The wild hecticness of the past two weeks ought to end on Tuesday night: I will have finished the Last of the Big Projects at Harvard Business School, and Mr. Improbable will (ash willing) be home.

I’ve missed him, but Milo and I had gotten into a nice routine of walks and napping (Milo)/working (me), and then in the evenings snuggling and watching movies and TV together. (I did wind up watching “Caprica.”) It’s been okay.

And it gave Milo an excellent opportunity to practice his comic timing.

He has an uncanny knack for sighing, growling, grumbling at the perfect moment when we’re watching a video, and I swear he’s getting better at it. I’m not pretending to be one of those dog owners who insists her dog understands English (even if he did, he still wouldn’t know what’s going on on “Lost” any more than I do). But he likes the attention of being laughed at, and I can’t help but wonder if he’s figured out that growling when he hears the sound of a threatening voice, or sighing when the music swells dramatically, will get him laughs.

He comes from funny people.

I love how whenever Milo chases a squirrel up a tree (and he’s not allowed to chase squirrels unless there is a tree, fence, or pole they can get to) he runs around the base of the tree, barking and barking as though that is going to make the squirrel come back down.

It’s like those guys who will yell at you on the street, “Hey, baby, wanna take a ride in my car?” and when you ignore them, shout, “Bitch, you ain’t that fine anyway!”

The squirrels never fall for it. Neither do the women.

I’ve got a discussion going on the other blog today about “What is romantic?” in honor of Valentine’s Day. That’s probably where the action will be, so go check it out.

And here’s a little story I’m not sharing with the boston.com crowd: yesterday, I was doing a radio interview on the same topic. What is romance, do men and women define it differently, media versus actual people’s ideas of romance, etc. During the entire interview, Milo was sitting at my feet, happily pleasuring himself.

No, I didn’t mention it. That, my friends, is what it means to be a professional.

“The Lion in Winter”:

The terrier in winter:

The Milo arrived yesterday!

Not our dog Milo, of course; he’s been home with us all this lazy week, and enjoying very much having two relaxed and largely unproductive humans to snooze on. I mean the annual gift of Milo, the malted chocolate beverage, that someone has been leaving us every Christmas since Milo, the dog, arrived to live with us.

No Milo arrived this Christmas day, which amused me; did my newfound joy in Christmas somehow mean I had to give up the Milo of my Scroogier days? But yesterday, there it was on the porch, carefully wrapped.

We gave it to Milo to open:

But he liked the bubble wrap better:

The blogs that I like best, like Andrew Sullivan‘s and Ta-Nehisi Coates‘s, bounce around to a bunch of different topics, more or less like I do. The fact is, though, it’s easier for a new blog to get attention if it’s specialized: fashion, politics, sports, science, Christian, literary, whatever.

But don’t worry. Although I’m pretty sure no one has covered this niche, the preponderance of posts having to do with dogs and/or springtime-green coats is not going to become the sole focus of this blog. But at the risk of beating the topic to death, I did want to share a couple more pictures that I found of Milo and me while perusing my hard drive.

I’d lived in Boston for a good 10 years before succumbing to the need for a puffy coat, but having a dog who requires a morning walk quickly made it obvious that fashion was going to have to take a back seat to necessity. So I chose — of course! — a nice springy green one from Land’s End L.L. Bean. It arrived in the mail, and I tried in on, and then came upstairs to model it for Mr. Improbable and Milo.

Milo, whom we’d only had for a few months, completely flipped a nutty when the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Woman came at him. The hood covered my face, and the strong plastic-y odor of the coat’s wrapping masked my own smell.

Once he realized it was me, of course, we made up.

Take a look, though, at his body language in that first picture. That is one scared dog. Look how far down his ears are tucked, how much eye-white you can see, how his hindquarters are bunched under him, ready to protect his vitals, or to spring. Everyone knows to beware of a dog that is snarling, hackles up, baring its teeth. But a dog who looks like Milo does here can be just as dangerous, if not more so. The vast majority of the time, a normal dog’s aggression is not driven by “dominance” issues, but by fear.

