Complete 180

As soon as I let the thought in, there was no shutting it out. Once I said it out loud, I was done for. Now, it's just a matter of saying it publicly.

I don't want the chickens.

There, I said it.

Actually, it's not so much that I don't want them, I just don't want to do the work associated with keeping them.

Here we have these six adorable little chicks, and instead of oo-ing and ah-ing over them, I'm already feeling hassled about having to change their water and clean their brooder box. Thinking about the work ahead of me - making the coop, designing the coop, maintaining the chickens - is stressing me out.

I loved having chickens. I loved being a family that had chickens. But I have to accept that our situation has changed. I'm now working full-time, we live in a different place, with different people, we've got different demands on our time.

I can see the writing on the wall, and it's not written in chicken scratch on the side of a chicken coop.

It's written in little digital characters in my Outlook calendar. It includes a full-time day job that spills over into the evenings, gym workouts, cross country practices, guitar lessons, teacher meetings, concerts, tutors, homework, etc., etc.

It doesn't include chickens. Not now, anyway.

But you know what? Now that I've admitted it, I'm okay with it.

Life is good. I'm just protecting against crazy.

Sleepover party revisited

To tame the wild beasts



just get some baby chicks.

So tired. So very, very tired.

It was a week of meetings at work, meetings which required me to be on and thinking and engaged and present. Meetings with sales reps and sister corporations. Meetings in which I was frequently the only woman (the record was yesterday's meeting, when I was alone in a crowd of 13 men).

So I'm tired.

On top of the meetings, it was a week of hitting it hard at the gym. The last three mornings I was up at 5:30 and in the gym by 6.

So I'm really tired.

That would all be fine if I could go home and rest.

But, I've got a 10-year-old sleepover birthday party at our house tonight and the boys have been planning out their Nerf gun attack formations for days.

Nerf wars happen outside. David just called to point out that he hasn't been able to do the poop patrol for a few days and the yard is full of dog shit. He won't be home until after the Nerf wars begin.

Which means, of course, that poop patrol falls squarely in the lap of yours truly.

And, I should probably clean out that cardboard box chicken coop that's hanging out in our kitchen before my house is swarming with Gunther's friends and their parents.

Tired. Very, very tired.

Welcome home

We brought six chicks home today. It was supposed to be four, but they were just so damn cute. We'll get the rest of our brood next week.



Our plan is to keep the chicks in the house for a couple weeks and teach the dogs that they are not allowed to eat the baby birds.

We put the chicks in a cardboard box inside Maybee's crate. That way, the dogs can see them but not touch them.

Maybee is a little obsessed with the peeping, mouth-sized interlopers.

25 what????

A chicken update:

It turns out that 3 of the chicks in Wolfgang's class did hatch, so his class is up to 28 chickens. Oh, and it also turns out that the chicks his teacher purchased are all roosters.

Roosters. 25 of them. That's insane. I don't even want one. We barely escaped the last Attack of the Killer Rooster.

But chicks, we get chicks. I'm so excited! (If I'm using punctuation with such wild abandon, I MUST be excited.)

Peep!

Two different classes at Wolfgang's school were hatching chicks, and we provided the fertilized eggs to both. Wolfgang's class went 0-22, but the other class had 8 chicks hatch over the weekend!

Plus, Wolfgang's teacher was so bummed about not having any chicks that she ordered 25 newborn chicks for her class.

So, we're back in the chicken business, folks!

We're going to see if we can get 4 of the chicks tomorrow and bring them home because we want the dogs to get used to them. With our first brood of chicks, we had them in a box in the house and taught our two dogs (Abby and Shadow) that the chickens were not to be eaten.

After Abby and Shadow died, we added Blackie and Maybee, but at that point the chickens were fully grown. Maybee, a 120-pound black lab, spent every waking hour trying to figure out how to eat them. He never succeeded, but we did have to pry the occasional chicken from his mouth.

We're hoping we can train these two adopted doggies to live in harmony with free-ranging chickens. We'll begin the 10-step program with our mantra: "Chicks are friends, not food."

