This got my attention. The only other Surgeon General’s advisory I can think of is the one on cigarette cartons. But parenting? Is it true that parenting is hazardous to our health?

I became a parent 28 years ago. Four children later, with three of them launched and the youngest finishing high school, I find myself reviewing and pondering the many, many benchmarks I’ve witnessed as a parent to my children.

I thought it was a logical question to ask, because if there is such an age, I must surely be creeping up on it — if I hadn’t already slid past it.

I’ll admit that much of my love for fall is tied up in nostalgia, in memories that I will never relive again. Gone are the piles of elm leaves raked into the street and set ablaze, into which we kids would toss apples and potatoes, and then rake them from the ashes to eat, charred husks and all.

Although I hadn’t ridden a bike through most of my adulthood, pretty much every morning for the past couple years I take a ten-or-twelve-mile jaunt into the countryside, where I converse with the corn and cows if they’re in the mood to listen. Whatever trials await me later, I always find a sense of peace peddling the pavement at the start of the day.

Of all the things that can be canceled or delayed or rescheduled — a meeting, a dentist appointment, even a tax deadline — a storm moving in, chased by thunder and lightning, refuses to bend to anyone else’s schedule. Between the curtains on the window over my sink is when I first see the trees swaying wildly in the wind, then notice that the late afternoon sun is lighting up a huge thunderhead cloud.

That’s what my son called it when he phoned me to ask: “How you doin’ against the ‘vid?”

I had no idea what he was talking about, so I asked him — three times — what he said: “Are you saying ‘vid’? What the hell is a ‘vid’?” Something in the corner of my mind hinted that it might be a term having to do with gambling, but I hadn’t placed any bets lately.

The clothes are from my friend Jennifer’s closet. She called us over because she was ready to clear some space from her ample wardrobe and wanted us, her friends with similar figures, to get first dibs.

At a certain point, I was trying on a cute little summer dress, and I hardly recognized the woman in the mirror.

I freely confess that I’m an idiot, but I’m not stupid. My bike has flashing lights fore and aft, I wear a red helmet and sunglasses, and I’m dressed in either orange, yellow, or fluorescent green.

Now, I don’t want to imply that any cyclist on the road is an idiot like me.

Tonight, our first concert is in Prague. We have rehearsed, but now that the performance is drawing near, tensions are high. It’s hot. The performance hall we are in does not seem to be air conditioned.

We’ve warmed up our voices, but there are still a few measures to be worked out.

While other birds are beautiful in some gaudy, outlandish way — like cardinals, orioles, goldfinches, or even robins — the tiny wren’s beauty lies in its simple, classical, dappled brown look, like a tiny refined Englishman in a tweed suit.

Its song, however, is anything but simple. During mating season, the male will stake out his territory atop a likely birdhouse and fill the air with trills and whistles whose complexity would make any classical composer envious.

Like most pet owners, we subject our poor Baxter to many nicknames. Some are run-of-the-mill like “Puppy” or “Puppy-Schmup.” We call him “Booxie” and “Booxinator.” On days when Baxter is freshly brushed and walks with a certain swagger, I refer to him as “Lord Buxton.” This is always pronounced in an awful English accent for absurd reasons that I can’t explain.

I started, of course, by saying goodbye to colleagues — teachers, secretaries, custodians, counselors, and even a few administrators — but then I bid farewell to the places and things I would miss.

One of them was the coaches’ locker room, where I had spent countless hours before school, after school, and on weekends.

For pages that existed in 2013, 38% are not available today. Even 8% of webpages from just one year ago are no longer available.

This phenomenon is called “Digital Decay.”

Sure, we’ve all been on a webpage, clicked a link, and gotten the dreaded “404” error: Page not found.

Still, if you’re a Sun City Illinoisan who was looking forward to getting reacquainted with those long-awaited love-bugs, this year of the dragon has been a bit of a drag, because there hasn’t been a cicada in sight in our part of the world.

And I guess that should come as no surprise, because they weren’t here in Sun City 17 years ago, either.

When I went away to college, I lived in a dorm named after Rev. Niebuhr, who was a pastor, theologian, and ethicist. My father wrote me letters addressed to Niebuhr Hall, and he would tuck a copy of the prayer he had clipped from a church bulletin.

OK, that might not be the best way to begin this. Let me start again.

Almost every Saturday and Tuesday morning, I go to the Woodstock farmer’s market, where besides finding the best produce and caramel corn, I listen to some of the best free music anywhere on this planet or any other.

I know myself to be an introvert, but I’m always a little bit shocked, on these rare occasions when I’m left alone, at how much of an introvert I am.

For four days, I happily went to work, came home, walked the dog, then attempted to do some laundry or sorting or cleaning before I eventually gave in to the temptation at hand: a novel I was reading, a limited series on Hulu I had been meaning to get to, or a podcast about a juicy Hollywood scandal.

But as the 18th Century Scottish poet Robert Burns famously wrote: “The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”

Well, that’s not exactly how he said it. In the words of his place and time, it was: “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men, Gang aft agley, An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain, For promis’d joy!”

And so, as I say, tomorrow Gail and I would be toasting our long marriage, had things not “gang agley”.

We knew they were coming, but it didn’t make it any less jarring to see the tiny holes in the soil where they had suddenly emerged after their 17-year-long buffet of tender tree roots. They’re not a welcome sight for many, and cautious homeowners along neighborhood streets have carefully wrapped young saplings in white nets as a way of protecting trees in their infancy from the attack of cicadas.

Quirky? Twisted? Wonky?

Nope. Let’s go with askew. I can live with askew.

So you probably won’t be surprised when I tell you that I’m planting my Planet Kerth garden now, and this year I’ve decided not to do it the way most people on Planet Earth do it, but the way they do it on Planet Mars.

Well, they don’t do it that way on Mars yet, because right now Mars is pretty much totally uninhabited and un-gardened.