Okay, I left you hanging in my last post about The Hawk Incident, so here goes. You think you had some wild and crazy visitors over the long Thanksgiving weekend? Try this one on for size.

Last Saturday as my daughter and I were getting into the car in our driveway, Ms. Nature Girl herself stops, cocks her head, and asks, “Did you hear that, Mom?” I did hear some kind of cawing noise but because we were late for an appointment in NYC, my response was something like, “Yeah, now let’s move it.” An hour later, I got a call on my cell from The Hubby, who informed me that a hawk had crashed through our (closed) kitchen window. Yup, you read that right. The Hubby was upstairs minding his own business with our two ferocious watchdogs/pampered pooches, when he heard an earsplitting crash. Running down to investigate, he found the hawk trapped in our adjoining family room, frantically searching for a way out and wreaking havoc in both rooms. Resourceful guy that he is, my husband opened a pair of French doors to the backyard and shooed him out.

As I write this, the long Thanksgiving weekend is coming to a close. Sitting in traffic going to the big family dinner gave me plenty of time for reflection, so below please find my very own What I am Thankful For List:

1. My college student bringing home only two gigantic stuffed laundry bags and not, say, the entire combined wardrobes of all his frat brothers.
2. Individual family iPods for the barely moving parking lot-like trip to Turkey Dinner.
3. My refrigerator being a No Tempting Leftovers Zone, thanks to my passing the hosting duties to my sister for the first time in five years.
4. My successful avoidance of any place of commerce on Black Friday thanks to the miracle of the Internet.
5. That I wasn't home on Saturday morning when a hawk crashed through our (closed) kitchen window. Yup, you read that right. To be continued...the whole incident deserves its own separate future post.

I love Thanksgiving. With no gift-giving to drain the imagination and bank account, no clever costumes to come up with, and no heavy duty decorating to stress over, it comes close to being my all-time favorite. Any holiday that combines lots of food with lots of family and is celebrated by every American of every conceivable race, religion, and ethnicity has my vote.

But this year, I have even more than usual to be thankful for. Not only will my immediate family all be gathered under one roof, and (most of) my extended family around one dinner table, for a change, that dinner table will not mine. To which I say: yippee! Don’t get me wrong. There’s something very cozy about gathering the clan and close friends at our house. There’s also something very messy and tiring about it, too. The huge food shop. The exhaustive prep. The endless cooking. The colossal clean-up. You know what I mean.

Chatting about our kids, some of who are working on leaving the nest—a real work in progress, that—my friend Alyssa offered up this maternal bon mot: “The bigger your kids, the bigger the problems, but the less you can do about them.” To which I say, “Ain’t that the truth.”

I’d heard the “bigger kids, bigger problems” saying before, but “the less you can do about them” part was new to me. And really hit home. Sure, the issues becoming bigger—getting the baby off the bottle becomes getting the Kindergartener hooked on reading and morphs yet again to getting the teen off a different kind of bottle—I got that.

Uh oh. According to the latest media hoopla (most recently, a “60 Minutes” broadcast), it turns out that:
1) I am the mom of two Millennials (kids born between 1980 and 1995) and
2) The new threshold for their “adulthood” is about 26.

Yup. You read that right. 26. Thank all the “you are so special” hogwash our precious progenies were bombarded with at school and home. (The "60 Minutes" broadcast even casts blame on kindly 'ol Mister Rogers.) “You can do anything.” “You are special just because you’re you!” Turns out some of these special, special kids are hitting college and the workplace not necessarily equipped to put in the extra mile and/or deal with frustration or (heaven forbid!) a little failure.

The good thing about all this delayed adulthood? Thanks to the magic of revisionist math, 40 is the new 30, 50 the new 40, etc., etc. Now that I like!

PS: Researchers say there are about 80 million Millennials. Do you know or share DNA, last names, and/or addresses with any of 'em? If so, what’s your take on all this?

Does slacking off in the cleaning department help kids from developing food allergies? Maybe, says the cover article, “Kids and the Growing Food Allergy Threat,” of the November 6th issue of Time magazine.

