“Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities.”

- C.S. Lewis

They're up to something, I just know it. But what?

No, this isn't a post about Strommie the would-be polygamist who may or may not be being hunted by Kevin, but about another member of the family — our failing guinea pig, Piggy-Wiggy.

He's not eating which, given his normal appetite, is either a sign of the apocalypse or of ill health. He's not taken a morsel for two days, even when enticed with succulent dandelion stems, the crispiest greenbeans or even his favorite treat — a Tic-Tac (the sound of a shaken plastic dispenser half-full of mints usually brings him storming eagerly to the bars of his cage). I suppose if eating your own excrement was a regular part of your diet you might look forward to a Tic-Tac or two as well.

Don't misunderstand — this has been a well-fed piggy-wiggy. He recently finished chewing his way through an entire bale of Timothy Hay, and the Reverend Mother has always prepared him a lovely breakfast salad of fresh greens and cucumber, meanwhile our yard has never wanted for dandelions, which I think he liked because the little fuzzy seeds tickled his nose.

He's at least seven years old, which we've learned is a ripe old age for a guinea pig. We've had him for four years or so, and rescued him from a home with heavy smokers. The white parts of his fur were yellow when we got him and it took a couple of shampoos to restore his natural tones. He was especially lethargic this morning, which the Reverend Mother noticed and reported to the girls, along with the warning to prepare themselves. The Mall Diva and Tiger Lilly were distraught, and took turns sitting with him in their laps for over an hour this morning, working their way through a box of Kleenex in much the same way he used to work his way through a bag of baby carrots.

He's always been a paranoid guinea pig, convinced that everything wanted to eat him, dashing into his plastic pigloo at the slightest disturbance and acting as if a warm bath was in reality some kind of sinister marinade. This may have been hard-wired into his genes. My sister-in-law, who is from Ecuador, was bemused to find we had a guinea pig for a pet. She said her grandmother, who raised guinea pigs, would have thought we were as strange as someone who kept, say, a rooster for a pet. That's because her grandmother raised GPs for food, not companionship.

This morning, however, our pig seemed resigned and rested quietly with the girls, making an occasional grunt of contentment as they stroked his fur. They eventually had to put him back in his cage as they prepared for their expedition today, and I've been monitoring him since then; this is more of a hospice, not a hospital — I'll be sure he's as comfortable as can be, but there'll be no heroic life-preserving interventions.

Then again, he might just pull out of it, declare that he's feeling better and that he thinks he'll go for a walk. If he should, however, expire today it will be an odd Memorial Day coincidence to go along with our last cat dying on Valentine's Day earlier this year.

I'll leave it to the Diva or Tiger Lilly to provide updates, if they're able. No one likes to see his children cry, and I feel sadder for them than for Piggy-Wiggy, who - face it - has had a good run. Right now I'm reminded of a poem I came across and saved a couple of years ago right about the time our hamster took his last spin around the exercise wheel.

Forty-One, Alone, No Gerbil
In the strange quiet, I realize
there’s no one else in the house.
No bucktooth mouth pulls at a stainless-steel teat, no
hairy mammal runs on a treadmill—
Charlie is dead, the last of our children’s half-children.
When our daughter found him lying in the shavings,
trans-mogrified backwards from a living body into a bolt of rodent bread
she turned her back on early motherhood
and went on single, with nothing. Crackers, Fluffy, Pretzel, Biscuit, Charlie,
buried on the old farm we bought
where she could know nature. Well, now she knows it and it sucks.
Creatures she loved, mobile and needy, have gone down stiff and indifferent,
she will not adopt again
though she cannot have children yet,
her body like a blueprint
of the understructure for a woman’s body,
so now everything stops for a while,
now I must wait many years
to hear in this house again the faint
powerful call of a young animal.
— by Sharon Olds, from The Wellspring © Alfred A. Knopf.

