“You’re a rare bird,” wrote an emailer I’d never met. I’ve been called many things, but never a bird. I’ve had pet birds, been served birds and flipped birds, but never called a bird. Much less a rare one.

But it got me to thinking. Birds are easily identified. Their physical markers, traits and quirks are well-documented by one field guide after another. But what about columnists? There are no field guides available to help enthusiasts distinguish one from the next.

What follows is a brief. . . um. . . wren-dition of a Field Guide for Columnists, Charleston Edition. So strap those binoculars around your neck and see how you fare at identifying the crew.

* * *

The saggy-breasted Re-gret is a pasty white creature that can generally be spotted rummaging in the clearance sections of major department stores, especially in the weeks immediately following Christmas. The Re-gret is generally in constant motion, seldom stopping for long. She feeds by foraging from the plates of others and finishing the food left behind by her offspring.

The Re-gret has a keen sense of smell and vision so acute it can monitor her hatchling from two rooms away. Physical characteristics include a prominent beak, broad tail, ample drumsticks and large, duck-like feet. Often mistaken for a Loon or a Grouse, the Re-gret moves awkwardly on land and is often witnessed tripping over its own feet.

The Re-gret is capable of making many sounds, but its most common song is one directed at its chick every morning, a high-pitched and increasingly shrill, “hurryyup.”

Hunters claim the most successful call for attracting the Re-gret is, “two-for-one, two-for-one.”

* * *

The fuzzy-headed Steelhummer is a tall, good-natured and ambling creature, its crown heavily covered with an abundance of high-sodium salt and pepper tufts. The Steelhummer originated in Central Oregon, but adapted well to the W.Va. climate. It seems happiest outdoors, although standing still in flowerbeds can occasionally cause one to be mistaken for a garden gnome, minus the hat.

A Steelhummer can be a master of disguise, able to alter its appearance drastically by simply removing the patch of feathers that sprout in a fan-like shape directly under its beak.

* * *

The lesser-known cousin to our country’s proud national bird, the Bald Eagle, is the Baldsportseditor, also known by the Latin exhusbandicus. The Baldsportseditor, or BS for short, is an opportunistic feeder, regularly traveling from one event to the next in search of his two favorite delicacies–the elusive buffet and open bar. The BS is known to be attracted by the smell of cigars and the sound ice cubes make as they clink against glass.

The call of the BS is a generally a cross between a hoarse croak and a mumbling grunt, and he tends to be good at his trade as it is natural for him to wear down his prey with relentless pursuit. The BS will corner his target, then pepper it persistently with those guttural grunts until a tasty tidbit is tossed his way, long before it is offered to anyone else.

Unlike the Bald Eagle, which really isn’t bald, the dome of the BS is mostly gray, patchy and thin. Fortunately, the BS is generally blessed with a good sense of humor and accepts ribbing in stride. They find it emu-zing. Even pheasant.

On my way in to work this morning, my car was nearly hit twice by drivers who were talking on cell phones and didn’t realize they’d drifted into my lane.

Had lunch today at the Thai House in Dunbar with an old high school classmate of mine. We weren’t catching up so much as we were getting acquainted, since we didn’t know each other that well way back when. She’s really nice. Easy to talk to. Tells a story well and doesn’t gloss over the not-so-pretty parts. I always admire people who don’t pretend they never had warts, but who don’t wear their hard times like a badge either.

I’m taking some vacation time next week to work on our house–cleaning, painting, getting rid of some junk. We’re hoping to have the house ready to put on the market this spring. The junk part is probably going to take the most time, although it’s much easier since we discovered Freecycle. I have a hard time getting rid of stuff that’s still good, but not really something that Goodwill or Salvation Army or one of the others would need.

My folks were going through some old photos and scanned these for me. Thought I’d post a few…

Me and my folks the day of my high school graduation (Nitro High, class of ‘82)

LEFT: My brother Kurt in our old tree house.
RIGHT: Me as a third grader. (Broken arm courtesy of a fallen tree I was attempting to use as a balance beam.)

I noticed a dab of shaving cream drying on our bathroom ceiling. I smiled when I saw it, thinking of how it got there.

Every year for Christmas, Santa leaves a can of shaving cream in my daughter’s stocking. This year he left two. And they were extra big cans.

