The Loved One and I are still keeping up our long-distance relationship. She stays in Bloomington, Indiana from Monday through Friday while I remain in Louisville, trying to peddle the house. We've had the place up for sale for four months now and haven't gotten so much as a nibble. The joint's a showplace. We've sunk tons of dough into it and everybody who walks through it tells us it's fabulous and beautiful. Yet none have reached for their wallet yet. The jerks.

It reminds me of my pal Mikey back in the old Pilsen East artists' community. He had a crush on a tall and beautiful woman named Delia, who was intelligent, well-spoken and was a filmmaker. Mikey was so smitten that he could hardly speak to her. I urged him to ask her out for months. Finally one day he mustered up the courage.

Mikey: "Say, um, Delia..., I was wondering..., you know, um, maybe..., I don't know..., why don't we go out to a movie or something..., y'know, like a date?"

Delia: "Oh, thank you, Mikey. That's sweet. It really is. And you're a really great guy. I really enjoy being your friend. But it's not the right time for me to get involved with somebody right now. It's not that there's anything wrong with you! Don't get me wrong. You're fantastic. You'd make a great partner for any girl. You're smart and you're good looking. You'd be quite a catch!"

Poor Mikey. Never had he been so lavishly praised by a woman. "If I'm so great," he complained afterward, "why am I not good enough for Delia to go out with?"

I had no answer for him. Just as I have no answer for why nobody wants to buy our fabulous and beautiful pad.

Anyway, The Loved One emails me a picture of herself every day. Yesterday's shot showed her with puffy eyes and a protruding lower lip. It was accompanied by this explanatory note: "Oh my God! I almost saw a kitten get run over this morning! I stopped to save it. I broke down crying after it ran away to safety."

Later in the day she filled me in on the details over the phone. She'd been barrelling down the road on her way to work when she saw the kitty up ahead, cowering between lanes, paralyzed with fear. The Loved One, whom I occasionally suspect would rather keep company with cats, horses and woodchucks rather than actual human beings, jammed on the brakes. She leaped out of the car and ran toward the feline. Most of the passing cars had been slowing down and giving the cat a wide berth. But as she neared it, a Jeep roared toward them and came within a whisker of squishing them both. When The Loved One got within a few footsteps, the cat darted away, safely, into the foliage along the side of the road.

Oh, the things The Loved One called that Jeep driver!

I'm proud of her. How many people on this Earth would risk their necks for a scared critter in the road? I know of two.

When we first moved to Louisville, I was driving her to work one morning when we saw a turtle struggling to cross the road. I pulled over after we passed it and put the car into reverse, intending to hustle him off the pavement. Suddenly, I heard an ugly crunching sound. Don't worry - I hadn't turned the guy into turtle soup; I'd merely scraped up our fairly new car on a telephone pole.

Every time I see the scratches I put on that fender and bumper, I think of that old turtle, who - I'm happy to report - made it across the road unflattened. The Loved One, who'd normally treat me to a stern lecture if I'd scraped up the car, didn't give it a second thought as long as we'd saved the turtle.

I suppose that makes us softies. That's okay by me. It's better than the alternative. A year ago, we entertained some visitors from Chicago, some relatives of mine. Let's call them Moe and his sons. The first night we piled into Moe's shiny new Chrysler, more an aircraft carrier than a sedan, with a Hemi engine that gave it more thrust than the Space Shuttle boosters. Moe couldn't wait to show me how powerful the engine was.

"Listen to that," he grinned as we roared down Brownsboro Road. It was almost dark and the road was winding and hilly.

"Y'better watch out," I warned, " there's a lot of critters that dart out at this time of night."

"Fuck you!" Moe roared over the roar of his Hemi engine. "If you think I'm gonna swerve into a head-on collision just to avoid a fuckin' squirrel, you're nuts!"

"Hmm," I said, "I was thinking there might be a third option, like maybe slowing down."

Moe was silent for a moment, then he muttered: "Fuckin' squirrels."

Me? I whispered to myself: "Fuckin' cars."