England 205 and 1 for 0 need another 473 runs to beat South Africa 335 and 343 for 9 dec (Amla 87, Elgar 80, du Plessis 63, Moeen 4-78)
#
On our 13th wedding anniversary my wife and I took the train downtown to have drinks and watch a couple bands play in the parking lot of a fancy restaurant. BB-Gun was playing. As was Haley Bonar. It was a beautiful summer Saturday in August and we were both in good spirits.
Because of how long we would be out that day, we had decided to bring our dog, Robbie, over to my mother’s for the night. Just so he could get dinner at a normal time and not have to wait forever for us to get home in order to do his business in the backyard.
Robbie is a good dog, but tends to be a runner. He will get on a scent and nothing you do can make him give it up. And so my mother knew to keep a good eye on him when he was out in her yard. She has a fence but we had been told by the rescue organization that we adopted him from that he was a bit of a fence jumper.
After we dropped him off we hopped the train and had beers inside at Funyon’s downtown. We laughed and talked away the afternoon. I was so happy that I had that wonderful burn in the pit of my stomach that I get when i feel like the universe is aligned for me, even if it’s just for a few hours.
At the show in the parking lot we had a couple more beers and watched the bands and talked and continued our lovely evening. Unfortunately the night turned sour when a couple talkative jerks were rather rude to my wife and I didn’t handle it very well and we left grumpy and upset and waited for the train in silence trying to hear the Paul McCartney concert happening at the baseball stadium behind the train station.
We got home and went to bed.
The next day we slept in — enjoying the quiet house without the dog making noise at first light to get his breakfast and go outside. At around 9am I got up and checked my phone and saw that my mother had called and left me a voice mail. Damn it. I knew it couldn’t be good news. And it wasn’t. I listened to the voice mail: she had left Robbie outside unattended and he had jumped the fence and was gone. My sister was on her way there to help look for him. I called her back and told her we were on our way there — and that I was angry with her. Very angry.
I woke my wife up with the news, grabbed my running shoes so I could chase the dog, and we were off to my mother’s house, which is in a suburb about 25 minutes south of our house.
I was so angry. Traffic was terrible. I was so worried. My wife was so upset. It was a horrible drive. I was barefoot and screaming and pissed.
When we were about five minutes away from my mother’s house, she called. My sister had found him and gotten him into her car. He was home. He was safe. Thank god.
We got to my mother’s and my sister was still there and I hugged her and thanked her for getting him home. He was filthy and exhausted and a huge wound on his stomach. But he was home. He was safe. My sister had gotten him home. Driven like a bat out of hell from her house to my mother’s at 9am on a Sunday morning to chase a dog that belonged to a brother that she really wasn’t very close with and found the dog and gotten him home. I was beyond grateful — and beyond relieved. I told my poor mother who was heartsick and who felt just terrible that it wasn’t a big deal, that it was fine. And it was.
Thanks to my sister.
Limited Overs 