I figured Celeste would do just like she has in the past–carry them straight to the tub, fill it with shaving cream, then jump in. But this year, she decided it would be more fun to share, so she saved the cans until her friends could come over.

Last Sunday, she called two of her best friends, Jordan and Olivia, and invited them to bring their swimsuits and come over. I made sure their parents knew what we had planned. They thought I was nuts to encourage something that potentially messy, but gave their ok.

The shaving cream flowed for well over an hour last Sunday night. From the safe side of the door, we could hear screaming and giggles and the wet, thwacking sound that fistfuls of lather make as they splat on the wall.

There were a few times when I braved opening the door long enough to snap a few pictures, but I didn’t stay long. I was actually kind of tempted to join them, but there wasn’t really room for one more. Besides, there was something nice about just listening from the other side of the door.

That night at bedtime, Celeste hugged me especially hard and thanked me for being such a cool mom.

“If I ever have kids, I’m gonna’ be just like you.”

When I was little, growing up on 21st Street in Nitro (the street that leads to Ridenour Lake), we had a long back yard that sloped just a bit in the middle. When hard rains would come, the area at the bottom of the slope would fill up with water. If you took a run and hit that water just right, you’d shoot right on through it. Hit it a little bit wrong and you were rolling in mud.

I don’t remember Mom ever discouraging us from attempting to slide. Sure, it was messy, but it was nothing the water hose and some Tide couldn’t erase. She believed there was nothing wrong with getting dirty. Her own mother had said, “You’d have to swallow a bushel of mud before it’d kill you.”

Swallow. Wallow. Just one letter different. All I know is it was one of the best parts of being a kid. I imagine I was probably dripping in mud when I first decided that when I was a parent, I was going to follow her lead.

Not long ago, my friend Terry was telling me about this well-planned road trip she went on last summer with her husband and sons. She’d carefully planned each stop along the way, but it just so happened they were traveling through Albuquerque at the same time as the town’s annual Muck in the Mud Derby. Testosterone trumped Terry’s itinerary, and before long, her boys and their dad were flopping in slop like the proverbial pigs, having the time of their lives. The event included an obstacle course that ended in a big pit of wet clay-sandy mud, the kind that made sucking sounds as they lifted their feet.

Both boys saved globs of mud from that day, souvenirs from their favorite day ever.

“It’s just plain old mud,” Terry said. But I understood.

It’s why I couldn’t wipe that drying dab of shaving cream from my bathroom ceiling.

Confession time. Not only am I a LOST addict, but I’m hooked on 24 as well. There are other shows I really like (Medium, CSI, My Name Is Earl, The Office, and Rescue Me), but 24 and LOST are the only two I take great pains not to miss.

For someone who proudly went ages without even basic cable, it shames me to admit I’m now badly addicted. From 9 to 11 most every night, after I get my daughter to bed, I’m in front of the TV. Geoff’s just as bad, although he usually has his laptop computer right there so he can work during commercials. (He’s probably really just playing solitaire, but it looks like he’s working.)

I’m developing something of a love-hate relationship with 24. The writers need to be more creative. They’ve found a formula that works so they’re chicken to venture into something vastly different. There’s always some top US government official or CTU agent who is corrupt and feeding info to the bad guys. There’s always some potentially catastrophic event that Jack manages to avert at the last possible second, but that catastrophic event was really just supposed to distract attention from the villain’s actual goal. Jack’s loved ones (and even liked ones) fare badly. They get kidnaped, rescued, then kidnaped again. Bad guys are captured, then just as they’re about to reveal some vital information (which they seem to like doing outdoors in alleys next to buildings with lots of windows), they get taken out by a sniper’s bullet.

And yet I love the show. I’m frustrated with it, but I love the intensity of it. They have some really great characters (especially Chloe and Jack), and classic lines. “The only reason you’re not unconscious now is because I don’t want to carry you.”

I liked the two days of two-hour shows to kick off the season. What a great way to make certain the viewers are hooked. It worked for me.

For the 20 years I’ve been working in Charleston, my daily one-way commute has averaged anywhere from 25 minutes to an hour, depending on how many fender-benders or construction barrels I encounter between here and there. Many times I’ll suffer clogged traffic both coming and going, and am left feeling as though I live in my car.