Update:

Our beloved Piggy-wiggy died last night after a few seizures. I miss him so much right now. I feel really bad that he had to die alone in the dark. He was my baby, and if love could have saved him, he would have lived forever. Same goes for the cat.
TL.

"Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the yard and shot it."
— Truman Capote

I don't have the experience, yet, of being an author finishing a book so I don't know if Capote's words are apt. It seems to me the writing-publishing experience is more like being a parent and having a child leave the nest. As the parent of a soon to be 19-year-old still in the nest but beginning to make her own way I marvel at how what I’ve “created” has taken on a life of her own; how the countless hours spent shaping and imagining and agonizing over just the right word has inspired dialogue with subtleties, nuances and complexities I never realized were possible, and how a true character has emerged fully-formed and bursting to go forth.

For years this book was mainly blank pages; pages that consumed my life and were never far from my thoughts no matter what else I happened to be doing. Day by day those pages were filled, and while there are things I’d like to go back and rewrite there’s no guarantee that the story would be even better than it is now; even so I wrestle with the temptation/obsession to continue to tweak and polish.

Will anyone else understand the humor of page 112, or appreciate how difficult it was to write Chapter 19? Certainly not at the level I do, but that knowledge is for my own book, the one written on my heart. Now, though, it is time to see this through; to be proud to see all the time, work and love realized in a tangible package; to admire not just the cover but the spine; to breathe deep the aroma of the fresh pages and the glue that holds them together.

It is good.

The new bird, Chiquita, is starting to adapt to her new environs. She's sharing a cage with the other bird and chirping and whistling. The one thing she hasn't quite accepted is that I'm not going to eat her. I walk past the cage and she immediately flits to the farthest corner away from me in a panic.

So I said to her, "What's the matter, bird — ya yellow?

Saturday night the Reverend Mother and I found ourselves kid-free so we decided to go let it all hang out at our favorite tapas bar. Trust me, we usually get funny looks when we actually say that as opposed to typing it out.

Tapas are small plates of hot or cold Spanish appetizers that you typically order in a series. We like Solera in downtown Minneapolis because the tapas are a creative treat both in flavor and in presentation. While portions are small they are packed with flavor and interesting combinations of meats, vegetables and spices. Generally you choose several from the menu and they are delivered one or two at a time so you can fully appreciate each plate. One time when my wife and I went there we played a little game: she took the cold menu and I took the hot and then we'd each order something without telling the other what was coming. We went three or four rounds like that, sharing each dish as it came and deciding who had made the best choice (believe me, there were no losers).

We didn't get the inspiration to go to Solera this time until late in the day so when we called there was no way to get a table in the restaurant. But, we were told, there was plenty of non-reserved seating on the rooftop patio. Since it was a very pleasant evening we decided to leave our cozy little suburb to go downtown and dine al fresco. Of course, you've first got to change clothes to go downtown, especially on Saturday night. I don't have much that will pass for urban cool, but I put on some khakis, a blue silk camp shirt (untucked, natch) and my Margaritaville loafers — sans socks! The Mall Diva had given me some "Joe" pomade for the new 'do but I already had a stylish head of hat-hair going on from mowing the lawn earlier in the day and I didn't want to become too irresistible since the restaurant is directly across the street from The Amsterdam Hotel, the mecca of gay hospitality in Minneapolis (perhaps "Mecca" and "gay" shouldn't be linked like that). The Reverend Mother did her part to save some souls, wearing those snug jeans I like that could make Elton John look twice. Also, since it was less than 85 degrees, she wore a jacket.

When we got up to the patio there were only a few tables already occupied so we had no trouble finding a place to sit. Despite being on the roof the view isn't much to write about, but I will anyway. The four or five foot wall blocks any sight-lines to the street if you're sitting down, but you can see the top of the Target Center, a parking ramp, some duct-work for the restaurant and the big white screen on the patio where Solera shows movies after dark. You also can't see the two-story billboard for the Amsterdam that features four cute guys cuddling; I guess it's up to you whether that's a positive or a negative. Regardless, it ain't Applebee's.

