I somehow still could not bring myself to read it. Every time I came to it, I quickly put it back on the bottom of the stack. It says, "If you think you might be procrastinating, try listening inward for the feelings of the part of you who isn't so sure that whatever you aren't yet doing would really be all right for you to do at all!"*

Of course as it turned out that was exactly what was going on. I didn't want to do the thing I was thinking about doing, but I didn't think it was okay to not want to, so I was going to force myself to do it anyway.

Learning to recognize these things early, and being willing to look at them as soon as I see them ... maybe that would make it easier to stop suffering a little sooner.

There are some attitudinal things on the list too, things like "Be willing to at least consider medication" and "Remember that it all passes eventually." I've found though that when the trouble is in my mind, mind-based solutions don't work so well. So this list is for things I can actually do – not just think about.

* I really can't recommend the creator of these cards highly enough – her writing has truly changed my life, and I don't say that lightly. The art and design are a little cheezy and some of the language struck me at first as kind of a turnoff, but her message is just about the most right-on thing I've ever heard in my life. For example:

To openly acknowledge and appreciate that we can act only from what feels so for us in the moment – no matter what an outside eye might see as the supposed truth-of-the-matter – this is a revolutionary stance. It is a radical act of self-care and self-loving to honor our inner voices above all others. And, it is equally radical to act to protect our selves from what might, to others, seem to be imaginary fears.

When you feel uneasy, unsafe or not-okay in any situation, consider taking your feelings seriously (no matter where they may be coming from) and honoring them by practicing radical self-care.

Why did I have to wait until my 30's to hear someone tell me it's okay to take my feelings seriously, even if they don't seem to make any sense – and take action to protect myself even if others think my fears are "imaginary"? Just reading the words makes me want to cry. In fact, I think I may just go ahead and do that ... it feels so good to cry sometimes!

One of these days I'll put together a list of other resources along these lines ... there are so many people who have really helped me through their work – including other bloggers – and I love to share.

Attacked by moles!

Okay, so there was only one mole. And to be fair, I did "attack" first – but not really.

We were taking a break from digging a truckload of compost into the ginormous hole in the ground that is going to be our garden this year, when I noticed the ground appeared to be digging itself in one corner. Soil was writhing and undulating ... then still again ... then ... moving a little more ...

Realizing it had to be either a gopher or a mole, and since we were both standing there with shovels in our hands, we decided to move quickly. These seldom-seen creatures are some of my favorites (notwithstanding the destruction they've been wreaking on our neatly planted rows of spinach, lettuce and chard), and it's usually impossible to really get a look at one unless it's already dead. So we ever so silently crept toward the scene of the disturbance, Mr. A with shovel raised and me poised to grab.

At the signal, he PLUNGED the shovel in deep and flipped the mole up into the light of day. I was thinking it would be stunned by the suddenness of this maneuver, and sit still long enough for us to take a gander at its adorable giant pink hands and little pointed snout. But no. It started screaming and instantly dug itself back into the loose soil – seriously, instantly. Without thinking, I lunged forward and grabbed it (very gently, of course), wanting just a micro-second more to look at the thing.

That was when it bit me. I was wearing heavy leather work gloves (would not have tried to touch it without them) so it didn't break the skin, but wow – if I hadn't been wearing them those teeth would have done some damage. It was fighting for its life!

I dropped it of course, and then – I don't know why I can't just leave these things alone – urgently commanded Mr. A to dig it out again. Then the whole cycle repeated, concluding with more hair-raising screams, frantic scrambling, vicious biting and a split-second (yet well-considered) decision to let the mole get back to what he'd been doing before we so rudely interrupted.

Let this be a lesson to me: never dig in the dirt, or go anywhere or do anything at all, without the camera within easy reach. I would love to have had a little video of the mole digging its way back to safety. From the state of our planting beds recently though I suspect I may have more than just this one opportunity to get that footage this year.

P.S. Since everyone and their dog seems to be "going green" these days I decided to reduce-reuse-and-recycle last year's spring header, at least until I get around to doing a new one.