No, the title is not a double entendre. A colleague of mine brought back a plastic sword for me from Italy, where she spent a month this summer, the poor dear. In a villa in Tuscany. Don’t you just weep for her woes hearing about that? I sometimes wonder about taking a 12 month position in a field where everyone else works 9 months. Tuscany seems very far away from Southern California summers. But then I remember… I wasn’t exactly being bombarded with job offers before this one. Right. You gotta dance with them what brung you, to quote Molly Ivins.

Anyway, she bought the sword in front of the Coliseum, one of my favorite places in Rome. She said I’d need it in my new job. My new job which is my old job, just now mine as my boss keeps saying gleefully, “forever.”

The sword is about two feet long and has a shiny silver blade and a vaguely Celtic looking handle. The Romans are not particularly interested in authenticity and never have been. When I spent time in Rome, I kept looking for evidence of the ancient city. It’s not there. I mean, it’s sort of there. But it’s got churches built in it. Once I accepted that the best Roman architecture was Baroque, I felt better. Plus, Borromini rocks. Really. Ok, I think he rocks. Undulating buildings.

That’s St. Ivo alla Sapienza. See how he uses curves and straights to suggest the classical form while also calling it into question? No? Fine. Ok, end of art history lesson. Why do I think it won’t be a popular as usage lesson over at Honey’s blog? Because it won’t. Moving on…

I like the sword a lot and keep holding on to it in meetings. I fuss with little things during meetings, and the sword is satisfying in that way. I’m sure the Freudian minded among you have all sorts of idea about the lesbian in the big office with the sword. Go ahead, think what you must. It’s probably just your subconscious telling you something.

Honey and I had a old wooden table on our back porch. It had been sent to us to accompany Red, the late great Welsh Springer, when we took him from my parents. He liked that table when he was a young dog. He’d stand on it and it was called his circus dog table. It gotten broken in shipment and we sort of propped it up and put random crap on it. Honey was cleaning random crap off the back porch and once the table was clear, asked what we should do with it.

I immediately volunteered to destroy it. I thought we had an axe and went looking for it. Whereupon I discovered that we didn’t have an axe, but did have two pickaxes. (How does one acquire these things? I mean I’ve never purchased a pickaxe, and yet we have two).

I emerged with the pickaxe. Destroying the table was extraordinarily satisfying. Way more so than just holding the sword.

Thing is, people seems scared of the sword. I had to put it up the other day because the person I was meeting with was alarmed by it. I slid it between my devil ducks and my “See Rock City” mini-barn/birdhouse. Then it fell on my head. Handle first, fortunately. So, now it’s back on my desk or my table at all times. The devil ducks don’t like it, which is why they dropped it on my head.

I didn’t like that we didn’t have a regular axe. We may need one at some point. Sometimes, a pickaxe isn’t the right destroying implement. So I went to the hardware store and bought what I’ve been referring to since as an “axe for girls.” It’s orange and black.

Oh, and did I mention it was made by a scissor company? Anyway, it seems like it could destroy stuff anyway.

I feel sufficiently armed, now. Plastic sword? Check. Axe for girls? Check. Pickaxe? Check, check. Let me know if you need me to destroy anything for you.

Oh, and if anyone is now scared of me…let me know that, too.

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