We decided on the $25 "Tapas for Two" combination from the menu; six different appetizers thoughtfully portioned into even numbers so that you don't have that awkward, "No, dear, you take the last shrimp" moment. The first plate was some barbequed potatoes, very tasty and tangy. Then our black-clad waitress brought us some small grilled sausages and grilled chicken strips in a green chipotle sauce, all on skewers and served on a bed of rice with raisins and mint. The chicken was especially delicious; I told my wife that the chicken was too spicy for her and she wouldn't like it, but somehow she was onto me and didn't fall for it. Next up was a plate of lightly-battered, skewered shrimp the size of small bananas and a bowl of what I think was either acini or risoni pasta and cucumber in a minty sauce. I'm not much of a cucumber fan, but I surprised my wife by eating and enjoying this as well.

I looked around right about then and saw a waitress bringing a plate of what looked like miniature hamburgers to another table. "Oooh, those look good," I remarked to my wife, so I was delighted when our waitress appeared with a similar plate as part of our course. These were actually chorizo sausage patties with a nice cut of roasted red pepper on top, served on mini-buns. Very tasty indeed, and my puppy-eyes prevailed on my wife to give up half of her sandwich, for which I ceded the remainder of the cous-cous and cucumber dish. The finale was a plate of seared tuna slices. They looked rather raw in the middle, but smelled and tasted great and we've since had no ill effects.

We were too full for dessert, but still had a fun evening of great food and better companionship. If you're looking for something to spice up your dining out experience, go "tapas"!

In my life I've had maybe five hairstyles. When I was a tyke my father bought some electric hair clippers, but the only style he ever learned was a buzz cut, which was what I had until about first grade (and for a short, traumatic time in 8th grade).

In first grade I made a stylish leap forward — a "regular boy" cut, parted on the left with a slap of Brylcream to make a debonair wave back from my forehead. Eventually I ditched the Brylcream and let the hair fall over my forehead, permitting the classic head-snap, shoulder-shrug move to clear it out of my eyes. By the time I got to college (and out of my father's sight) I let my hair grow out to about shoulder-length and even tried the part-in-the-middle thing. My hair was naturally wavy and drove the girls mad with jealousy but not much else.

I'd grown out of that by the time I went corporate and was back to the low -maintenance, part-on-the-left, just-over-the-ears-and-collar look. It was pretty much wash-and-wear, with no mousse or gel (or moose-and-squirrel) and definitely no Brylcream. It must have been ok because I was able to induce the not-yet-Reverend Mother to marry me. When I went to get my hair cut on the morning of my wedding day the stylist (perhaps at the behest of my bride) suggested I try something different.

Sure, on the single-most important day of my life, let's take a flyer — maybe it'll keep people from paying too much attention to the rented tux. On that day I converted to a no-part, combed straight back and moussed look, and I stuck with that for the next 19 and a half years. It may have even been stylish for a year or two of that period, but it was always neat and tidy and responded well to my comb. My hair was so used to that grooming that even if I skipped a day without the gel it would still go back that way; my wife called it "memory hair."

Naturally, life with a hair-stylist in the family brings a certain dynamism to the home that means change is inevitable. Last week I sat down in the Mall Diva's styling chair for a cut and mused that maybe I should try something a little diff- ... well that was about all I needed to get out before the she went into a blur of hands, clippers and scissors. Fortunately she knows a few more tricks than my father, but I ended up with short hair on the sides and a little bit longer than that on top. Instead of moussing it straight back however, I was told to put the gel on my finger tips and poke it into my hair, then tousle everything back and forth once or twice, leaving it standing up and pointing in every direction.

