I love puns. We used to play with words in the most horrible ways when I was a kid. The worst we came up with was “possumbly.”… One day someone said, “Oh, no there’s a dead possum in the road. Do you think maybe he came from the swamp?” I replied, “Possumbly.” Everyone died laughing. Funny thing, though. Nobody seems to appreciate my puns as much now. We lost something growing up.

Anyway, I married into the name Cao. The proper Spanish pronunciation is “cow” but my kids prefer “K.O.” I can’t imagine why… Now if you have a family named Smith you would refer to them as the Smiths. The English convention is to add an ‘s’ to make it a plural. So with Cao we become the Caos. In Spanish that means exactly what it looks like: chaos. It fits. My husband had ADD in the best of ways and our boys continue the tradition. When they were little I kept threatening to rent them out as demolition experts.

Now it isn’t so bad, but life is chaotic. I try to keep a handle on it but things keep slipping through the cracks. The poultry refuses to be contained, the fridge is a constant terrifying science project, and the blackberry vines laugh at the goats, who can’t get out of their pasture, but escape any other enclosure I try to put them in so that they have a chance at consuming the brambles. Before we moved here I knew that I would call this place Caosville because it fit in every way. And I like it that way.