It's been a busy couple of days working and running around in 90 degree heat--and seriously, will it never end??--plus there was a bit of excitement with the dogs and a grocery cart, and a surprising discovery at a home improvement center.
Yesterday...
It was time to transplant my two palm trees, both bursting out of their pots. This is a real chore because they weigh a ton and I have to haul them down two flights of stairs, repot them, then haul them back up two flights of stairs. But, it needed to be done and I've procrastinated long enough.
So, after walking the dogs in the morning, I went to Home Depot to buy bigger containers, and because it was already too hot to leave the dogs in the car, I took one of their beds from the car, stuffed it into a grocery cart, and plopped in both dogs. Max think the cart is a giant moving cage and wants out badly. Ozzy loves going into the store, but doesn't want to share the bed or the cart space with Max.
If they could talk, it would have been:
"I don't want to be in this cage. Letmeoutletmeoutletmeout. Help, I'm in a cage. Now I'm hyperventilating, I can't breathe, I'm drooling. Letmeoutletmeout. I'M GOING TO DI-II--EE!" Poor Max...
In the meantime, because Max is tense and standing in the bed, ready to jump at the first opportunity, Ozzy is cranky because he likes to lay down and watch everything that goes by while he's being pushed in his own carriage like the prince he knows himself to be.
"He's touching me! Eewww, now he's drooling on me! Make him stop touching me! HE'S TOUCHING ME!" He stands, growling and snarking...which just makes Max more worried and upset. Jeez, why do I bother? Sigh...
Finally, after resettling Ozzy, trying to calm Max, I get the pots, then wander into the houseplant area, which is a separate greenhouse-type building, and discover that, amazingly, they have a great selection of bonsai plants.
[Digression: I love bonsai. I had a most beautiful one in Edinburgh (Bob, photo on the left) that I had to leave behind with my neighbor, who has cared for him since I left Scotland two years ago. I got another one from a local garden center here in southern Oregon, but it died within a month. Living in the wilderness doesn't allow for much in the way of exotic purchases, so I was not only startled, but excited, to find a whole shelf of bonsai plants yesterday at Home Depot, of all places.]
I'm in the main aisle, with rows of plants in tall, deep shelving units on both sides of me. They have an overhead watering system, with drains in the floor, and the place is humid, jungle-like and filled to bursting with plants. I see a particular bonsai down a very narrow side aisle that I want to check out, so I tell the boys to behave, I'll be right back, and I go to investigate. I'm digging through foliage and plants when out of the corner of my eye, I see something moving. I jerk my head up just in time to see the cart, with both dogs staring right at me, shoot past. I leap forward, skid around the corner of the shelving unit, take three giant steps, stretch into the diving lunge move...and literally grab the cart handle about one inch before it smacked into a huge wall of clay pots at the end of the aisle.
Holy crap.
After I catch my breath, and determine the pounding of my heart isn't actually going to kill me, I start laughing. The boys aren't as amused as I am, especially Max, but hey, it was a great save, and I'm totally relieved disaster has been averted. It's also about this point that I realize the floor is slanted, apparently so the water from the sprinkler set-up will drain properly. Go figure.
I do love a twisty trunk on a bonsai, it just looks so cool and Tolkienesque to me. This one is bigger than Bob--and I don't like the peculiar container--but it's still a miniature tree, and it will be great fun to have another one.
So. In the end I got some nice, inexpensive pots for the palms, made an unexpected exotic find, and managed to not nuke my dogs.
All things considered? It was a good day.
It's all a test, isn't it? Life, I mean. In every day, there's at least one moment when we have a choice--the free will option, if you will--to choose kindness over cruelty, patience over haste, tolerance over temper, trust over fear. Whether we pass or fail is entirely up to each of us.
Sometimes the test is monumental, overwhelming, excruciatingly difficult; or maybe just getting out of bed was the test. Some days the test might be barely recognizable, but then, that's part of it, too: paying attention.
This morning. I take the boys to the soccer field park; now that school has started the park is quiet, not many folks around and I can usually let the dogs off-leash for a nice run along the river.
I'm meandering along, keeping my eye on the boys as they run willy-nilly, having a good few minutes of freedom, when I see across the vastness of the soccer field--and in the direction we are heading--a man sitting on the remnant of an old foundation wall that must have been either a restroom or a maintenance shed of some kind many years ago. All that's left of the original building is the thigh-high rectangle of crumbling cement with trees, bushes and weeds reclaiming the space. It's a good place to sit, right beside the river, and I've done it several times, as have others. Like this guy who appears to be reading a newspaper as he sits on the wall in the sunshine.
Several minutes later, we've come halfway around the field and are approaching the path that will take us directly past the man. I squint into the sun because I can't figure out what the large black object is at his feet. A big duffel bag? A body wrapped in a tarp? I call the dogs to me, leash them up, and slowly walk forward until I'm about 20 feet or so from the man.
And then the duffel bag moves, stands, stretches and I realize I have inadvertently walked into deep trouble. The Rottweiler outweighs me by many muscle groups. His teeth are bigger than my fingers--a comparison I quickly make when he yawns, mouth open and foot-long tongue curling. I stop dead in my tracks when I see the dog is not leashed. And then from behind the man, another head rises out of the shrubs.
What do you do when the fight or flight option isn't relevant in the least? It's a debilitating sensation to have your brain say Run!, but your body say Don't move! We're dead meat if we run.
Now, in the 3 seconds this all transpires, the guy continues to blithely read his newspaper. I'm stunned by his lack of concern. Which fortunately breaks the spell of imminent death and dismemberment that has frozen me in place. Quietly, I say, "Have you got your dogs close?"
He raises his head and looks my direction. He's really handsome, in a bad-boy-biker sort of way, with dark hair and a trim, sharp goatee, one glittery stud in his right earlobe. "I surely do, ma'am," he says in the softest southern drawl I've heard in years. Holy crap. "May-am" just might be my new favorite word.
"It's just my dogs are quite small and yours are so big..." I drift to a halt as the second dog practically steps over the 3-foot wall with no effort and joins the first, both staring at Ozzy and Max like they're potato chips. Which is about the right snack-to-mouth ratio.
The guy chuckles, then says something under his breath, and both dogs immediately lay down at his feet. Now, they haven't stopped the "bet you're tasty" stare, and both are drooling as they focus on my boys, but wow, it seems with just a whisper the guy has control. Still. They're animals. Big, big animals.
I leash the dogs close and walk forward. Max wants to greet the guy because he feels everyone wants to pet him, but no way in the world am I going to let him walk between these two giants.
"They won't hurt your dogs," the guy says as he sees me pull Max to heel.
"I can't tell you how many times I've had someone say that to me, right before their dog decided to eat mine."
He looks straight at me, smiles and quietly says, "I just wouldn't let that happen." And I believe him. A total stranger with two huge dogs that could kill a rhino if they wanted to. But I trust him, take him at his word.
"Good to know," I say as I walk past.
Once I get beyond them, I turn and, walking backwards, smile at the guy. "Thanks," I say.
"You're welcome, ma'am." He raises a hand to his forehead and makes a gesture like he's tipping his hat, then goes back to reading his newspaper, the dogs laying quietly at his feet in the sun.
Was that my test for the day? Trust a perfect stranger instead of react to the fear that could have caused a real problem for everyone? Or did I just luck out and happen to stumble across a perfect southern gentleman, out of time and place?
I don't know, but you can bet my head will be filled with that soft drawl for awhile...
