Five Years

The summer has begun, and I’m reading and writing and hoping to get a few things done. Graduation day felt like kind of the cusp, the transition from class time into this other less structured time, but one thing I failed to mention about graduation — one of the nicest things, or, well, the nicest, was being invited by a cadet to his commissioning ceremony, and then being (somewhat surprisedly) asked to say a few words at the ceremony. I don’t know what the word is for the combination between being flummoxed and honored, but that was me, and I hope I did OK. I couldn’t have had anything other than the best things to say about the former cadet and now lieutenant, who’s going to do well and go far, and who I would’ve been grateful to have had as a platoon leader in my days as an NCO: good luck and godspeed, 2LT M.; it was a pleasure and a privilege to work with you, and I hope — know — you’ll stay in touch.

So, after the cusp: with considerable pruning, the grape vine is flourishing beautifully on the pergola — the advice I found about trimming it back by more than half each year was right on the mark — but the birds are already in and picking the tiny berries away. The creepy carnival is back in town this weekend, but they’ve repainted the funhouse with a penguins theme, though the penguins’ lopsided eyes and beakéd lipless grins bring to mind nothing more than a Steve Buscemi psychopath. Tink is favoring her luxating patella again, and I wonder if the pain in that bad knee is connected to the incoming thunderstorms that mark June’s transition to ninety-degree weather, but she’s also my queen of feline neurosis; the girl who runs and hides when she hears childrens’ voices outside.

And this blog is five years old. Much more about the cats and the house and such than it was when I started; much less about scholarship and investigating ideas. Much more about the quotidian and the certain; much less about the abstract and the questions.

That feels like a bit of a loss.

Five Years

4 thoughts on “Five Years

  • June 9, 2008 at 6:48 pm
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    Happy anniversary, Mike! You need to join Facebook.

  • June 9, 2008 at 9:24 pm
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    Nope. Took myself *off* Facebook and MySpace.

    But thanks for the anniversary wishes. 🙂

  • June 10, 2008 at 5:24 pm
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    Wellllll. Okay. How did your cat get the luxating patella–is it the result an accident or is it congenital?

  • July 6, 2008 at 3:38 pm
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    Congenital. The problem’s very common to small dogs, especially corgis, who can get so used to it that they’ll simply kick their back leg outwards while running to snap the kneecap back into place. Tink does the same thing, but more slowly: think of doing a bent-over hip extension and that’s her, with the right leg way out to the back. The problem’s not uncommon in cats, apparently.

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