Wherein I pitch a possible movie idea

I told Dylan and Julie they should make a Christmas card that looks like the movie poster EAT! PRAY! LOVE! STARRING JULIA ROBERTS! Only their poster should say EAT! SLEEP! POOP! STARRING ELOISE CANNON!

Really, that's all newborns do. And yet when you're taking care of one, there isn't time for anything else.

Stranger in a strange land

Over at Good Letters Sara Zarr recently posted a terrific essay about how SCARY nature seemed to her, a city girl, when she first moved to Utah. Although I've historically been a little more outdoorsy than Miss Sara (or "outsidesy" as Alec calls me), I've experienced a taste of what she felt while I've been here in Greenville.

It's . . . different here. The air is thicker, the light hazier, the smells stronger and more exotic. Overhead large birds--are they crows? Because if they are crows they're freakin' HUGE crows--circle and wheel. Meanwhile all the grasses shimmer with movement and unexpected life. What's in there, I wonder. Snakes? Roaches? Things we don't have in Salt Lake? I find myself treading carefully.

But, it must be said, with wonder.

Lockdown lifted!

What the header said.

Meanwhile, Dylan will have another good story, right?

Well now here's something you don't expect when you go visit a baby

Julie and I turned on the TV, only to discover that ECU's campus is on lockdown because a gunman was spotted. Dylan, of course, is on campus. I'm guessing he hasn't gotten a chance to give his presentation yet . . .

Dude moves to North Carolina just in time for a hurricane, an earthquake, and now this. Good times in Greenville.

I'm sure he'll be fine.

Carolina sights

A milky moon rising from the top of pine trees.
A silvery pond glittering beneath that milky moon.
Cotton balls harvested in the dark.
A baby girl with elfin ears and big wide eyes.

Falling trees and other hazards

Dylan was going into the second grade when we moved to Tuxedo Park, New York, a place populated with huge trees and old stone houses. I mention the part about huge trees and old stone houses, because both of them figure into this little story.

I was inside our OLD STONE HOUSE (see? I told you) when Dylan rushed inside to say A HUGE TREE had almost fallen on top of him. I kind of said yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what huge trees do--they just jump out of the ground and purposely fall on second graders who CLEARLY FEEL LIKE THEY'RE NOT GETTING ATTENTION FROM FRAZZLED MOMS WHO JUST UNPACKED A BIG OLD U-HAUL AFTER DRIVING ACROSS THE COUNTRY WITH FIVE KIDS AND THREE DOGS.

So I ignored him and went about my business, and later when I went outside, I realized I couldn't back out of the driveway because there was a 100-foot tree that had fallen (TIMBER!) across the road and landed squarely on our property. Where, apparently, my little boy had been standing, all slack-jawed with amazement.

That's why I was interested in a picture he and Julie sent me after Hurricane Irene. Guess what fell down near their house?

I know. My son the Tree Magnet.