Regulars at the Sandy Hook Diner might be wondering why their favorite waitress is pouring juice in coffee cups and forgetting to bring them their eggs. I crouched beneath the counter and eavesdropped as to why Jodi’s head is in the clouds: she is a new grandmother, as of the beginning of the month! So until she gets her feet back on the ground and stops daydreaming about her new grandson, I guess we can cut her some slack. Congratulations, Granny!

Newtown playwright Brett Boles is walking on air, too. Not only did he and his true love Caitlin O’Keefe tie the knot this month, but Foreverman, the musical for which he wrote the lyrics and music, opens in NYC next Friday, July 20. Foreverman was one of the pieces selected last winter to be produced for the New York Musical Theatre Festival this summer. For more information and tickets to any of the six performances of Foreverman, visit www.nymf.org.

If your head is more in the stars than the clouds, it seems that there will be astrology and tarot card readings each Tuesday afternoon at demitasse in Sandy Hook center. Kristin Roberts and Twink McKenney will offer their expert advice, first come, first served, for $25 per 20 minutes. Is it surprising that I’m as curious as a cat as to my future? I might have to wind myself around their ankles and see if I can’t purr up a reading.

The Friends of the C.H. Booth Library 37th Annual Book Sale isn’t even underway yet, and it’s already breaking records. Volunteers tell me that this past weekend two people had already staked out claims to the first two positions in line to buy tickets on Saturday, July 14, when they go on sale at 7 am, using boxes as placeholders. “This may be a record,” says my source. Apparently, staking out a place in line with a box is a “trusted and honored technique” and one which volunteers and others respect. Of course, there is always the possibility of sabotage, I hear. By midweek, another half a dozen boxes were in line behind the first two. As you know, it is not unusual for the earliest of the early birds to make a run for it, as soon as the doors open at RIS, at 9 am, opening day of the sale. Yikes! It smacks of The Hunger Games, and I suspect that Room 201, the rare and collectibles room, is the cornucopia of treasures to which they are headed!

One of the worker Bees who regularly travels Route 302 is very appreciative of the runner who laces up her shoes with neon pink laces. “They made her so visible on that road,” she buzzed in my ear. “I saw her feet first!” I am pretty sure that she is not the only driver who appreciates when runners and bicyclists on that busy road go out of their ways to make themselves more visible. Now if only they made neon antlers for all the deer…

While out and about this week, I spotted some ducklings hiding from the hot afternoon sun in the shade of one of the school’s walls. I didn’t see Mama Duck, but I have a sneaking suspicion she was not too far off, keeping a close eye on me.

The library has something new to offer — an evening of community dance, with calling by Patricia Campbell of The Reel Thing, followed by a cookie contest, Friday evening, July 20, from 6 to 8 pm. Put on your dancing shoes, bring your best cookies along, and get ready for some fun. And don’t forget, the Second Annual Incredible Edible Book Contest is coming up Saturday, July 28, at the library, too. Turn your favorite book or character into a creative, tasty treat. Call 203-426-4533 for more info on either of these library events.

If cookies and cooking aren’t your thing, how about a peaceful and interesting evening with a local author? Newtown photographer Chris Seman, author of The Patriotic Spirit, will host a book signing at C.H. Booth Library, Friday, July 20, from 6:30 until 8 pm, on the main (second) floor. Mr Seman recently published his coffee table book, which offers photos taken in every state, featuring Americans of all ages and backgrounds (including wife Aimee) taking their turn holding an American flag, and his impressions of each state. He began his project shortly after 9/11, “with his camera, a seed of patriotism, and a sense of both pride and adventure following separate acts of mass death and destruction on American soil,” we wrote last September, when the book was released. The Patriotic Spirit is a tribute to the victims of 9/11 as well as the April 19, 1995, bombing in Oklahoma City. Copies of the book ($25) will be available for purchase. Wine and cheese will be served.

I feel vindicated. Researchers in Finland believe that having pets actually makes for healthier children. Alright, most of the good news points to dogs, specifically, as helping to improve children’s immune systems, but a few cats sneaked into the study, too. The researchers from Kuopio University Hospital aren’t sure if it is the dirt pets bring into the household or something about the pets themselves, but it looks like new moms who put out the “Free Pet To Good Home” signs when bringing babies home are doing their children a disfavor.

Art Abandonment is a Facebook group designed to encourage random acts of art, left in various locations around the globe, for a lucky unsuspecting person to find. Two friends of Sandy Hook resident (and a wonderful artist) Sally Lynn MacDonald, Michael DeMeng and Andrea Matus DeMeng, started the group and it reportedly has branches all around the world. “This month’s theme is The Giving Tree,” Sally Lynn said this week, “so I did something that fit that idea and put two items out there. One was at C.H. Booth Library and the other was placed…” I’m not going to say where, but readers should know that another work may still await discovery. The item left at the library had been discovered within 48 hours. The idea, said Sally Lynn, is that the art is randomly placed with the hopes that someone discovers an unexpected treat. Many pieces are left with notes so that finders know what they have come upon. If they choose to, finders are invited to send a note to the e-mail address left with each piece of work, just so that an artist knows that his or her work has been found. Artists, meanwhile, share photos of what they have been leaving on Art Abandonment’s page and, if all goes well, a report when their work is discovered. Sally Lynn has established the Newtown branch of the group, and would love to hear from fellow artists… and of course, anyone who finds the work they begin to stash around Newtown. 

You can abandon all the art you want, but I hope you won’t abandon me. Remember next week to… Read me again.