When I read too much, which has been of late, I think and dream and move in prose. I am an observer even as I participate, I am writing in my mind as I dodge the earthworms to retrieve the mail. I need to return to this world, the world where I am not drifting languid in a sea of words, but rather smelling the tea that steams before me and feeling the hand so small and warm in my own.

Just so you know, this entry is not going to be anything worth reading. It's pure mind jumble spew stew. So, if you continue on, don't blame me.

I woke in a panic, heart seemingly racing even though my pulse was normal. I suspect it was the wind rattling both the house and my subconscious through the night.

And when I am anxious I generally manage to accomplish quite a bit in an effort to restore inner serenity by putting my surroundings in order. Although today it hasn't worked thus far, I have managed to fill three trash bags with needless junk as I cleaned out the utility closet, pantry, junk drawer and office drawer. I started out by looking for my not one, but two packs of rechargeable batteries that have somehow made a break for it into the big bad world.

They have disappeared into the black hole, that Bermuda triangle of things that you know you have but cannot find. There was a book I loved as a child called "The Borrowers" about mouse sized humans who lived in people's walls and existed off of all those "misplaced" items that they "borrowed" from their average sized human counterparts. Isn't that just such a great concept? That we don't lose all those things, but rather there are entire communities of teensy people who have made use of the random spools of thread or rechargeable batteries or new bottles of shampoo that have disappeared into the ether? I forgot about that book. Anyway.

So, yes, usually I can make sense of my world by letting my OCD rear its freaky head and organizing the heck out of our house. But today I may have to move onto the kava tea. And simply accept that the moment I purchase rechargeable batteries and throw away the receipt, the ones that I have lost will suddenly reemerge in the most obnoxious of places, like in the middle of the kitchen table.

Duke and I celebrated our joint birthdays this weekend. Mort headed off to his grandparents' home and I took a nap and read a book. Duke played the piano. We then went to the movies and out to dinner. In our pre-child world, that would have ranked right up there with Most Boring Weekend Ever. In our post-child world, it is marked as Heaven on a stick. We got massages and had brunch. In a grown-up restaurant. With tablecloths and bloody marys.

Of course, my back is all out of whack from getting a massage. Oh well, as long as it doesn't go out on me completely, it was worth it.

Existentialism and the pre-schooler

"How do we know that this is real and that we aren't dreaming right now?" Mort asked.

Quite frankly, we did not have an answer to that and for all we know, we are indeed dreaming. Or plugged in to the Matrix. So, because we couldn't answer, we sent Jack Handey to his room.

No, just kidding, we didn't really do that. But we did distract him with something shiny.

AAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!

Those  *@!^$&#!  tomato hornworms!!! They have made their mission in life to torment me!I knew it! I knew such a grotesque chrysalis could only contain something equally horrifying. 

As it has been so cold at night, I was concerned as to the fate of our chrysalis. I began another earnest search on the World Wide Web looking for information as to how best protect it from the elements. Damn if I didn't stumble across the fact that I have been harboring the enemy in our salad spinner. Oh the bitter, bitter irony at my discovery that I am cultivating the moth from which the most disgusting of creatures will be hatched. And now I have to throw out a perfectly good salad spinner because I will gag and dry heave every time I look at it.

That tomato hornworm is pure evil genius at its best, I tell you. Oh, but it did not count on having an insomniac bleeding heart mistress, did it? One who would be awake and searching the Internet at 4 am looking for how to best care for it? Game, Match and Point, ME, you revolting little pupa. It is ON. I am going out and getting a fleet of bracnoid wasps to greet you when you awaken from your slumber. And guess who is going to dig the hell out of that garden today in search of your brethren? That's right, bitches. You are all going DOWN. No moth stage for your life cycle.

WARNING: If you are this type of moth and come anywhere near my garden, 

your offspring will be making their exit from this world covered in gestating wasp eggs. Now go tell your friends.

Green

I just woke-up. Duke and Mort are watching a cartoon in which the bad guys are bad because they waste electricity and natural resources. That's the kind of cartoon I can get behind.
It's no Jem and the Holograms, mind you, but I like it.

What are the chances of a chrysalis surviving a frost? The salad spinner has to stay on the deck in case it is not a butterfly cocoon after all, but rather some gelatinous mass of scary insect that would become entangled in my hair. Because that's what bugs do. 

I am feeling the love! I have had three days straight of some of my favorite people. And tea. And espresso martinis. And apples and garlic bread and hot dogs. And laughing. 

