Put Me In Coach

In spite of the rain that fell on and off all day, they had the baseball practice. This is the third time this season my son has been hit, hard, by a pitch -- this time in the hip. He sat for much of the practice and was quite unhappy throughout the barbecue, refusing even to eat at first, though he finally had a brownie and a hot dog (in that order). Stupidly I did not stop to think that of course it would be all beef burgers and dogs, so I could only eat potato salad, a deviled egg and dessert...there's a Lebanese boy on the team whose mother made wonderful rice pudding.

Otherwise the highlight of my day was stopping in Michaels to get my younger son paints and finding some silver bead clasps and sets of decorative buttons. I got cats and nautical-themed shapes like anchors and wheels. Now I just need something to sew them on.

Darnestown has a park with a Civil War trail sign -- the Confederate Army came through -- and a big open field surrounded by trees. Because of the trees, there are cicadas, despite all the new construction up past Gaithersburg and the surrounding farmland.


Me with a cicada. Now, admittedly I have short stubby fingers, but even so you can get some sense of their size.


And here's one on my wrist, next to my watch.


Cicadas that can still fly tend to seek trees. The ones on the ground seem unable to fly any distance and I suspect they are already dying, even if they are mobile.


One of the boys on the baseball team had been collecting cicadas and putting them in a big metal bucket with twigs and leaves. Here's a close-up view...


...and here's the distance view with all those buggy red eyes glaring out.

Once again late: Happy birthday , , and !