Suspiciously Smooth

Today was a Monday back in the office after a Friday out, with the boss coming in tomorrow, and me possibly out for three days for the joy of jury duty. And I think I got EVERYTHING done ... which, as sure as I am of myself, always gives me pause. I never quite like feeling 100% efficient on a day so strategically placed, with time so truncated.

And yet ... I'm pretty sure I did the whole job today, and exceedingly well. I was on top of everything from the plug-ins for my boss's upcoming expense reporting, to a pot luck I won't be able to go to, to diplomacy, to tech requests, to research and sleuthing, to a full slate of preparatory documentation and housekeeping, with backing-up, for the possiblility of my absence.

Sometimes you have to suck it up and admit success. Hmm.



And now I sit outside, in the beauty of the day, my signal not overpowering - but it's there - and enjoying a breeze. Sure, the dog's crying and won't sit down and relax. But even as I type it, she finally reclines: Sir Sidney, on guard at the keep gates. My late beloved neighbor next door said she used to call my dog Sir Sidney, because she thought "he" looked like a knight. So alert, so handsome, so erect in her guardian position.

To be sure, Siddy does take care of me. And I have never been precious about mistaken pet gender assignments. Sid is generally assumed to be male. She has a strength about her, so I take it as the compliment it is - and certainly, if someone's making friends, "Hey boy" has never yet caused her to complain. (Ask me about the male cat I once had, named Gert ...)


***


So here I sit behind the perimeter set by my beautiful, vigilant Sir Siddy. Warm, yet not hot, in the brightness of afternoon's deeply angled sun. The world green about me, the dogwood - and other trees - bending softly with the active, but not restless, air. The rows traced by the lawnmower still clear in the even turf, the once-tiny Japanese maple as thick as a healthy bush.

And this is mine, and Sid's - and we had a good day at work, she and I. And I am home now, as is proper, to be with her.

Traffic is thinning. And I can admit. I've had worse-failure days than this one seems to want to be.