Kind of like people.

So maybe the next time you’re faced with an angry coworker, or in-law, or child, if you can, take a step back and ask yourself what’s really motivating them. Often, treating angry people as though they are afraid can be a remarkable way of defusing tension.

Milo (right) and our houseguest Kaiser (left). This rather serene-looking photo does not nearly do justice to the epic, pitched battle of tug that was going on. Milo is a terrier mix with speed and home-field advantage; Kaiser is a French bulldog with terrific muscle power on his side. As Mr. Improbable put it, “It’s like watching a soccer player versus a sumo wrestler.”

The Ear Club for Dogs: they’re not just members, they’re the presidents.

Tomorrow is Milo’s fourth “Gotcha Day” with us! I wrote a little essay about him on his second, and a poem for him on his third. Digging through some old computer files, recently, I found something I’d written a couple of months after we got him, that will suffice as this year’s celebratory post:

Much as I often type “teh” instead of “the,” I’ve discovered–since the arrival of Milo, our adorable mixed-breed rescue dog–that I usually type “god” when I mean “dog.” I always manage to notice this and correct it, usually with an obscure feeling of guilt. However, if I hadn’t, here are some of the things I would have written in various e-mails to friends in the past month:

• If you’re really not up for having a god in the house along with the new baby that’s perfectly okay.

• He is a great god, bra fetish notwithstanding.

• And we have a new god, who is a constant source of puzzlement and delight, and who appears to find us much the same.

• He’s a gentle god but “calm” is not a word I would use to describe him.

• We are working on “quiet god” right now.

• My husband and my god like each other.

• If anyone is afraid of or allergic to gods be assured that he will be crated and upstairs during our meeting. If anyone likes gods you can go meet him after we’ve concluded our business.

• The important question is how are you doing these days, and the really important question is when are you going to come admire my new god?

• And can I force you all to admire the attached picture of my new god, bravely defending us against an evil, scary bunch of bananas?

• He doesn’t feel the need to mark his territory as male gods often do.

• On the upside, I LOVE MY NEW GOD! He is the BEST god ever and we just signed the adoption papers today.

Happy Gotcha Day, little man. While your humans are cavorting in Italy, you are staying with a friend in the country, and I hope you are having a wonderful time. We are probably looking at all of the Italian dogs and saying to ourselves, and sometimes each other, “That dog’s not as cute as Milo.” You remain a source of puzzlement and delight to us, and it appears we remain so to you, as well.

And here, for anyone who cares to see it, is the picture of Milo the second night we had him, defending his new home against that sleeper cell of terrorist bananas (he’d been barking at them, so we put them on the floor and let him investigate):

Whether they are Reform or Orthodox, all religious Jews are literally on the same page: we all read the same section of the Torah every week, broken up so that we read the entire Torah (i.e., the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) every year. Each Torah portion is named after its first word or phrase. We finished the Torah, this year, on October 10, and started it again in Genesis this past Saturday.

Genesis begins with “In the beginning,” which in Hebrew is Bere’shit, so that is what we call it. Four years ago, I’d started writing a little essay on Sundays, a personal reflection on that week’s portion. Because I couldn’t find anyone interested in publishing these, that didn’t last too long. But I thought I’d share the one I wrote on Bere’shit with you. Even if you’re not religious, I think it speaks to something about the nature of creativity and otherness. Or maybe it will leave you cold. I don’t expect every post to hit home with every reader.

This week’s Torah portion, Bere’shit, contains one of the oddest and funniest scenes in the Torah. In Genesis 2:18-21 we read, “The Lord God said, ‘It is not good for man to be alone, I will make a fitting helper for him.’ And the Lord God formed out of the earth all the wild beasts and all the birds of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that would be its name. And the man gave names to all the cattle and to the birds of the sky and to all the wild beasts; but for Adam no fitting helper was found.”