Wow. I figured people would think I'd either paid $90 to have my hair professionally zhooshed — or they'd think I'd just gotten out of bed. It's kind of hip, kind of now...and by the end of the day it's a little droopy. My daughter says that is because I'm just using styling gel; I need to switch to pomade. Pomade? I could see myself going into the drug store: "I'm a Dapper Dan man, I don't want Fop, I want Dapper Dan!"

It also feels kind of funny, especially when the breeze blows. When I catch sight of my shadow or my reflection I reflexively reach for my comb to get the strays back in formation before I remember there are supposed to be strays; if I've done it right I'm supposed to look like a durian fruit, or Sonic the Hedgehog. I leave my comb in my pocket, though truth be told I could probably just leave it at home.

I'm getting used to it, though, and no one's said anything to me about it. They probably figure it's just some mid-life crisis and they don't want to get involved.

I've been doing a bit of father-daughter bonding lately with Tiger Lilly via one of the Xbox games I received for my birthday: Justice League Heroes. In it mixed duos of superheroes fly and fight their way through a less-bloody version of the Baldur's Gate II universe (the games were designed by the same people). Though you can play individually, the game works best with a real partner and Tiger Lilly's just the person you want to take with you into a dark Gotham or Metropolis alley - fast thumbs, sharp eyes and a diabolical "heh, heh" when she unleashes a devastating A-B-A combo on a pitiable robot or para-demon, or — if she's playing as Zatanna, Mistress of Magic — when she turns them into white rabbits.

You start out with your basic A-list of superheroes: Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Zatanna, the Martian Manhunter, the Flash and the guy I'm kind of partial to — Green Lantern (who's secret identity is John Stewart). As you go along you can earn shields (points) that allow you to unlock more characters such as Aquaman, Hawkgirl, and the Huntress. On some levels you get to pick your character from the entire roster, but most of the time the duo is predetermined (to fit the cut-scene segues) and you only get to pick between the two — which means I sometimes get the opportunity to explore my inner Wonder Woman (laugh and I'll bounce a tiara-boomerang off your head so fast you'll feel like Jimmy Olson).

Each character has a different set of super powers and it's fun learning how to best apply them. Superman, for example, has a super-assortment that includes heat vision, freezing breath, a high-speed flying strike and the Super-Punch, which takes a moment to load up but does tremendous damage. Still, he can be a bit of an oaf. On one level where I'm playing as Superman and Tiger Lilly is Wonder Woman, TL takes great delight in letting me fly out to punch a laser-shooting creature...and then using her lasso to snatch the villain right from under my nose (or fist) so she can deliver a knock-out kick. The best part though, in my opinion, is the job the artists and writers did in getting the personalities of the characters into the game. Superman and Batman, for instance, don't really like each other (well, to tell the truth, Batman doesn't really like anyone) and trash-talk each other throughout the game and there's girl-talk between Zatanna and Wonder Woman (Z: "Just between us girls, don't you ever get cold in that outfit?").

As in Baldur's Gate, if you let your characters stand still too long they get antsy and let you know about it in ways generally true to their character. Zatanna, for instance, will say, "Hey! Pay attention to me!" or "Want to see a real magic trick? Pull my finger!" Her friend Wonder Woman will say, "You can tell that a man designed this costume," or, "If only I could remember where I parked the invisible plane." Superman, always the Boy Scout, will finally say, "I don't mean to be pushy, but 'places to go, people to save,' you know?" or "Have you ever noticed there always seems to be a lot of kryptonite lying around? Really, what's up with that?" My favorite, though, is the Batman: "Robin used to make me wait; ever wonder what happened to him?" — or the all-time winner, "What's the matter, Precious? Your mother kick you out of the basement?"

Besides having fun, I've even developed some super-powers of my own. For instance, Tiger Lilly can have her nose buried in a book, or be heading for a cuddle with Mom and all I have to do is interlock my fingers, raise my thumbs and twiddle them and she jumps up and runs at super-speed to the television. Now if I can only get that to work when it comes to mowing the lawn...SHAZAM!