Reading: Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel

Not yet given up on: John Milton, Paradise Lost;

On deck: Don Quijote, The London Rich, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

Moving: walked 5 miles

House: My stuff remained mine

Garden: are squirrels eating seeds right out of the ground, or what? Zucchini are weeds, and should sprout anywhere. But nooooo.

31 May 2002: Mine

Mine mine mine. Mine. Mine. Many things are mine. Mine and mine alone. Damn it.

I say this knowing the same thing could happen tomorrow and not end as well.

RDC and I were downstairs watching the news with the house all sealed up against the 90+ heat, not that we would probably have heard anyway. The doorbell rang, and the cockatiel went off like a dog or an alarm clock, and RDC went upstairs to deal with what would probably be a solitcitor. He went mostly because he deals with such folks better (think John Cleese in "A Fish Called Wanda": "Fuck off, pigs") and partly because I was wearing a nightshirt, it being all of 6:00 in the evening. I paused CNN, thinking he'd be right down, flipped over to "Sylvia Scarlett" (which, since I know that Kate doesn't end up with Cary Grant as she so rightly does in their other three movies, isn't holding my attention; also, name me a pre-1939 movie excluding "The 39 Steps" and "It Happened One Night" that's worth watching), heard him say "Just a minute, let me unlock the door," yet remained uncurious as he left the house. That's me in my Friday night stupor.

When they returned, I found some clothes in the laundry room such that I could go upstairs, the back way, with a laundry basket that I left on the landing. At the top of the steps I saw that our visitor was a police officer. RDC turned from writing something at the dining table and said, "Our bikes were almost stolen."

The most unfortunate aspect of our house is that behind it, on the other side of a six-foot fence in the alley, is a dumpster shared by six houses. It's okay except in summer, when people don't shut the doors and it gets really ripe. It's okay except when the rubbish workers replace the dumpster behind our gate so we can't open it, as was the case this week. I called waste management last Friday and today and lodged a complaint; RDC called waste management today and a truck showed up in half an hour (hence why he deals with solicitors, the police, etc.). So he was out in the alley late this afternoon and would have noticed if the garage door was open. It wasn't.

Except it was open when a neighbor drove through the alley toward her own garage and saw a man straddling one bike and leading another by the handlebars with a weedwhacker over his shoulder. She called the police immediately, and they must have shown up immediately, because when we scampered out, our bikes and weedwhacker were only half a block away up the alley, with one officer waiting for a crime unit to show up (to take photographs) and another in our alley with the suspect in the backseat. RDC had been writing a statement saying that these items were ours. The suspect had given a statement that he ran a lawncare business, presumably from the shopping cart also stashed in the alley.

He had nothing on him, the officer said, to break in with. You'd have to bust the car-door from alley to garage to get in that way without the remote opener. The person-door, from the garage to the back door, was locked and whole. Are there master garage-door openers, operating on all possible frequencies? Does a neighbor have an opener that happens to be set on our frequency? That's the freakiest aspect: how was the door opened, either by him or by honest, accidental means?

We scurried over to the neighbor, whom we had never met--we share an alley, but it's not as if that's where the commerce of the neighborhood takes place. We thanked her profusely, and I shall probably bake her a batch of cookies and buy some treats for her two dogs.

And that was that. After the crime lab staff took pictures, we were allowed to take our bikes and whacker--the vagrant (or a cop?) had taken the time to wrap its cord with the charger--it's electric-, not gas-powered--neatly around its stem--and now they are not only inside a locked garage but locked to their rack (a vertical one) inside a locked garage.

I said, as we returned from the neighbor's, that now I really feel like I live in a city. (This is not true. Taking my skanky bus, recognizing the resident homeless (an oxymoron?), dusting black exhaust particulates from my windowsills instead of good honest dirt, having my neighborhood written up as a happening streetwalking area, being able to walk to a symphony or a sushi restaurant--I am quite aware of Denver as a city.) RDC scoffed. He's had two bicycles stolen from him, one in suburban Connecticut and one in Florida. Neither location surprises me. But also his house burned down when he was 17, and since then he has had an admirable lack of concern for possessions qua material things.

One which, I should say, I do not share. I know that I am a lot more materialistic than I care to be or care to admit, but my material possessions are mine in that they cannot be replaced. My bear, my autographed copy of A Wrinkle in Timeand Possession, my boxes of letters and journals and photographs. This bike I have not anthropomorphized as I did my first real bike, a twelve-speed I bought (or that I intended to buy, and my father bought for me) in tenth grade. That was a red Huffy Windsprint that I, Greek mythology maven that I was, named (for being a Windsprint), Zephyr, and which I then referred to in my journal as, no surprise, HWZ. But still, I love my bike.

And as of tonight, it's still mine. Two pair of our Connecticut friends relish among the primary attractions of their houses that from them they cannot see their neighbors even in winter. It would be nice sometimes to be separated by more than 15 feet on either side, but I like the front-porch, dog-walking, busybodying community, and today, I am particularly grateful for our nearby neighbors, for their being vigilant and concerned. Also for the police's prompt response. I wonder if the neighbor said, "That's the quickest response I ever got from anything. I hadn't no more than just finished describing him to the police this minute--"

Well, she was pretty great even if she wasn't Cuffy.

(Hey, another reason to love Cuffy! I reread The Saturdays from Oliver's Saturday onward, and during the coal gas panic, Cuffy emerges with her hair in a tail down her back. Not specified as a braid, but I bet it was. Good old Cuffy.)