you get used to hanging if you hang long enough

Surprise arrivals usually make their appearances late at night, often taking unexpected forms. You wander into the kitchen one morning, bleary-eyed and bee-lining for the coffee, to find a late-arriving guest dangling from the ceiling---luckily outfitted with a full complement of airbags.


Safety first.

Saint Tardia, the guardian angel of late arrivals, was just one in a long line of items discovered hanging from the kitchen ceiling. Over the years, this mysterious phenomenon included many other instances of unexplained "dangling"---stuffed animals, poems, hacky-sacks, collages, extraterrestrial-repellent foil masks, bundt cakes, and other baked goods hanging precariously in apparent defiance of known physical laws of cohesion, adhesion, structural integrity, gravity, and gravitas. And Mom was always the early-riser to discover whatever fresh startling horror was hanging there, offering its cheery, gravity-defying greeting. GOOD MORNING FROM MID-AIR! And she was the one who always had to take it down and dispose of it.

Which brings us to birthday blogs. Think of this as a continuation of the hallowed Saint Tardia tradition of dangling objects. How exciting! For the next sixty-some days, we'll stumble around at midnight, sneaking and giggling, gluing and baking, stringing up a little something to greet Mom in the virtual morning. Somebody make some coffee.