As a compulsive multitasker, I’ve learned how to make the most of my time in the car. I listen to audio books to keep entertained. And when traffic’s at a complete standstill, I use that time to organize my purse, clean my dog’s nose art off the windows, dust the dashboard and pluck gray hairs. Most of all, I make certain every errand is taken care of while I’m on my way to work or home. Once I pull into my driveway, the last thing I want is to go out again.

So it was with great reluctance that I agreed, last September, to let my daughter take a dance class in Charleston one night a week. I dreaded the thought of driving all the way home to get my daughter, then turning around to drive back again. It was a decision I didn’t make lightly, especially considering the high price of gas.

But January’s Academy of Dance was the only school offering hip-hop, so I relented, half hoping Celeste would soon change her mind and want to quit. After a few classes, though, she was hooked.

“I love to dance until I sweat,” said Celeste. (A statement that made me consider the possible need for DNA testing.)

Gradually, though, I’ve begun to realize I no longer dread Thursday nights. And as much as my girl loves to dance, she recently told me her favorite part is the drive.

Our Thursday conversations feel different from the ones we have the rest of the week. They’re more grown-up, more drawn out. More involved.

At home when we talk, it’s often over the din of TV or while we’re in motion, getting ready, doing homework, taking a bath. She and I talk all the time, even in our sleep, but if there’s a distraction of even the most simple kind, like folding laundry or making a bed, it must somehow feel less than 100 percent.

Now I suspect some who have experienced me at the wheel might suggest my driving to be a tremendous distraction, but that’s only for others. Not for me nor Celeste, who likes when my driving makes her belly tickle.

And she likes it when we have 25 minutes to talk uninterrupted, first on the way there, then again on the way back.

Until recently, I never gave much thought to the parents I’d pass on the road, driving with a cell phone glued to their ear while their children appeared glued to their Nintendos or PlayStations or portable DVD players. Now, I see it as an opportunity missed.

An opportunity I almost missed, too.

When our children seem happy and well adjusted, it’s easy to believe that in spite of the crazy schedules we keep, we must be doing OK or they’d show it somehow. We may have the best of intentions, but real life can swallow them whole.

Over the past six or eight months, I’ve been dropping as many obligations as I can manage, hoping to free up more time, to calm my life down. But I’m coming to recognize that a calm, unharried life just isn’t possible at this stage of my life. So I need to take advantage of those rare blocks of time when I can disconnect from those other distractions and focus on those who are most important to me.

In a life where I’m regularly driven to distraction, I’m going to make the most of those times - those Thursday nights - when I’m driven from it.

Finally. I got my LOST fix.

Last night’s episode was a good one. Eko is an intriguing character, and his backstory was one of the better ones. Still, the episode left me with even more questions, like how does a small plane from Nigeria get to the South Pacific? Isn’t Nigeria on the exact opposite side of the world from the South Pacific? Are the scriptures written on Eko’s stick some kind of clue? Were there faces in the smoke, or was that just my imagination? That smoke bugged me. It’s totally screwing up my theory.

Up until last night, my theory has been that the initial group of people on the island and the countdown computer were part of a psychological study being done by the folks at Dharma to see how far people would go if they could be persuaded the countdown clock was real. The bunker and mechanical-sounding monster and the magnetic equipment are as real as they needed to be in order to make the guise believable, but isn’t really capable of destroying the earth. Toss in a polar bear and a few quarantine signs to make the study even more interesting. These social scientists may have been manipulating these people for years as part of their study.

But is the study even still going on? Maybe it was disbanded (and forgotten about) ages ago. Maybe the crazy rich man who funded the whole thing died without anyone knowing about the island.

New thought–could the black smoke have been some kind of security system that somehow senses fear? If a person is not afraid of it, it means they must be one of those who are supposed to be on the island because they know not to be afraid of it. If it doesn’t sense fear, it leaves them alone. Eko and Locke weren’t afraid, so it assumed they belonged there.

What happened to Danielle (the strange French woman) and Desmond (the man who was living in the hatch, punching in the numbers)?

Why was Locke in a wheelchair? What about Jack’s dad, whose body was missing from his coffin? Could the guy Hurley met in the mental institution part of an earlier experiment?

