Seventh Inning Booty Moving

Seventh inning stretch, and some guy has taken off his shirt and dances in the aisle, his flab shifting beneath his leathery skin like a couch from the 70's come to life. His jean shorts have ridden down, and the crack of his narrow, bony ass peeps out demurely just over the top of his brown leather belt as he gyrates.

Katie does a slow take to me as everyone else does their best to look anywhere but at this guy. There's no metaphor, no larger lesson - just a middle aged guy dancing with his shirt off to some hair band while the Yankees pause in their shellacking of the Toronto Blue Jays on a mild evening in May.

Ooooh, Burn.

The vast array of gum and candy in front of the registers is daunting, and it takes me a few seconds to find the exact brand I'm looking for. I toss the box of Dentyne down in front of the register at the exact moment a white haired man walks up attempting to buy a bagel, but, since I'd already spoken to the cashier, she takes my money. The man looks at me like I'm the bad guy, but seriously, I was there first, and the cashier moves on quickly after I've paid and asks the man if he needs anything else.

He shoots me a dirty look, "Well, now that I think of it, I could use some gum."

Just Don't Call Her Late for (Insisting on) Breakfast

That swimming to the surface feeling of waking from deep sleep, up from darkness to the bright claxon of the alarm. Normally I don't sleep straight through the morning, as there is usually a cat doing her passive-aggressive best (stomping with all her weight on my chest, curling up around my head and purring loudly into my ear, flexing her needling claws in what may or may not be genuine affection so that they puncture the thin skin on the inside of my arm, and oh, were you sleeping?) to awaken me in the small hours that I might feed her sooner rather than later.. Today, strangely, she is absent.

As I walk into the kitchen, however, she comes trotting down the hall meowing in distress, like someone late to an appointment she slept through, and demanding that, despite her seeming neglect, I fulfill my obligations to her now, please?

Maybe I'm Not Ready to Quit My Addiction

I take my phone back into the bedroom promptly at eight o'clock, plug the charger into it, place it on the nightstand, and walk away. This is all part of my plan to be more "present" and "available" to my experience at nights - talking to my wife, playing with the cat, cooking dinner, instead of spending the night fucking around on Facebook and playing Dots (have you played Dots? Dots is really awesome).

Later, I snap at Katie for the third time (or fourth?) over something inconsequential, saying, "Why are you being so contrary?"

"Well, normally it makes you laugh," she says with a brittle smile.

Good Advice

"Urijah Faber, he's teaching me how to fight in this dream, and it's, like, underneath the Manhattan bridge, actually under it with the girders and stuff, or maybe it's just an underpass. So he asks me to show him what I've got, and I put my fists up," I raise my hands, "like this, but my thumbs are sticking out, and my arms don't work right."

"And Urijah smiles this really big smile, and he tells me not to worry about it, because I have to get my kicks working, and if I use my kicks, he says nobody'll be able to stop me."

Katie listens to all this very seriously, and then says, "Pookie, you're not allowed to be a UFC fighter."

Darkness at Noon. And Most of the Day, Actually

The day has had a slight air of gloom about it since morning, and now, as we attempt to walk off an early afternoon's brunch, both Katie's phone and mine buzz simultaneously in our pockets. We pull them out to see the weather alert from the National Weather Service, suggesting not just that we might have some weather, but that, indeed, we should get the hell indoors immediately due to some sort of impending, apocalyptic wrath of God shit. "Remember," the notice finishes ominously, "if you are close enough to hear thunder, you are close enough to be struck by lightning."

We wait on our stoop for a half-hour as the darkness increases rapidly, until we start to see umbrellas unfolding into existence a block away, and the passers-by begin to pass us by with increasing urgency, first strolling, then walking, and finally, as the hiss of the swift approaching rain dials up into a roar, running.

Cerberus Minus One

The best way to find a dog park (which is where you want to go if you want to watch dogs play at night before you go see a movie) is to follow the guy with two dogs walking late at night into the park, so we follow him and his samoyeds. The dogs seem pretty happy just to be out for a stroll, but the guy stops abruptly by a fence, looks both ways, then picks up one of the dogs, and flings him over the fence onto the grass. The dog seems to be used to this, and waits patiently where he landed on his feet while his twin is also picked up and flung, whereupon they both begin to dash in tandem around the grass like crazy things, rolling and tumbling over one another, wrestling and laughing open mouths, pink tongues lolling.

Katie watches enraptured as they execute a perfectly synchronized hairpin turn, says, "They're like one animal in two bodies"