Pregnancy does funny things to the brain. I have always prided myself on my grammar; I make the occasional mistake, but I usually catch it on my own, though not always until after I hit the publish button (my apologies to those of you who read my RSS feed).

But during this pregnancy I have noticed a disturbing trend: I have been misusing apostrophes. I will be halfway through a comment on someone else’s post and realize that I wrote “your” for “you’re,” or “they’re” for “their,” and I feel as if I’m slowly going mad. Where did this affliction come from? What chemical in pregnancy hormones affects the apostrophe receptor, and what possible benefit can this have for humanity?

The other day I noticed, too late, that I had thrown a completely inappropriate apostrophe, willy-nilly, into a comment at this post at Lifenut’s blog.

I cannot fully convey to you how that wildly misplaced apostrophe pains me.

To make matters worse, my keyboard has collected a large-ish crumb from the fingers of children. This crumb shifts around, but returns frequently to its haven under the comma key. I have tried to clean under the letters, but with no success. From under the comma key, the crumb resists the force of my typing, and the computer consequently leaves out commas.

This is not good for my mental health.

So to all of you grammar sticklers out there, I offer my heartfelt apologies for the indiscretions you see on my blog or in my comments on your blog. Please know that they bother me just as much as they bother you - possibly more, since I feel my identity is somehow involved.

And if you have a beloved, nerdy daughter who shares my fixation with proper punctuation, you might not want to mention to her this side effect of pregnancy.

At least, not if you want grandchildren.

Dear Mr Buckley:

You are one of the leading conservatives in this country, but you wear your hair like a way-out liberal hippy. It is nasty looking, unkempt, and subtracts tremendously from your appearance. You would be a fairly good looking man if you would get a haircut — not necessarily crew like your brother [Senator Buckley]. If you really are conservative, why don’t you make yourself look like one?

Fellow Conservative

Dear Fellow Conservative: If I were also good looking, don’t you think it would all be just too much? Cordially, WFB

At the library the other day I picked up a collection of letters to the editor and responses from National Review, the conservative magazine founded and, for forty years, edited by William F. Buckley, Jr.

I had never read much from William Buckley (other than his language advice in the newspaper), but I have read National Review a few times, and the magazine has always made me uneasy. Side by side within its pages might be an informative article full of surprising good sense - a pleasure to read - while the next article might be a political screed listing and attacking the beliefs of unquoted -ists and -isms, full of straw man arguments tendentious enough to make my eyes bleed.

But this little collection of the published letters to the editor of NR is a quick and entertaining read, not least because of Buckley’s verbal swagger. His wit and vocabulary were impressive, but more than that, he had an opinion on almost everything, and was willing to state it with confidence. He suffered from what Alister McGrath calls, in reference to Richard Dawkins, the “delusion of omnicompetence.”

And after reading this book, it occurred to me that pomposity can be a pretty entertaining thing. No one can be well-read and well-informed on every subject, but sometimes arresting, entertaining prose can result from a willingness to make an ass of oneself.

While sometimes I agree with Buckley, and sometimes disagree, or even find him infuriating, I can’t help but envy his style. There is a part of me that wishes I could manage the pomp and swagger, the seeming certainty of every opinion, the delight in summing up his opponents’ shortcomings and blunders.

It would make one hell of a blog, wouldn’t it?

But my pomposity just doesn’t pass muster. It lacks the intensity necessary for entertainment, and subsides instead into a rather dull conceit. I’m smugly certain that I’m smart, but I’m never quite convinced that my side of the argument is the only one possible for rational people.

Worst of all, I feel a little guilty if I’m witty enough to humiliate someone.

Pesky conscience.

Mr. Buckley: You are the mouthpiece of that evil rabble that depends on fraud, perjury, dirty tricks, anything at all that suits their purposes.

I would trust a snake before I would trust you or anybody you support.

A. Ruesthe

Dear Mr. Ruesthe: What would you do if I supported the snake? Cordially, WFB

Some days things just don’t go right.

