Egg on my face,

spinach in my teeth, toilet paper on my heel, sixth grade best friend told that boy I thought he was cute AND showed him the note, bailing kids out of jail, feminine hygiene accidents...all pretty embarrassing, right? Yeah. Well try this - you're home on a Sunday enjoying a conversation with your stepmother and father, husband and kid. A nice relaxing family afternoon, sitting around and chatting, when the phone rings. You hear your kid so "Uh, no....she's here. I don't THINK she does..."

She turns to you and says "Do you have a class today?"

No. No I do not have a class today. I checked my date book. There's nothing in it for this weekend. What IS the child on about? You move to take the phone but it's disconnected. Still grumbling, you grab your date book and check, just to verify that you are, of course, right. But you're not. You're wrong. DEAD WRONG. You have a class, from 1-4, Beginning Lace. And it's 1:15. And you are a half hour from Webs. And you've been in the garden most of the morning, so you're in stinky t-shirt, dirty shorts and dirt-caked bare feet and unshaven legs.

What do you do (besides turn the air blue, I got that one right off the bat)?

Well, did you know that you can go 80 MPH and not get stopped as long as you stay behind the person from Connecticut who's obviously also late for a knitting class (and is the teacher)? Did you know that knitters are very forgiving (even of unshaven legs and dirty shirts), warm, wonderful people who, when you finally arrive 45 minutes late and breathless, smile up at you and say "Oh, it was great. Barb let us in and we sat and talked and knitted and looked at yarn!" Seriously. They did not flog me, shoot me, or demand money back. They did not howl, threaten, or get angry. They sat, in the dark and quiet coolness of Webs on a Sunday, got to know each other and knitted up a storm. I love knitters.

And um, customer service, when you get in this morning and there's a crazed, incoherent message from me, something about a class and students, and "sorry"? Uh...I also didn't realize it was Sunday until I got to Hatfield. So just erase that, please, just forget all about it. I wish I could. Really, I need someone to promise me that the brain does grow back. Really. If this is not temporary, there'd better be a pill for it.

Advice please: if you were going to New York and had only two days, and only could convince your traveling partner to hit one yarn shop, which would it be? And, since Wicked is like $300 a ticket or something equally staggering, what show would you see? Or is there a way to get cheaper last-minute tickets? I cannot believe I convinced him to go, we're days from going, and I am totally unprepared, unplanned, unfocused. Seriously. If this is menopause, you can have it. Give me the estrogen. Sign me up. "Fuzzy thinking"?? This makes postpartum brain death look like a cake walk.

Still obsessed with the camera, but getting better about controlling the urge. I have a particular fascination with mushrooms and there's a lot of them around. Also the garden, which is lush and lovely right now, except where the woodchuck got it. Mr. W. put up a fence this weekend. He seems to not want to kill the woodland creature. I, of course, have no such scruples and would gleefully whack him, if only he'd come out when I am out. I think he knows who to run from. The young hawks are spending more and more time sitting around the nest on branches. They're still quiet silent. They should fledge at about one month old, but we don't know when they actually hatched. I'd say we're darned close. I know some hawk species teach their kids to hunt and forage before they're fully independent. I don't know what these guys will do. We watch and wait. I think it would be nice if they'd hang out for a while. Yesterday when I was letting the chickens into their yard (since running in mine now carries the added danger of a nest of young hawks eager to learn to feed themselves) I noticed a big hole in the aviary netting. I am hopeful that it wasn't my aviary netting that resulted in Mom-hawk's damaged leg. They don't usually go after chickens unless they're very hungry or very young and inexperienced. Chickens are too big to cart off. Snakes, chipmunks, moles, mice that sort of this are preferred.

BarkGarden
Hawks around nest (there's 3, look close)
Mushroom Problem