What do you do if one of the plants in a terrarium starts trying to overthrow the others? I admire its dedication to survival, but I may have to put it in solitary confinement.

In the car yesterday.

Me: "I'm so glad it's raining!" Translation--I planted arugula, spinach and broccoli rabe and didn't feel like getting out the hose to water them. Thank-you, Mother Nature, for picking up the slack .

Mort: "I'm kind of glad that it's raining and kind of not glad."

Me: "Yeah, I know what you mean."

Mort, puzzled: "I know what I mean, too."

Now, what in the world are those strange creatures you may be asking? Well, one is Stella. You may not recognize her because she has her game face on. She is anticipating all the rabbits she will not see and not catch during this year's gardening session. She is calculating how many times she has to give chase and/or toss out a couple of barks and growls in order to make it seem as though she is part of the family and earning her keep so that she can trot off to a warm patch of grass and snooze it up.

The other creature is apparently a butterfly chrysalis. Mort and I were working on preparing the garden yesterday and stumbled across this. At first I thought it was-well, no need to go into that. Let's just say I was ready to be angry at one smallish dog. She knows the garden is off-limits! But then I saw it move. My reaction was a bit of a gag reflex. However, I am a woman of the earth this year! I am not fooling around. I rescued every worm from the wheelbarrow and put them back in the dirt. I chucked out every grub my hoe unturned. I can handle a freaking cocoon. Even if it's moving.

I had a bit of a raging fear that it was not a butterfly or moth, but some other type of horror that I had not known existed, like that tomato horn worm. But the Internet did indeed pull-up a picture of that chrysalis as a butterfly. So, Mort and I decided to take a leap of faith and see if we could bear witness to a butterfly emerging from this otherworldly sack. I was rooting around in the cabinets for a proper butterfly W Hotel when Mort seized upon the salad spinner. "Hey! What about this? This has a lot of air holes!" So, the cocoon is safe from birds and insects in our salad spinner; a handful of organic greens and capful of water and some sticks in its shelter.

In case you were huffing, Okay , well that's all well and good, but what about your cleaning saga?! I'm right there with you. Let's begin. So, I have begun the search for a cleaner. I feel completely bizarre and spoiled and pretty much like a jerk from the jerk store, but it is what it is. However, before I can pay someone else to clean my house, I need it to be clean. It took me 2 1/2 hours to do our living room. I was choking on the dust. I took a Zyrtec(hateful stuff that is, I am so cranky when I take it) and opened all the windows and made Mort play upstairs. Ugh. I only finished one other room that day. Yesterday, I preemptively took Zyrtec (surprisingly I was once again snappy and short-tempered) and wore a dust mask. The bedrooms that I tackled did not have nearly the dust content that plagued the living room. And then I felt I had put in enough time to head outside.

What a difference a year makes! Hopefully I will be able to whip out some other cliches for you. Last spring I was still forced to rototill the dirt. This year we were able to do it by hand. Mort was Mr. Muscle. He is my new back. While I was ripping out the dead grass choking the borders, he was using his shovel to dig out the weeds, chucking rocks into the wheelbarrow and pushing the cultivator like it was going out of style. Ooo! Cliche number two. So, today I am getting good soil to mix into the existing stuff and it should just about be ready. I'm having a really hard time finding organic seeds, however. Every place is sold out. I have read that the amount of people growing their own food has dramatically increased this year, but wow. Although that's good for us all. The greater the demand for organic seeds, the less people will use ones that derive from genetically modified plants and unnatural hybrids and the better our food will be.

I read a headline this morning that asked, "When will robots do all of our chores?" I think that is perhaps one of the greatest questions ever asked and I eagerly await the answer. I hope that robots have the same chore list that I do. Like putting gas in the car and returning library books.

We have rented and watched two movies this weekend that fall hard into the "suck" category. Having a small child that cannot be trusted to effectively lie about his age in order to get into R movies has put a real damper on our movie-going experience.And most decent movies are not released in our area anyway. And so we depend on Netflix. And Rotten Tomatoes. And what is written on the back of the box.