I had a nifty schedule of post subjects all written up, ready to be consulted so I could post every day for two whole weeks.  But we have been teaching my oldest daughter a few basics about using the computer, and apparently I had not been careful to log off when I finished.  As far as we can tell, she dragged several folders to the trash and deleted them.  It included blog stuff, recipes that I had accumulated over the last five years, and other things that we will only discover as we miss them.

Boo hoo.

You may have noticed I have gussied up the blog a bit.  I read the comments at BooMama’s on this post, and when I saw how many people refused to read a blog that wasn’t pretty, I think I made a sound like “Yawp!” I decided I had better get crackin’ on beautifying the place.

I switched around the fonts and chose a color scheme. The banner photo on the homepage is a collection of books and crayons.  If you click on an individual post, the banner photo is Sweetpea’s foot in a sandbox.  If you click on the About or Blogroll pages, the banner photo is the bottom of a rocky pool.  All of those are ideas I got from you, my lovely readers.

I tried to take some pictures of crackers, but have you ever tried to get a decent picture of a saltine?  Definitely beyond my skill.

Toddled Dredge has always made me think of the hot toddies that Az the Husband made  for me one month when I had a horrible throat thing that would not go away.  Honey, lemon and scotch, warm and sliding over my raw and ragged throat - it was the closest I think I have ever come as an adult to the soothing comfort of mother’s milk.  So I wanted those colors - amber and sand and toast and orange like a crackling fire.

So let me know if you have any trouble with the pages loading or with the way they show up on your browser.   I still have not settled on an avatar, and I may do a little tweaking, but this is basically the look of the blog for the foreseeable future.  Let me know what you think.

Outside my study window is a catalpa tree. It is tall and twisted, a survivor of a lightning strike long ago that left a scarred branch turned in on itself before sprouting new greenery.

Every spring this tree blooms, frilly white blossoms rising above the leaves, tall panicles of blooms like the towers of Khmerian architecture. The flowers have a sweet scent that is barely there. It catches me unaware on breezy days, sudden and unfamiliar, so light that it leaves me certain that lilacs and honeysuckle are merely pushy.

I have wanted to catch a photo of this tree in bloom for you, but it lasts only a few days, and I always seem to miss my chance. This year I was sure I would get the photo just in time, but a thunderstorm blew through, and the next day the blossoms were on the ground, covering the driveway, where they rotted into a brown paste that the rain washed away the next week.

Once, people planted Catalpas all over North America. The tree will grow almost anywhere, and it grows quickly.  It was affordable and hardy and tall and inexpensive, a boon to working class families longing for a little green.  It was called Catalpa, Indian Bean or Cigar tree.

They were once planted for their wood - a fence post made from a catalpa and set in the ground will grow harder over the years rather than softly rotting away. They are still desirable wood for carvers, but nowadays the wood is hard to find.

I have fallen in love with this beautiful, useful tree and its enormous leaves, smooth and heart-shaped, shady and perfect.

But trees have fashions just like every thing else, and catalpas have fallen out of favor. Catalpas are too inconvenient for the modern homeowner. Their beauty comes at the price of mess and disorder, and treelovers turn their noses up at them.

Catalpas make long bean pods, sometimes 18 inches long. The pods dry and fall and litter the lawn, looking like snakes. At our house, my daughter chooses the straightest to be her playtime swords, racing around the yard, slaying imaginary dragons. When we build campfires, the dried, slightly oily pods make great kindling.  The fallen pods seem just one more way to appreciate this lovely old grandmother of a tree.

But to consumers looking for a tree to plant, this tree is sloppy, unnecessary and extra work.

I can’t help but take it personally.

Az the Husband watched the kids today while I ran some errands. When I came home, we could not find Sweetpea. She can’t open the front door yet, so we knew she was inside somewhere, but she did not answer when we called.

Finally, we found her. She was curled up in the ratty old glider in my room, which was facing the window. She was completely hidden from view, fast asleep.

And she is sleeping still, even after I took this picture.