Unless a flying saucer falls out of the sky and crashes on the ground right in front of me, I will never know that it has been hovering over my head.
Once on my way to school I was traipsing through deep snow, watching my boots with the plastic bread bags folded over their edges sink into the snow and out of the snow, almost disappearing with each step. I was so absorbed with making sure that none of that white stuff came in over the tops of my boots that I walked head first, straight into one of those skinny little trees that the city had planted the previous summer and I fell over backwards. Well, as long as I was down there I did make a snow angel. But the point is that it had not been my intent and I did walk head first into a tree. And walking into a tree, no matter what size it is, with your head, hurts.
I blame this on my Dad. He could be seated at the kitchen table with six rambunctious kids and my mom yelling something about a spilled glass of milk and a freshly waxed floor and be completely unaware of the situation.
He also never didn't have a cut on the top of his head.
So, being the unobservant creature that I am, noticing a mushroom invasion was a pretty darn exciting experience.
I admit that I would have had to have been blind not to have seen all the mushrooms, but even then I bet my seeing eye dog would have pointed them out to me, unless that seeing eye dog was Hunter.
I hope Hunter is never my seeing eye dog.
I was in my yard walking around with a cup of coffee one morning when I spotted these two guys next to the driveway.
"Well, hello," I said. "Where'd you two come from?"
Mushrooms don't say hello or answer questions, but I must say that I did feel their general sense of good will.
And I went on my way.
In the days ahead I began seeing a diversity of mushrooms everywhere I wandered.
The Butterfly Bath
The mushrooms were having LOTS and LOTS of babies out there.
I was rinsing off a plate when I thought I saw a space ship out the window, over by the propane tank.
"What the hell?"
"Sven!" I yelled.
I dragged Sven out there with me to see if there were any aliens hanging around and I grabbed my camera on the way out the door. I would love to meet a creature from another planet, but not without my camera or my Sven.
Well, it was a false alarm. It was not a flying saucer. It just another mushroom. Another mushroom on STEROIDS.
This guy I called, Papa.
It was then that I realized our failed garden had nothing to with us. Papa must have sucked all the nutrients out of the earth for miles.
Everyday more and more of Papa's babies were popping up out of the leaves.
So naturally, I invited my mom and my sister Louisa to come over for a mushroom walk.
And I'm not referring to the kind of mushroom trip that I went on once in my youth, which included trying to eat a hamburger that I could not, because it wouldn't stop moving even after I sent it back to the kitchen to be cooked some more and Louisa rolling her eyes at me from across the table. And then getting back into our friend's speed boat in the pitch of night and him driving around at one hundred miles an hour and throwing his head back and at the top of his lungs cackling, "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA." All the while my boyfriend Jason was curled up in a ball screaming, "Were all gonna die! I can't swim! Were all gonna die!" And our friend with that steering wheel in his hands, zigging and zagging all over that black glass, "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA," forever and ever and ever and ever and Louisa still just rolling her eyes at the three of us.
Apparently, Louisa did not partake in the mushrooms.
No. That is not the kind of mushroom walk I invited my mom and Louisa on this day.
One of those kinds of mushroom trips has sufficed me for the rest of my life.
My friend, Claudette, sent me a text, "What are you doing today?"
"Going for a mushroom walk." I write back.
"I'll be right over."
My God how life has changed.
Pedestal Sink for Ants
Leaning Bar Stool
Ho Chi Min
Hamburgler Hill
Leopard Lenny
The Kraut
Lemon Meringue Pie
The Scoop Chip
Whoopee Cushions
Ruby
The French Tickler
I know! Right?
I understand that where there are mushrooms there are fairies dancing.
I never saw any fairies dancing but there was definitely a national fairy convention out there and a LOT of partying going on for a few weeks.
Those fairies are welcome to hold their meetings at our place anytime. They were never too loud, always courteous and they didn't leave a piece of trash behind.