Both movies we watched this weekend were touted as amazing pieces of treasure and won awards for their sheer level of fantastic-ness. And it is not exactly like we are movie snobs. Granted, it's not like we will see anything that starts with "Tyler Perry" or has Ashton Kutcher in it. But I have seen Roadhouse more times than I can count. Duke will watch pretty much anything. He loves truly good movies, his favorites being fairly highbrow affairs that are too upsetting for me to watch, but probably still including Lord of the Rings. And I like anything that is good and doesn't include anyone being mean to children or animals. My favorite movie is Out of Sight. But we both loved Anchorman and thought Zach and Miri Make a Porno was hysterical and vastly under appreciated. (And yes, I am paid to edit, and no, I can't recall what one does with movie titles and I don't feel like looking it up. Hence the italics. Deal with it.)

Why am I telling you all of this? To set up a firm basis that movies at our home are highly appreciated and widely embraced, regardless of genre. So, we settled in to watch Happy-Go-Lucky. And we ended up having to turn it off. How the heroine won a Golden Globe for Best Actress is anyone's guess. Because I cannot speak for Duke, but I kept hoping a meteor would fall upon her in order to stop from hearing the sound of her voice. It takes a lot for us to stop watching a movie. I think in 13 years, we have walked out of two. That's how bad this movie was.

Last night we popped in Synecdoche, New York. Hard to go wrong with that, right? Every actor who has won an award in the past ten years is in it. Award-winning writer/director. However, the description blurb should have read "A truly pretentious piece of shite that will keep you watching until the very end in order to satisfy your immense desire that the main character dies."

So, that was my morning movie critique. I'm pretty sure we are now going to be late for pre-school.

I am a haphazard housekeeper at best. I'm more on the slovenly side of things. It's not like you can't sit on the couch for all the old newspapers or that you can't use the sink for all the dishes. And I never skimp on the bathrooms. You kind of can't when you live with boys. So, what's the problem? you are probably thinking. Doesn't sound too bad.

The problem is dust. I hate hate hate to dust. It is a double-edged sword because I loathe dusting as I'm highly allergic to it and I am always suffering from allergies because there's too much dust.I also hate to vacuum. And then you throw in the ridiculous amount of shedding my dog and I do and ugh. Our house is a dust and tumbleweed shrine. Pah, you are thinking. Suck it up and just fricking dust. What's the big whoop?

I like chores that have an end result. A gleaming counter. A sparkling sink. Dusting is a thankless task. By the time you have finished the last room, the first room already has dreaded dust sprinkles resettling onto every imaginable surface. 

This has never before been such a problem for me. We first lived in a teensy three room apartment that I could thoroughly clean-including scrubbing floors on hands and knees- every day in about 9 minutes. Our additional rentals were of a similar fashion. We built our first house and we still were childless and it was half the size of this one, so even with the extra room, it was still a joy to clean. As much as cleaning can be a joy. I mean,I was on top of things. I removed entire light fixtures on a regular basis to get in all the nooks and crannies.

But now. Jayzuss. I don't know if it's living in the country proper or the house itself or having a small person child or just sheer laziness. I am perpetually overwhelmed. 

I have new found admiration for my mother, who worked full-time outside the home-- at night no less-- so that she could work full-time in our home during the day and had to swaddle my bedroom in plastic and dust it twice a day because of my allergies. How in the world did she do it? And in between her current very busy, high-pressure job that starts at 6am and ends about 8 pm and million and one friends and social outings and 4am trips to the gym, could I somehow entice her to come to my house twice a day and do it again?  Kidding, kidding. But seriously, I will pay someone. I will. Send me an e-mail. I am accepting applications. You don't have to dust twice a day like my mom, but it would definitely move your resume to the top of the pile.

Mort is drawing elaborate pictures and then telling me the story of the picture. I remember doing that when I was a wee lass. In fact, I can recall rushing through the drawing, impatient and eager to get to the part involving words.

Last night Mort asked to write on the card I was using as a bookmark and when he returned it to me, he had scrawled "I love Mommy" and drawn a heart. Needless to say, I am using that as a bookmark for the rest of my life. I 'll probably get it laminated.

And for prosperity, I need to document a conversation between two boys sitting in the back of my car. Can I just tell you how having someone else's kid in your car really cements your role as mommy?

Chance: I caught a fish. It was really big.

Mort: Really really big?

Chance: Yeah! Really really big.

Mort: Maybe it was a grouper!

Chance: It was! It was a grouper!

Passing a creek...

Chance: Hey, that's where I caught my big fish!

Mort: The grouper?

Chance: Yeah!

Me (trying very hard not to laugh): Did you catch any trout?

Chance: Yeah, I caught three trout and a grouper.

