We had a very active weekend with a lot of stuff going on. On Saturday I went over to Rob and Theresa's. Rob offered the use of his kitchen so I could do some of my holiday baking since ours is still under destruction. We split up the cookies that we made together. I have to say it was a lot of fun working with him and he's very organized. We made a double batch of chocolate chip cookies, a double batch of sugar cookies, ginger snaps, and peanut butter cookies. Because the sugar cookies have to be rolled and cut out we worked steadily for 9 hours.

We didn't get into frosting the sugar cookies they were enough of a challenge to bake because of the dough being uneven. I only make cut out cookiesat Christmas time, so I'm not good at rolling the dough evenly. Consequently, the cooking time varied wildly, and poor Rob spent a great deal of time peering into his oven, eyeballing them for doneness. But, of course, he isn't accident prone like I am, he didn't singe his eyebrows or anything!

On Sunday we had a showing of the house, which was sort of surprising. We really wanted the place to shine because we know that anyone who is looking at houses this time of year is a serious buyer, not a "window shopper". We had spent a lot of time on decorating, but still really needed to clean. And, after 9 hours of baking on Saturday, I wasn't exactly setting the land speed record for doing anything. Still, we managed to stash the laundry, clean the kitchen and bathroom completely, go over the hard wood floors with murphy oil soap, hide the scarey bills - hopefully in a place where we'll remember where they are before they get any scarier. ( I'm afraid the Exxon bill is going to mate with one of the bills from the gasterointerologists, jump out of desk and hollar "I've got gas! And I'm not afraid to use it!" And if that one mated with the home heating oil bill, it could probably threaten to blow up the house.)

We stuffed the tattered comforter into a duvet cover I bought way on sale at Kohls for the specific purpose of making it look like I am not too cheap to buy bed linens - which, of course, I am. I went over the wood cabinets in the kitchen with wood cleaner, we put the curtains back up, and The Hub began to clean up the office near Pair-a-Tweeter manor.

"Hey honey", he said in an ominous tone, "There's an egg in here. Two of 'em."

Well, we'd been through this before. Right after we got Dorothy, and found out that she was a female The Hub thought that she had laid an egg. In fact, it was a blueberry that I had put in their food dish to suppliment their seed.

I had not put any fruit in their cage lately, but The Hub really, really needs to have his eyeglasses changed, and besides, I was not prepared to deal with...well, anything more complicated than cleaning sink at that moment.

"No, there can't be."

"Come look and see if I'm not right. No wonder Dorothy's been in such a bad mood lately! She's been trying to lay an egg!"

Dorothy is always in a bad mood. After she got over her initial gratitude at being rescued, literally, out of the gutter on Main St, she has turned into one of the meanest parakeets I have ever met. She never met a finger she didn't want to bite. She not only bites the hand that feeds her, she bites it HARD and then steps back and sqwalks at it for good measure.

I figured she probably had less than ideal experiences with human beings and have gone very, very slowly in trying to tame her. In fact, I've gone so slowly that it's a very thin line between that and having given up.

Sure enough, there were two little round white eggs in the bottom of the cage. One was broken open, the other one was severly cracked. "Oh, no! Dorothy! Are you okay?" I asked. Naturally, she glared at me. "Buckbeak, what do you know about this?"

Good Lord, what do you expect him to know about it? They're parakeets! I told myself firmly. We took the ruined eggs out of the cage. I felt terrible.

I know that female parakeets sometimes lay eggs that aren't fertilized. It just means They Wanna. It doesn't mean that she and Buckbeak Did. But I have been paying attention to a lot of other things besides the parakeets lately. I have no idea what's going on in there. Worse yet, I was under the impression that parakeets usually laid three eggs at a time, though that was by no means a rule. What if Dorothy was egg bound - that is, had another egg inside that she couldn't lay?

We went to Petco, and I rifled through their tiny selection of bird books to try to get a clue. These were unhelpful. Though they had plenty of pictures of newly hatched parakeets - which were scarey enough looking in and of themselves - they offered no information on how they got there.

You can learn anything you want about any aspect of human reproductive health at the click of a button on line, or in bookstores, or libraries, or even through public service announcements these days. Finding out about the acutual birds and the bees is a little more involved. I decided to calm down and see what happened next. We went out to the market and to the movies, but all the while I was worried about Dorothy.

Sure enough, when I came home, there was another egg. And Dorothy looked, well, tired but a little calmer. She was nowhere near it, and I could see that this one was also cracked. I felt terrible all over again.

If I wanted to go through this level of anxiety I thought to myself as I tried to calm my speeding heart, I'd have gotten pregnant myself!

I absolutely have to call the bird vet. Maybe he can give me some advice over the phone. I can at least pick up a nesting box, so she'll have someplace appropriate to lay the eggs if she Wants To. But I have got to learn about all of this - and fast. This is worse than having teenagers!

Help.