News From Hawkhill Acres

Okay, so I’m up to my wimple in yellow brocade, hemming these sleeves that go down to the floor and look like batwings, when Mark, the pool guy, knocks on the door, Daughter starts wailing that there’s a hornet in her room and Son clomps down the stairs and announces that he can’t get the blue lines off a stop sign, so he won’t have a shield for the next time he fights and besides that, how the heck can he make a lobstertail without the material? How, indeed?

Yanno, according to the free horoscope that I get every day, we’ve entered the peace-loving sign of Libra, where balance is everything. Reflecting the fall equinox, which was yesterday according to my calendar, Libra ushers in a season of sharing, socializing and fairness in business and personal relationships. Time to get together with friends and family, try new things and party hearty. Oddly enough, that’s what we’re doing, which is why I’m sewing, Son is making a shield and we’ll be camping in a field in Maine in September at a re-enactment of a Middle Ages Hunt. I ought to have my head examined.

The pool guy was here to close the pool, because it’s way too cold to swim, even though the daytime temps get up to 70-something. At night, it dips down into the 40s and even 30s, so the water is a tad nippy by morning. He was knocking on the door to let me know that there was a horse in my yard again, so I called my neighbor and she said she’d be right down to get the little dickens. Only a horse lover could call something that weighs as much as some cars a “little dickens” with a straight face. The horse lover’s face, not the horse’s.

The lobster tail, by the way, is layered pieces of leather which go on the back of a hockey helmet, which is what youth fighters wear when they fight like knights used to fight if knights had worn hockey helmets and padding. The stop sign is one that the geek got when the Department of Transportation threw it away and will be turned into Son’s shield, if he can figure out how to cut it into a shield shape with the puny tools that inhabit our garage.

For tin snips, he’s using some clippers that are barely a threat to hydrangeas. Somehow, I don’t think they’re the stuff that Middle Ages’ ironmongers reached for when they needed something to shape a knight’s shield. What he needs is a huge, heavy mallet and some giant, razor sharp cutters that could rip his arm off if he slips while cutting the sign.

Trust me when I say how sorry I am that we don’t have such a thing in our garage or anywhere in the house either, so he’ll just have to use the hydrangea clippers until the geek gets home to help him. (Hey, call me a wimp, but I’m not up for a trip to the ER and I’m a little hazy on tourniquet application for arterial wounds.) Oh, and I forgot to add that the reason helmets have lobstertails is to protect the fighters’ necks and the tops of their spinal columns from blows that might sever one or the other.

Why the HELL can’t males find something safe to do? Why do they always have to be doing something that can result in death if one little thing is overlooked? And why is it that the list of things that can’t be overlooked is always the list that they hand to Mom? While the list they keep is the list of equipment that they need to play the game that will almost certainly result in death, dismemberment, bankruptcy or all of the above. But, what of that?

I paid the pool man and waved at our horse-loving neighbor as she rattled a can of feed at the horse, who ignored her and peevishly kicked over our garden bench. Then I went upstairs and dispatched the errant hornet with a fly swatter, thus freeing Daughter from her room where the hornet had her and about a dozen beanie babies trapped in a corner. (Beanie babies are notoriously wimpy about hornets, Daughter says, and she stayed to comfort them.)

Downstairs, Daughter’s renaissance gown leered at me from my chair, so I glared at it and went out onto the deck to sit in my rocker for awhile. It was very peaceful out there with nary a sign of the horse, my neighbor, hornets or pillaging knights. However, a lot of the leaves have gone over to the Dark Side and are turning colors much faster than they need to. It’s only September, after all, not December.

This is the fall equinox when we start the long, slow slide into cold and grayness that is winter in Maine and New England. We can camp out this weekend. Sure, we can. (I’m channeling Mr. Rogers here, folks.) So what if it’s cold and damp and we wake up feeling as clammy as bait in a cooler? That’s all part of the fun, isn’t it? We’ll warm up, just like the temperature warms up and the mist burns off when the sun comes out.

In September, you can get away with camping in Maine, as long as you have that sleeping bag that’s good to 30 below. Not that it gets to 30 below, but that’s what it takes to keep warm in September in Maine, no matter what the tag says. Trust me on this. And if you need more information… If you can’t get your lobstertail tied on right or if your snood just won’t lie flat, look me up. I’ll be the one in the wool cloak, wool tabard, wool skirt, thick cotton tunic and voluminous chemise, wrapped in the “good to 30 below” sleeping bag and half a quart of mead.

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