Now this, to me, clearly indicates that HaShem* may not have known exactly what it was He’d created when he made Adam. The issue of God’s omnipotence and omniscience, as well as the entire question of how we can have free will if God already knows everything we will do—that I will leave to theologians. But taking a purely literary or theatrical approach to the passage, there is no doubt that HaShem is, at this point, a bit confused about what he might have on His divine hands, if He seriously thinks that He can find Adam a suitable mate from all the animals in creation.

It’s a scene I’d love to see the old Monty Python crew perform (John Cleese as God, of course, and Michael Palin as Adam). “All right then, Adam, let’s get you some company, my boy. Giraffe? No, no, too tall. A tiger, perhaps? Erm, might be a bit dangerous, that. Sheep? No, you’re not from New Zealand, are you … Bother, I’m not quite sure what is going to work here …” And when He does finally decide He’d better just make another human, He creates her from the original model, as though He’s not quite sure what might happen if he tried that “breathing life into dust” thing again.

To suggest that God may have been a bit unclear about the nature of His creation is not to take away from His authority or wisdom. Parents, and artists, can all attest to the “shock of the new,” the awareness that this thing you made has a life, and a spirit, entirely of its own. I think this is what’s going on in Parashat Bere’shit, and it shed light, for me, on why, perhaps, God created us.

Here’s what I think: I think He wanted to be surprised. Look at verse 19, in which God brings the animals before Adam not just to see which might make him a suitable mate, but “to see what he would call them.” What’s he gonna do? That’s what God is asking Himself. I feel a sense of play, of experiment, in HaShem at this point. What will Adam make of all of this? It’s the same delight you see in a parent giving her baby a new toy. Will he like it? Will he be afraid of it? Will he do something utterly surprising and funny, and take my breath away with delight?

Of course, as the Canadian folk singer Jane Siberry so wisely noted, “Everything Reminds Me of My Dog.” And I suspect having gotten a new dog—on Simchat Torah, no less—is strongly influencing my reading of this passage. Milo pleases me when he obeys me. But he delights me when he surprises me—by doing something so purely and ineluctably him, that for all my superior wisdom and learning I could never have predicted it. When he jumps straight up in the air, almost as high as my shoulder. When he decides for his own obscure canine reasons that he must, right now, protect us from the evil, menacing bunch of bananas lying on the kitchen shelf. When he puts the side of his head on the floor and rotates himself around in a circle like Curly from the Three Stooges. His obedience pleases me, his affection warms me, but his ability to surprise, to always be the unique creature that he is, breaks me out of myself and into sheer joy.

So obey God. And love God. But just as importantly, always, always be yourself and hope that somewhere up there He is laughing in delight at you.

*HaShem is Hebrew for “The Name,” and is one of the ways we refer to God. So please, people, if you’re trying to be all interfaith and tolerant, stop writing things like “Whether you pray to God, Allah, or Yahweh …” For one thing, Allah is God. It’s the Arabic word for “God.” Arab Christians pray to Allah, too. It’s not like some whole different character. For another, no one prays to Yahweh, at least no Jews do. If you want to come up with a Jewish way of saying “God,” it’s “HaShem.” We don’t say “Yahweh,” and we don’t say “Jehovah,” either, except when we’re quoting “Life of Brian.”

That post on “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” was supposed to run today, not yesterday; I got the date wrong when I set it up. So no post for you! If you don’t get over to the Miss Conduct blog much, you might want to check out this question that I posted yesterday — it’s generating some excellent discussion.

Oh, wait, I’ve got a little sumpin’ sumpin’ for you. In the fine internet tradition of Friday Dog Blogging, here is one of Milo. He has stolen something very important and is looking very guilty.

Do you think this is his way of saying he wants a little two-legged brother or sister? Not gonna happen, little man!

(Note to any concerned dog lovers: this happened shortly after we got Milo. He gave up the pills immediately without a fight, as we have trained him to do. We do NOT normally leave medicines where he can get them, and he developed common sense about living a in a house very quickly and won’t try to play with anything that isn’t one of his toys.)