12.2.98

    Just got back from the mall. I need to find some sort of cocktail dress for T.'s office Christmas party which is this Saturday. No such luck. I didn't even try anything on. Granted there were the usual size issues and the usual style issues but everything was simply too costly. We're on a budget and I can't afford a $200 dress. Very frustrating.

    I was speaking with a friend, online, and he didn't think the dog-walking gig sounded fun at all. But, it is. On my job I get to stop and watch squirrels play. I get to kick through new-fallen leaves. I get to stop and smell those roses anytime I feel like it. I get exercise and the dogs just love me to death for what I do for them. The downside to the job is that I do have to pick up dog doo and occasionally I accidentally step on a snail.

    This morning was just perfect. My first walk was at 8:30 a.m. and the air was crisp and cool. The sunlight made patterns through the trees in the faint, low-lying fog. Squirrels running across wet tree branches created small rain showers. It was just lovely to be out and about.

    Something odd did happen on my second walk, though. I was ambling along with a troublesome Labrador down a street in Beverly Hills when I heard singing. Not just any song and not just any voice. It was a low, soulful baritone and belonged to a man in a nice-looking bathrobe and slippers standing in what I assume was his front yard. The song? The Star Spangled Banner.

    With his arms raised heavenward he belted it out with great feeling; singing to the world:

Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming.
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight...

at this point I was about to pass him and he waved at me, dropped his arms and — still singing — turned and went back into the house. His voice faded away as I imagined him moving towards the kitchen to make coffee:

...O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming.
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave...

By then I couldn't hear him anymore so I quietly finished his song:

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.