One other thing that’s been bugging me, and maybe I just need to go back and watch it over again, but the black woman, Rose, was seated near Jack, waiting for her husband to return from the restroom when the plane went down. But when her husband (Bernard?) is found, he’s buckled into his airplane seat hanging from a tree. Is this just sloppy writing or something that’ll be explained later? Or maybe it’s just that when things got bumpy in-flight, he grabbed the first available seat and obsessive fans like me are going overboard with their compulsion to obsess on every little detail.

There are so many loose ends I can’t see how they’ll be explained.

Geoff and I got a nice surprise yesterday afternoon when we decided to check out the new restaurant that just opened in Rock Branch next to the grade school, where Hardees used to be. The first person we spotted working behind the counter was Manoli Stavrulakis, who used to run Mykonos Café in downtown Charleston with his wife, Aoleen.

The food was as good as ever and the prices are fantastic. I can’t believe our luck. We’ll definitely be regulars there.

I thought loads of research went into new product development. I thought manufacturers–especially the big ones–hired companies to conduct market research and tests with consumers. So could it really be possible that the folks making this new breakfast cereal aren’t aware what it resembles? Well, maybe they do. And maybe they’re counting on the gross-appeal to youngsters. My daughter likes nothing better these days than a heaping bowl of “poop cereal.”

There are some sweet advantages to having my own column.

When I was a kid and managed to beat my brother at something, the only way I could advertise my superiority over him was by word of mouth, which was time-consuming and exhausting (considering I had to do it so often).

Now, however, just by tapping away at my computer, I’m able to share his shame with thousands.

Yes, the mighty has fallen. My brother Kurt, self-proclaimed Monopoly champ extraordinaire, has succumbed to the wiles of his baby sister.

We don’t get to see as much of my brother and his family since he transferred from BF Goodrich Aerospace near Lewisburg, W.Va., to North Canton, Ohio, a few years ago. This year, scheduling conflicts prevented us from spending Christmas together until several days later, when we met at our folks’ house to swap gifts and, well, rekindle the ol’ sibling rivalry.

Born just 14 months apart, Kurt and I have always been competitive in the way only siblings and the archest of enemies can be. He was older, bigger, stronger and had better hair. His teeth were perfectly straight and impervious to cavities, while mine overlapped and resembled Swiss cheese. From earliest childhood to the present, Kurt can somehow manage to be guilty as sin, yet look innocent as a lamb, while I–genuinely lamblike–often exude a Clinton-like air. It doesn’t matter that I never inhaled. I look like I did.

It was almost as though, when physical, character and skill traits were doled out, there was only one of each to divide between us. He got math. I got English. He took outgoing. Left me with shy. He has a nose a pelican could comfortably perch on. Only lesser seabirds could take roost on mine.

So I suppose it was natural that two such total opposites would compete at regular intervals to see which would end up owning a particular thing.

Like Monopoly.

‘Twas his. Now mine.

Our battle, which started at nine and lasted until midnight, included Kurt’s early evening boasting that he’d once beaten the No. 4-ranked Monopoly player in the U.S. I took his children down, too. First Madeline, 10, then Zachary, 13, then finally–after Kurt–came 14-year-old Tori, a shrewd and competent player. (She takes after her aunt.)

And so I sit here at my keyboard, delighting in my victory, feeling the tally has been evened a bit, that I’ve managed to wipe from the sibling scoreboard one of those times when he wrapped hair around the head of my toothbrush or filled the earpiece of my phone with Vaseline.

I was discussing the cruelty of siblings with my friend Pam, who has a delightfully wicked older sister, Mary Jo. A few months back, Pam and Mary Jo were talking about some of the toys they’d had as children, and Pam admitted to an irrational fear she’d once had of one of Mary Jo’s dolls.

“It had the absolute scariest expression on its face,” said Pam. “I used to hide it all the time so I wouldn’t have to look at it.”

Mary Jo, who lives quite a distance away, tracked down that old doll, then drove all the way to Pam’s house and positioned the doll just so on a windowsill outside Pam’s bathroom window. That night, when Pam went to the bathroom to brush her teeth just before bed, she looked in the mirror and saw the reflection of the doll peeking in.

It seems some siblings have a monopoly on mischief.