Easter Music

In honor of Easter, it seems, I can't get this song out of my head. It's a favorite of mine by that old favorite of mine, Tom Waits.

To hear the song, click on my playlist on the right. If you want to watch a video of it (and hear Mr. Waits sing it through a bullhorn) check out Tom Waits on Letterman.

Chocolate Jesus

Don't go to church on Sunday
Don't get on my knees to pray
Don't memorize the books of the Bible
I got my own special way

But I know Jesus loves me
maybe just a little bit more
I fall down on my knees every Sunday
At Zerelda Lee's candy store

Well it's got to be a chocolate Jesus
Make me feel good inside
Got to be a chocolate Jesus
Keep me satisfied

Well I don't want no Abba Zabba
Don't want no Almond Joy
There ain't nothing better
suitable for this boy

Well it's the only thing
that can pick me up
Better than a cup of gold
See only a chocolate Jesus
can satisfy my soul

When the weather gets rough
and it's whiskey in the shade
Ii's best to wrap your savior
up in cellophane
He flows like the big muddy
but that's ok
Pour him over ice cream
for a nice parfait

Well it's got to be a chocolate Jesus
good enough for me
Got to be a chocolate Jesus
good enough for me

Well it's got to be a chocolate Jesus
make me feel so good inside
Got to be a chocolate Jesus
Keep me satisfied

You get what you need

We got together with friends tonight, ate pizza, enjoyed several drinks and played many rousing hands of Asshole.

At one point in the evening, the Rolling Stone's "You Can't Always Get What You Want" came on the radio.

We barely got through seeing her at the reception when it was pointed out that we're now beyond the age of the characters in the Big Chill.

Ouch.

Oh, yeah. I guess age is on my mind. I pointed it out.

Eggs

I can't help thinking about our poor peeps as I'm hard-boiling our Easter eggs...

: (

No peeping, movement or cracking this morning, according to the teacher, which means the chicks didn't make it.

Great sadness.

Peep

The eggs are peeping. They're jiggling. They're cracking.

BUT THERE ARE STILL NO CHICKENS!

Wolfgang's teacher took the incubator home over the holiday weekend so she can take care of the chicks if they hatch.

All the noise and movement is no guarantee. The chicks need to be strong enough to get themselves out of the shells. You're really not supposed to help.

Darwinism at work. And all I can do is wait.

Don't count your chickens

when they haven't hatched yet.

I keep waiting to hear. But nothing. No chicks yet.

I'll keep you posted.

I'm pacing around the newsroom with a box of cigars, waiting for the call from Wolfgang.

A new brood

If all went well, today and tomorrow a new brood of chicks will join the world. They've been incubating for the last 20 or so days in Wolfgang's classroom.

With incubators, you never know what you're going to get. Could be one, could be 44. We'd like more than one and less than 44.

The science class will keep the chicks for a couple of weeks and then they'll come live in a trailer in our garage until we can get a coop built.

Trailer chicks. There's a joke in there somewhere.

A glimpse into my brain

I'm feeling bad for calling my kid a "shithead."

But, I write what I think and that's what I thought as I wrote that post.

I don't know what's more pathetic: that my reaction is to think my kid's a shithead or that I feel guilty about it or that I feel the need to acknowledge my guilt.

My brain is a scary place to be.

My brain on PMS is just downright dangerous.

Saving the drama for your mama ...

Insomnia, again. Not me, but 12-year-old Wolfgang.

This morning, I went to wake him up and he didn't want to move. I gave him a few words of encouragement ("Get yourself out of bed! You have to go to school!") and went about my morning routine.

I returned five minutes later to find him easing his body down the stairs, slowly, painfully, on his butt. His long hair hung in his face as he hung his head, his eyes at half mast.

To my mystified demands of what the hell was going on, he grunted something about not falling asleep until 5:30 in the morning.

I felt bad for the kid, really I did. But, as an occasional insomniac, he's going to have to learn to deal with life on those days that he doesn't sleep. If we were to let him stay home from school because he's tired, he'd just sleep all day and be up all night tonight.

