ALTAMONT — I missed the deadline to enter the fair! How could this happen"

My son and I talk all the cold year long about what we’ll enter in next year’s Altamont Fair. He won a blue ribbon for his cookies last year. He was 7 years old. He won a ribbon and I didn’t, so he was pleased.

He told his third-grade teacher that he would enter Chocolate Delicious cookies this year. The three-inch cookies have M&Ms in them, and they form perfect circles while baking. We gave them out to teachers and bus drivers. My son doesn’t like chocolate cookies, but he thought they would be a sure winner at the fair.

For our village-wide garage sale two weeks ago, I made Cherry Bites — a small cream-cheese cookie with fresh, local cherry halves baked on top. The basic dough emphasizes the sweet cherry flavor. I used all my willpower that day to save enough cookies to package up for sale.

I’ve been saving my last jar of zucchini garlic and dill pickles for two months. Every time I made a sandwich, I considered opening it, but that same willpower prevailed and the lid stayed sealed.
The three-foot yellow dinosaur I sewed for my son’s Christmas present has been ready and waiting for six months. The beaded and "blinged" shabby cushions I made after a refusal to buy a single $30 store-bought cushion sit on the guest bed, waiting for company.
My son learned how to use the sewing machine last week — Electronic machinery with a pedal" Cool! — and he made a cushion, which we promptly decided he’d enter this year, too. Blue satin material with gold dragons on it is perfect for games of Pirate Booty, Dragon Lair, or King of the Castle. Doesn’t every king need a royal cushion for his throne" Doesn’t every dragon lounge on a luxurious pillow near an open treasure chest"
My son made the cushion on July 20. The deadline was July 25 — plenty of time to enter the fair. So what happened"

Life happened. You know the drill. Work, recreation programs, work, visiting relatives and whirlwind entertaining, dinner preparation and clean-up, laundry (Oh! The laundry that piles up and never ends!), and every other part of living.

Sometimes something’s got to give. This year, apparently, the something is our collective fair entry. We’ll still be there at the fairgrounds to eat burritos and cotton candy, to ride ponies and wavy slides, and to see the dairy and beef cattle. We’ll surely stop into the Arts and Crafts Building and see the variety of ways people create something from a few scraps of what they have at hand.

We’ll see what produce people have grown and wonder why our garden lags so far behind. We might ask the volunteers how we can get our tomatoes that big, too.

Before we leave, we’ll visit the goats and sheep, the new chicks near the hay-bale maze, and the rabbits.

And, maybe next year the something that has to give won’t be the fair. Maybe by that time my son will have the rabbit and the dairy cows he’s wanted for years. And maybe, if we ever finish building the chicken coop, I’ll have a hen to enter, too. But if we don’t, we’ll be back, again, the next year, already dreaming of what to enter in 2009.