Later in the day.

Mort: Mommy! Chance said people eat deer!

Yesterday was a jam-packed day. With events. Not jam. Dukehad returned from his business trip the night before and it was a whirlwind to get the family ready the next morning to make the hike to our nation's capital where a very dear friend was visiting from Italy on her business trip. And so, we got pulled over on the way there. It's amazing how much less traumatic that is when you are an adult and you don't have to tell your parents about it. Although explaining to our five year old why the policeman was talking to us was interesting. We had to keep reiterating that we were wrong and had broken the law and that the policeman was doing his job in keeping us all safe. I really hope that story doesn't resurface for Monday's show and tell at pre-school.

We had a lovely morning with our Italian pal. She wanted to eat an "American breakfast, something with the how do you say it? Seer-rup?" so, she had a Belgain waffle loaded with whipped cream and syrup on the side. "How long does it take to burn off the calories of something like this?" she asked. "Um...a week?" I guessed. She was also disappointed that some places posted the calorie content of their food because she said it took all the joy out of eating. And she bought an Obama beach bag for her brother. Duke got him a Bush key chain.

Which is a funny thing about food. People are all anti-carbs. Or at least they were. Maybe they aren't anymore since the anti-carb guy died. I don't know. But in Italy they eat carbs at every meal, and what's more, they have full MEALS at every meal. On the beaches, everyone traipse up at lunchtime to enjoy plates of cold pasta. In bikinis and speedos. Anyway, no one in Italy is obese. They may be tan beyond anything you ever knew to be humanly possible, but as a country, they seem to have a pretty unified and healthy BMI. So, I am kind of going to go out on a limb and suggest that carbs are not the issue.

Anyway, is there anything that doesn't sound gorgeous with an Italian accent? Plus,our friend has a fantastic laugh, the kind of laugh that gives life to the words "peals of laughter" and she just rocks.

And then went to see the dinosaur bones and then as we were headed for home, Duke made the fatal mistake of mentioning how he has never successfully exited DC on the first try. Nor have I.We were totally jinxed from that moment on. My attempts to exit the city have involved a trip to the police station to get directions after a Dead show and paying for directions from the man who tried to get into my locked car at a gas station. Our combined forces resulted in a trip through the part of DC you don't want to be in with your kid, who luckily was asleep and we were therefore spared from having to answer his questions. "What are those people buying?" "Why are those women dressed up?" Good times, good times.

In case you are curious, I recognize that this entry is not one of my very very very best. But we found out far too late last night that we were down to the dregs of our coffee can and as a result I am drinking coffee flavored water this morning. Out of cream as well. And my brain is not really interested in pursuing basic functions without proper coffee.

Sun is shining. Birds are singing. Crocuses are blooming in the yard.My roots are freshly dyed a lovely color. Kindergarten registration is behind me.

Ah, kindergarten registration. I won't get into the whole thing because I have to treadmill it this morning and quite frankly, there is not enough coffee in this house to get through that saga. There were screaming children clinging to their parents' legs. There were parents crying. And they weren't even crying over their child's inability to go read a chart and get a cookie without them! Yeesh. If my kid pulled that, I would be crying with the relief that someone else had to deal with that mess for 10 minutes. I mean, I've been joking about the whole thing, but wtf? Yes, I felt a pang over how tiny my very tall for his age little guy seemed in that school. Yes, I felt a wave of tenderness when he solemnly shook hands with the principal using his left hand. And I have no doubt that come fall I will be lucky to make it inside before I vomit as the bus pulls away.

However. If you are crying while you are signing your kid up for school, do ya think there's any particular reason why your child is lying on the floor with a death grip around your ankles screaming their head off? I mean, it's not exactly like you're on the Titanic here.

Anyway, our particular situation had to do with the student helper, the dangerous people in the school she informed my son he had to make sure to never talk to because they would get him and how she told him not to tell anyone. Let's just say it was a very good day to be wearing pointy toed boots with four inch heels. They hurt your target alot more than Birkenstocks when you're doing some ass kicking. 

I will have two five year old boys tearing down my house today. Do I have time to hit Lowe's and get them shovels so that they can get cooking in the garden? I'm thinking yes.

If you are a stay-at-home mom whose only child will be in school full-time come fall, is it wrong to want a cleaning person? Because I really do. One might think, Hey, lazy ass, okay, whatever, you're too busy being a mom right now to bother with trivialities like the fact that your windows are so dirty they appear frosted, (although strangely enough you have time to update on facebook and crank out a blog or two a day) but what will you be doing in the fall when your job is elsewhere for eight hours a day?

