Yesterday I was showering before work when I heard a rapping on the very unfortunately-placed window that looks out from the bathroom to the backyard. I pressed my nose against the glass mid-shampoo, and there was J, pointing across the grass, yelling, "Who did that? Who put those birds there?" See, a month or two ago I arrived home from a night out to find my enterprising fiance on the floor with a saw and wood chips all around. When I asked him what he was doing, he replied, "making a fruit feeder!" - like, how could I not have known what he was doing? Who doesn't build fruit feeders from scraps of wood on any given weekday evening in order to attract the rarely seen Baltimore Oriole to his or her yard?

Every day, J would look outside at the feeder, hung carefully from a tree limb in the back, and exclaim, sadly, "No birds are coming." He religiously placed half-cut oranges and grape jelly in the proper places, and we waited for the Orioles.

But yesterday morning, BEHOLD! J looked at the feeder, almost forgotten now, and said, "Holy shit!" (he told me the story after my shower). THREE birds were perched there. J grabbed his binoculars and ran to get a closer look. But wait. They weren't moving. Could they be dead, he wondered? The orange was black and covered with fruit flies, maybe they died...and then J took a closer look. The birds, fake, were wired to the feeder, and attached too was a note from the greatest prankster ever, as he shall now be known.

This prank, you see, turned my morning from one of stress and worry about how to get it all done...what to pack...the unfinished items on all the to-do lists...to one of great gaiety. I drove to work under perfect blue skies with the sunroof open, drinking my coffee, playing loud music, thinking, "fake birds. Oh, man, fake birds!" The rug may go un-vacuumed but that's not what matters! And today we go to Vegas where my friends have planned this weekend for me, for us, I have no details about the agenda and am oh so ready for the great unknown...