Twilight Zone

There are some very weird things that happen around here. Not even kid-driven weirdnesses!

Our shower, for instance, has a love/hate relationship with the on-demand water heater. So when we shower, it ranges from really hot to rather chilly -- and the shower becomes a dance where one has to listen for the temperature change. On the upside, our showers are brisk and water-conserving.

Then, speaking of water-conserving, we use buckets to catch extra water, or to empty one of the kids' "warm-up" baths, and then to water the plants outside. Maybe because of that, the plants in the front yard have put on huge bursts of growth. For the first time in as long as we've lived here, the wisteria is blooming. The volunteer pumpkin plant had put out four pumpkins, big ones, and we were tickled. Enough for each child for Halloween! But now, every single day there's a new baby pumpkin showing up. Since I am all for increase, when I lug the bucket out, I do some assisted pollination. Maybe we'll have enough pumpkins for all the kids in the neighborhood.

We won't, however, have enough chickens for everyone. We had gotten the six new ones, bringing our total to ten hens. One of them had a congenital defect in her beak, so she didn't eat or drink as efficiently as the others. She seemed, however, perky despite small. Then, one of the completely healthy new hens died a couple of weeks ago. I didn't do any kind of post-mortem, and the kids buried her. I am so over naming the hens that I didn't even attend the funeral. When I told people one of the chickens had died, every one said, "The dork-beaked one?" But no. However, last night when I went out there, the dork-beaked one was dead. Lying right in front of the coop building. I noted that but figured I'd grab her body and put it in the city compost bin later.

Later didn't come until this morning. I'd wrestled the bag of honeycomb up onto the draining area, poured the already-drained honey into jars, and then after wiping up, decided I needed to tend to the living and remove the non-living. I grabbed newspaper and went outside. And -- the body was gone. I didn't see any tracks, or feathers, or anything. She was just gone. I assume something got to it and ate her, but I don't know. It felt like one of those scary kid-stories about how the hitchhiker just disappeared.

And I sort of talked to the guy at the camera-repair shop yesterday, and if I understood him correctly, the part to repair our camera isn't available or is only available on ebay, or we should parts our camera on ebay, or he wants our camera for parts, but I have a sinking feeling that I'm not going to get to use my camera again. This makes me sad, because I really enjoyed using it.

Fortunately, the place where my spouse works is having enough scandals and crises that every time he turns around, they're promoting him and giving him more money, and my job is steadier than I could have predicted, so we can afford another camera, but making the decision about what camera isn't easy for me. It has to have a really fast shutter, because my kids move so quickly -- I can't do that digital drag. I'd like it to date-stamp pictures as an option. I'd like it to have huge resolution so I can make big big blowups occasionally. I'd also like it to have easy to understand options, and maybe a clear manual. I'd like to be able to do macro shots. Spouse thinks a Nikon is the way to go, and maybe that's true.

I know that waiting on electronics almost always makes the price go down and the options go up, so I'm not impatient for that. But the all-words blog is boring me, and I'm two welts into the hot-color family snail mitten, and there's a lovely finished object just waiting for pictures, so I would like to have some pictures.

Not to mention, you gotta see these pumpkins!