Something Burrowed, Something Blew

Early last week, Denise and I spent an afternoon working on the cinder-block walls of the basement hatch, chiseling away at decades-old mortar and then filling the cracks with freshly mixed Hydroxic cement.¹ The hatchway doors were open, of course, to let the warm rays of the sun in and the stifling clouds of dust out. In between the chiseling and the filling phases, a mole scrambled two-thirds of the way across the edge of the hatch before it lost its footing and tumbled to the basement floor, landing at Denise’s feet. Not the squeamish type, Denise was ready to kill the mole right where it stood.² However, I stayed her hand and proposed another, more entertaining idea. I collected the mole in a small container and brought it outside. Then I called our dog over.

I’d like to say that our lovable mutt Sonya fulfilled her appointed role as head of pest control admirably, but alas, she does not quite possess what one would call “hunting prowess.” The mole zigged and zagged, always just out of Sonya’s reach, across the yard and into the underbrush in the back corner. Sonya searched that corner for the next ten minutes, then gave up and headed back into the house, her head hanging low with disappointment.

~ ~ ~

At the end of the week, we headed to Buffalo. Along with checking out potential venues for our own upcoming nuptials, Denise and I attended the wedding of one of her cousins. Now, I’ve always considered the traditions surrounding the bouquet and the garter to be kind of stupid, if not borderline disturbing. Typically, the single folk have to be begged to participate. And then, they simply stand there, glumly, until one of them gets hit with the item and figures that they might as well pick it up off the floor, since no one else is reaching for it. Yet, at this reception, after the two lucky contestants were done with the whole push-the-garter-up-her-thigh nonsense, the DJ introduced a whole different set of rules that I swear he was making up on the spot. He bade the guy to sit down, had the girl remove the freshly placed garter, and then had her put it on his thigh instead. Every inch past the knee, the DJ said, would correspond to more enjoyment for the bride and groom on their wedding night. I left at this point, not at all interested in what the DJ had in store for the bouquet.

This episode only further cemented in my mind that Denise and I will in no way be observing these traditions when we get married. The only way a garter will find itself airborne is if one of the snake variety interrupts the ceremony and has to be forcibly removed. Also, if I have anything to say about it, none of the following will be found at my wedding, either: groomsmen, bridesmaids, pews, Pachelbel's Canon, wedding cake smeared on the face of someone older than five, attention-seeking DJs, attention-seeking wedding band singers, rain, videographers, George W. Bush, and of course, the Macarena.

Oh yeah, and moles.


¹ It’s kind of like hydraulic cement, but made by grinding Oreo wannabes into a fine paste. The quality isn’t quite as good, but it’s cheaper.
² Presumably, by setting the poor creature’s little feet in a bucket of the cement and dropping it into one of the local ponds. After all, her mother is a mafia queen in certain jurisdictions.^3
3 That is, if Facebook is considered a jurisdiction.