I wish I had an answer for you. I really do. All I know is that whatever I will be doing, I will still not have the time needed to devote to scrubbing the woodwork. Maybe I can juggle just enough freelance work to cover the expense of a cleaning person and still have time to chaperone field trips and sit in my car with high powered binoculars at recess and cry when Mort is having fun without me. We shall see.

Wind is to trash day what the UPS person is to Stella. All around our neighborhood, recycling bins have been upended and lawns are strewn with newspapers and cans and plastic containers. Luckily, Duke and I foresaw such a problem and weighted down our recycling with empty high quality beer bottles. Who's laughing now? Okay, well, we were laughing then, too.

I just read a woman's account with the struggle that is making mommy friends. It did indeed ring true and clear. Perhaps if you're a work-outside-the-home mommy, the situation isn't so dire. You still have that whole connection to the adult world. But for stay-at-home moms, friends are the balm to your sanity.

I had a lot of things going against me in this arena. I am an introvert by nature. I am incapable of making small talk. I did not have work force friends, as I have been in college since we moved here from Boston. I did not have college friends because I went to college with kids who were 10 years younger than I. They were getting busted in the dorm for smoking the pot. I was clipping coupons and making dinner. And then when I was a became a mom, I realized I didn't know any other moms that lived in the same state as I.

And trying to befriend like-minded moms was akin to trying to get a date with the most popular girl in school. If there was a mom who had a kid roughly your kid's age, wasn't pregnant, stayed at home full-time, was even remotely friendly and/or interesting, they had been snatched up long ago. Just when you would think you were making some headway and trying to get up the nerve to ask her out, her betrothed would appear and the two would push their strollers into the sunset, laughing and drinking water from eco-friendly containers and feeding their kids broccoli--all the very things that you had leaped ahead and envisioned doing with your brand-new best friend while you were introducing yourself. Sigh.

When Mort had just turned three, I was engaging in chitchat at the library with a pair of cute moms. I had no hope for them to be my friends. They were already a unit. One had rhinestones on her flip flops. The other had great hair. They had adorable, funny kids. I knew at any moment they would leave for lunch together.

Instead, it was the beginning of my venture into the wonderful world of girlfriends. For all these charming women that I met changed and enriched my life beyond anything I had known to even dream. We got together for the kids and stayed for the moms. They are a group straight out of a mommy lit novel, straight out of a chick flick. We watch each others' kids and we go out for dinner without them, we bolster and support and laugh and vacation and drink wine and eat Thai and see movies and get ice cream. When I am out of town, they invite Duke and Mort on their excursions. When my life hits a bump or I worry about Mort, they close ranks around me.We are safe within that circle. When we are together, everyone's child is our own.

So in reading that mother's article, I both felt terrible for her in her plight, because it is a real one and I felt grateful, so very grateful that I know what life is within your family of friends.

I have found that whenever I have a gigantic mess of paperwork to go through, it is much less daunting if I shove it in a cabinet for a month or so. When the deadline is approaching and I am nearly faint with anxiety, I tend to discover it is no big deal and sail through it in minutes, wondering why I was sweating it in the first place.

This morning's slew of forms was KINDERGARTEN REGISTRATION. When the manila folder arrived in the mail, even seven cups of kava tea couldn't quell my shaking hand long enough to answer the repetitive questions. Cell phone number?!? I don't know that! I don't even know how to find out what it is! "What are your child's interests?" Is that a trick question? Are they secretly trying to figure out whether or not you have a kid that is already bright enough so that he or she can be dumped into the classroom of the teacher who is unable to properly use an apostrophe? Why do they need to know that? Are they planning a class devoted to what my kid wants to do that day? Dentist forms? Are they in cahoots with the insurance companies? "How do you feel about your child beginning kindergarten?" I feel like that is none of your dang business! So what if I throw-up whenever I picture the bus driving out of sight and he doesn't even turn around to wave because he's so happy and i have to go inside and spend the day in a haze of smeary mascara and empty vodka bottles and whatever passes for daytime television on non PBS channels that I haven't seen in the past five years?

Anyway, this morning I was able to whip through those forms in three minutes flat.