Let me get some things straight from the get-go before we go any further here: 1) We’re not talking about living in squalor or 2) blaming the rise in kids’ allergies on anyone, especially their parents. But one interesting theory advanced in this article, the so-called “hygiene hypothesis,” has me wondering if raising my own children in a less than pristine, dog-filled home might have actually been good for ‘em (the kids) and not a negative (as the popular, clucking mother-in-law theory goes).

The colder weather finally settling in here in the Northeast ushers in one of my favorite times of the year: Chick Flick Season.

Yup, I’m addicted. So much so that last December, in this very space, my guest blogger (The Hubby) complained that I never seemed to want to go to the movies with him. (I did, of course, but he wasn’t willing to accompany me to view my genre of choice.) I believe he said that he thought he was “below my pals” and “just above a crying infant” on my list of people to go to the movies with. Ouch.

So in anticipation of much heavy-duty chick flicking ahead, I purposely set up dates recently for us to see two good-for-both-X-and-Y-chromosome-viewers movies. (By the way, they were both terrific; I wasn’t bored for a second in either. If either are still around in your area, go see Gone, Baby, Gone (riveting) and American Gangster (ditto).

Don’t you just love the title of this movie? I also loved the actual movie too, as would, I'd bet, any woman who is, was, or wants to be in a committed relationship. Of course, the fact that I am writing this entry after engaging in a “heated discussion” about The Hubby’s purchase of a plant (just goes to show, you don’t have to be a newlywed to get into these ridiculous verbal sparring matches) in no way influences my opinion that this is a classic example of a fab chick flick—for any woman.

That's why I was taken aback that some people were surprised that I'd see a Tyler Perry film. I mean, what's up with that? Yes, 95% of the cast is African-American—so? Its themes are totally universal and will resonant with anyone with an X chromosome, whether black, white, green, or purple. (And hey, if she can get her guy to come along, too, she’s a better woman than me.)

File this under: What’s up with that? In the journalism biz, we say one time’s a blip and two times maybe something’s happening, but three times? You have a trend. I spotted my own Botox-related trend awhile ago and have been puzzling over it ever since.

Let me go on the record here that while it (currently) comes under the category of Things I’m Scared Out of My Mind to Try (the whole botulism thing is a turn off), I have nothing against Botox. My feeling is, hey, whatever anyone wants to do to or for themselves—lipo, face lifts, boob jobs, you name it—go for it; it’s your body. And while I haven’t joined the legions of women who’ve gone the syringe route, I’m not ruling it out forever. (The bangs thing is currently working for me and when it doesn’t, maybe some botulism-free or more long-lasting alternative will have come along.) So this isn’t about the pros and cons of Botox.

What is it about? The mini-trend I’ve uncovered. Over the past few months, three different women: an acquaintance, a colleague, and a virtual stranger, have confided in me that they do Botox but their spouses do not know. Another words, they’ve actively chosen not to tell the person they are married to.

File this one under: How Annoying Can One Man Be? We’re rushing around to hit the road and get a jump on traffic to go visit our son at college last Friday. The directions are downloaded, the iPod is charged, the road trip munchies (green apples for moi, a Costco-sized bag of M&Ms for you-know-who) are stowed beneath the car’s front seat, and the overnight bags (plus outerwear for every conceivable weather condition) are stuffed into the trunk.

And I’m waiting. And waiting. And waiting some more for The Hubby to reappear after running a few last minute errands. When he finally does show up, he decides it’s the perfect time to feed his fish. I know this is totally un-PC of me, but I thought it was the guy who was supposed to be waiting around for me to finish putting on my make-up or change my outfit or something (okay, it often is). But this day, I’ve had it.

Total number of Trick or Treaters who rang our bell last night? Five.

Total pounds of candy we had on hand (because The Hubby insisted on adding to our stash even though I told him not to bother)? Ten.

Even this numerically-challenged word wonk can do the math.

Oh well, we’ll be heroes at our offices today ‘cause that’s where all the leftovers are going, especially the Nestle’s Crunch bars that you-know-who just couldn’t resist.