So, there was nothing to do but nudge him along, gently but firmly.

He reached the bottom of the stairs and started to drag himself on his knees into the kitchen, and that was when his father came down.

One quick, sharp yell from David and Wolfgang managed to get himself off the floor, ready for school and onto the school bus.

I worried about him all day and waited anxiously for our insomniac to get home.

Of course, he was fine. His day was fine. School was fine. Everything was fine.

Shithead.

Brilliant!

Found!

To give you a sense of the chaos of my day yesterday: I found the phone under the desk.

Phew.

Not quite so brilliant

When I left work this afternoon, tired, hungry and just generally beat up, I realized that I didn't know where my(Wolfgang's) phone was.

I checked my pockets and all my bags and couldn't find it. So, I went back into the office to look for it on my desk. I didn't find it.

I'm hoping that in my tired, hungry and just generally beat up state, I put the phone somewhere it didn't belong - like in my desk.

I expect that I'll find it there when I get to work tomorrow.

If not, I'm screwed. I don't think I can just commandeer David's phone the way I took Wolfgang's.

It'll be there. Right?

Brilliant!

I knew there was a good reason to get Wolfgang a cellphone. David pointed out that I could probably commandeer the kid's phone and reprogram it as my own.

He was right. After a frustrating 45 minutes on the phone with Sprint, I transferred my phone number to Wolfgang's phone.

I was most excited at the genius of it all and expected as much from Wolfgang.

Our conversation went as follows:

Me: Do you know how my phone was stuck in a car at the airport?

Wolfgang: Yeah.

Me (holding up Wolfgang's phone): Well, now your phone is stuck in a car at the airport and my phone is right here.

Wolfgang: You suck.

Yes, I do. But at least I suck with a phone.

Situation Normal, All Fucked Up

We're on the mend. Gunther and Otto are recovered and back at school. Wolfgang has a cold, but he seems to be weathering it.

I managed to get away over the weekend - I went on a girlfriends' shopping trip, hitting the outlets in Freeport, Maine. I had a great time and got a few much-needed items (okay, maybe the $50 king-sized fitted sheet from LLBean wasn't really necessary).

The bed and breakfast was cozy, the company was exceptional and I got to eat lots of seafood (though the place we went to dinner on Saturday night was out of raw oysters and didn't serve Bushmills).

On the four-hour ride back home, I got to share my atheistic, existential philosophy on life, which I'm quite sure freaked out my friends.

But I digress.

The point of this whole story is that the getaway was great until this morning, when I couldn't find my cellphone. I'm pretty sure I left it in Alice's car.

And the thing is, Alice's car is really her husband Dave's car and, as of early this morning, that car is sitting in longterm parking at the airport. It'll be there until Friday.

With my phone in the backseat. I think. The only way to be certain is to take the 50-minute drive to the airport and check. Otherwise, I wait until Friday, and I'm not sure I can do that.

Anyone care to join me for another couple hours in the car? I promise not to talk about life, death and the two planes of existence if you come with me to the airport.

"There's a girl boy in the garden."

Reset the "no one's thrown up since" clock to 2:30 this morning.

But they are getting better. Right now they're outside getting some fresh air, wandering around the yard like extras in Shaun of the Dead.

On the mend?

No one has thrown up in over 24 hours and, at this moment, the kids are dancing to a song they made on Garageband.

No wait...now they're fighting...and now they're coughing...and now they're making their way to the couch, glossy eyes and all.

Glimmers of hope.

Perhaps this family will sleep through the night tonight.

Perhaps.

The flu sucks

It's karma, I tell you. On Sunday I was thinking about how we had dodged the flu bullet that had decimated so many other families.

No, that's a lie. I wasn't thinking that we had "dodged a bullet." I was thinking that we hadn't gotten sick because we're just so damn healthy in our lifestyle choices.

I have been bitten in the ass. In a big way.

Twofer

Simultaneous fevers and vomiting. That's what I call two for one. Here's to hoping the twofer doesn't become a threefer.