And now I am trying to scientifically approach my garden's layout for the year. Which is tricky because my brain doesn't do science and math. It only does words. So reading about pH balances is akin to asking me to explain string theory. I am doing companion planting this year. Supposedly if I plant borage and marigolds, it will deter those God-awful tomato hornworms I was

 plagued with last year. Don't remember them? Oh, okay. Here's a picture. Also, lavendar will apparently confuse pests, but it also attracts bees, which while good for the garden, are not so good for the allergic gardener. I need to figure out which plants are beneficial to each other so that I can have a better crop and better quality of soil. I think I liked this better when I just shoved a bunch of stuff in the ground and hoped for the best. No, that's not true. It's actually very exciting to be plotting this. Because what if it works? How great would that be? And I want to add a strawberry patch this year, because someone in our house can tear through a pound a day. However, if I plant them in our existing garden, I need to look for a certain strain of strawberry that can handle vegetable stripped soil. If I eck out a new garden for them, I don't know that the soil will support the crop this year. Do you see the world's weight I carry on my shoulders? Believe me, I count my blessings that I get to worry about this stuff.

I am making beer bread this weekend. I will have the answer to my question: will it taste like beer?

I have always been partial to Janice from The Muppet Show. If she didn't epitomize  chic, I don't know who did. I think the sax player looked an awful lot like Frank Stallone.

The problem with writing a blog is that sometimes people start reading it. And then you start censoring yourself. Maybe I need to start another one so that I can really let the freak flag fly without risk.

People who use football analogies for everyday life should be stopped.

Andy Rooney is so old he wore a full-length wool bathing suit. It's true! His column this week started with that little nugget. I couldn't read further because my head stopped working at that unfortunate image. But really, how old is he? Isn't that what Laura Ingalls Wilder wore?

Sometimes I am fearful that we are raising our son in a 70s time warp. He can reel off the name of every special guest star on The Muppet Show, complete with title: "Miss Rita Moreno! Miss Valerie Harper! Mr. Joel Grey!" He reads books that don't read back to him.  He walks around the house turning off lights and scolding people for wasting water. He likes the original Star Wars but is less than impressed with the ones George Lucas vomited for sheer profit(okay, maybe he likes them all just fine and that one is really me).  He enjoys a  good bowl of chicken corn soup.  I mean, it's not like he's holding up his tape player to get songs off the radio. But it's also not like he has ever watched a DVD in the car or played an electronic game at the dinner table. I am a big fan of that type of life. But I am also an adult who has chosen this path. If you raise your kid like it's 1978 but it's really 2009, will they be able to relate to their peers? Will they have common ground?Are our choices making our kid an anomaly? 

I can't help but wonder about that. We're definitely doing something wrong. Everyone does. But what will it be? What will be our mistake that he holds tightly as proof of our inadequacy? Will it be something we currently agonize over or will it be something we cannot even begin to imagine? I guess you just have to hope that in the end, the good you do outweighs the bad.

I believe that we are biologically driven to reproduce, to become parents, to raise children, although, certainly some are able to allow logic to prevail. Who would sanely choose such a ferocious undertaking? But when we do have these little lives in our care, what are we doing? Are we trying to right the wrongs in our own childhoods? Are we trying to recreate what we deem idyllic? Are we raising soldiers to carry out our version of values into the world at large?

Unrelated-or maybe not. What kind of asshole punches McGruff the Crime Dog because he "thought it would be funny"? What is wrong with people?!

Mort has declared that he is staying in his pjs the whole day. Fine by me. I just got out of mine and it's 1 in the afternoon. I was rearranging things in our home (OCD and/or favorite pasttime. Mort: "What are you doing? Are you rearranging? You always do that.") and switching out pictures and suddenly I looked-up and it was after 12.

The morning was devoted to the wonder that is my new camera. I begged my family to jump up and down so that I could marvel at the crystal clear mid-air shots it produced.I then went outside to gawk at the crazy powerful zoom. I was able to better see a far-away hawk's nest through my lens than when I have out the binoculars. Great great stuff. Very

exciting.

But a little sad as we spent time in Florida with a crappy throw away camera in which I inadvertently ruined the film by sending it through the x-ray machine. And we saw bird there that I have have never before seen in real life: ospreys, bald eagles and birds that are just plain old cool: pelicans, egrets, great blue herons, scarlet ibis--oh man, the shots I could have taken had I not been dithering around weighing one camera against another like they were dogs up for adoption and had that camera then.

Instead, I have these useless beauties: