Pics of peeps and their coop

Well, I finally finished the bulk of the coop. I still have to bury the hardware cloth around the building, but the perimeter is finished. I need to stain the guillotine door. I need to build a little ladder for the girls and Dr. M to get inside. And I need to figure out a lock and latch for the gate. I need to finish laying the floor and build a divider indoors. But for now, the gang can go in and out, and I know they are relatively safe when we are not home.



Here are a couple of the chickens. That is Dr. M, the rooster, in the foreground, and my favorite hen, Martha, with him. Martha is named biblically--she is the one who is eternally working, scratching, digging, and who doesn't sit at the master's feet. In fact, this Martha more or less keeps the master in line. In the background are Edith's chubby chicken thighs. I don't know, but these hens (actually, they are still pullets), because of their appearance, call for old fashioned names. So far, we have Gladys (she talks a lot), Edith, and Martha. The two new girls we picked up yesterday don't have names yet. More on them later.

Gender Identity Issues

Wow. I've been gone a long time--nearly a month.

I have been putting up a six-foot fence and configuring a chicken fortress for the girls. I'll post pictures soon--it is a good thing that chickens are not architecturally critical. If you consider that I could use a hammer, pliers, and screwdriver, and knew the difference between a flat head and Phillips screwdriver, and that was all, it is pretty remarkable that the fence is up.

And has stayed up so far.

Second, I have been writing the dissertation, which is a difficult task. I can respect that; if writing this thing was easy, there would be more Ph.D.s out there.

And, finally, three of the pullets are not girls after all, but are boys. So, we will keep one, but the other two have to go back to the breeded. Of course, we named them. One of the boys, Ollie, appears to have Houdini blood in him. That chicken will be inside the chicken tractor one second and outside it the next, with no feather out of place.

I'll miss him, but as much as he gets out, he would most likely be hurt or lost, so better I lose him to someone else's dinner plate than to lost him to a raccoon's midnight cravings for extra crispy.

I am special

This morning, a little after nine on a Sunday morning, the land line rang. Since the land line is usually for one of the kids, I have adopted a somewhat "now what?" attitude when it rings outside of normal kid hours.

The caller was a recorded female voice which identified herself rather chirpily as Lisa, and informed me in gleeful, compelling tones which would make any pep rally participant proud, "Thank you for participating in our recent survey, and we wanted to tell you that you are ABOVE AVERAGE."

Well, first of all, if we did participate in a survey, it was not at all a serious response, as we are known to answer the phone on telemarketers and then call the rest of the family into the room while we have some fun. Our most recent sport has been with some telemarketing company overseas which has irritated us at all hours with their calls.

"Hello?" we will say.

"Hello," the caller will reply in a thick accent and then take off at warp speed to get the spiel in before he or she is interrupted. "This is Elvira, and I am calling for General Electric Mortgage Corporation, andwearepleasedtoinformyouthat youhavebeenchosentoparticpateinasurveyabout . . . ." Pausing for a quick breath, the caller asks the first question.

We pause, timing it exactly right. "Hello?"

"Hello," the caller is caught off guard, but only for a moment. "This is Elvira, and I am calling for General Electric Mortgage Corporation, andwearepleasedtoinformyouthatyouhavebeenchosentoparticpateinasurveyabout . . . ." Again, the first question.

"Hello?" we say again.

This is the part where we find out just how well trained the caller is. A well-trained and compliant telemarketer will follow the script, NO MATTER WHAT, launching into a spiel for the third time. A free thinker, and perhaps candidate for management training, will say, "Hello?"

"Hello?"

"Can you hear me?" the caller will ask. "Hello!" we will reply, as if we did hear.

Off again with the script. This next part now requires flawless timing. We wait for several beats, and then say, rather tentatively, "Hello?"

One of several things will happen at this point. The caller, wimpy in nature, will hang up on us. The caller who has more moxie will get the supervisor, which allows us to ramp up our performance. And the third type of caller will start discussing our bad connection, and reason for the phone issue (or our mental health issue) with co-workers nearby.

That is when we jump in again. "Hello!" we will say. "Hello?" Jolted back to reality, the caller will say, "Can you hear me?"

"Yes! Hello!" And off they go, racing through the entire spiel. Of course, when the first question comes up, they should see what will come next, but they rarely do.

Anyway, the only reason I can think of that we were chosen for "above average" status was that we outsmarted the call center employee and supervisor. However, Lisa encouraged me to press 1 to talk to a human and get a $100 WalMart gift card or 3 to be removed. While I was tempted to press 1, I opted for 3 instead.

Mother's Day Debriefing

The one thing I asked for this past Mother's Day was that A) no one would fight and B) that I would not, for just once in my life, not have to nag or threaten anyone into doing their chores.

And, just like that horse I always wanted so desperately as a kid, I didn't get my wish. In fact, Nita got sent to bed without supper for her horrible attitude, and no chores got done until I announced that only those who did their chores would eat the evening meal, which I prepared, as the dog ended up eating the lunch which Kiki made and then left unattended on the table as she wandered away. At least the dog hit paydirt on Mother's Day.

So, next year, I will ask for what I truly NEED--everyone to go away for the day. I need time to remember that I was someone before I was the cook, cleaner, laundress, mediator, and disciplinarian of dogs and kids. I need to find that still place inside me, the room which I close off and protect from all the day-to-day chaos. And I need to go to my still place and reflect on the choices I made that got me to the place where I am. It will be only then that I will be able to welcome them back and be glad that I am the mother they honor on only one day in May.

Thought for the day

Someone recently said, "I can't remember a time when I wasn't at least a little bit tired."

I concur.

Growing

The girls are growing. Now we have half-grown birds in a dog crate in the basement. While the girls are still small enough to all fit in there, the face remains that we have half-grown CHICKENS in our basement.

The other day, I was on craigslist, and I saw a piece of furniture called a "chicken hutch." Apparently, this item allows the homemaker to keep a chicken in the house. And it also provides storage.

For what it's worth, I bypassed on the hutch. After a month of chickens in the basement, I am ready for the girls to move out to their new digs.

Should I blow or should I go?

Nita has entered her annual spring allergy phase. This is always a tense time for me, as she does not like to blow her nose.

Today I was, ahem, discussing this issue with her, and I informed her that she was going to end up in the emergency room if she didn't start blowing her nose. She replied, "But I like going there--they give me popsicles."

I looked sharply at her. She laughed, pleased at her joke, and went off to dramatically blow her nose.

Nita was the one who was evaluated by the school and given an IQ of below 70. For her to joke is such a blessing, as joking requires an awareness of what is absurd, which requires an awareness of what is "normal." That, of course, requires a certain mental acuity.

While I never had any doubt that Nita had mental acuity, the school psychologist apparently did. (Of course, I suspected at the time that the school psychologist lacked a certain mental acuity and I also suspect that Nita noticed that lack in the psychologist herself, which is why she refused to do the evaluation to her best ability.) Anyway, Nita is funny, both intentionally and unintentionally.

Her latest foible was in the car. We were driving past some businesses, including a post office, a nursing home, a restaurant, a Tastee-Freeze, and Jardine's Funeral Home. Nita asked, "Mom, why don't we ever buy furniture there?"

"Where," I asked.

"Back there," she replied. "At the furniture store."

"What furniture store?"

"The one with the J."

"Jardine's?" I asked. She replied yes. "Honey, Jardine's is a funeral home."

"Oh," she said. "It is?" And after a second, she added. "I guess we wouldn't want the type of furniture they sold there."