Ten Minutes at time

My sweetie and I are trying to repair our tattered relationship, ten minutes at time. Once a day we're going to put everything and everyone aside and spending ten minutes together. I have no idea if this will even work, but I want to give it a try.

Tonight was our first try. Ten minutes of what did you do? What do you have planned for tomorrow? It was good. It was nice. It was enough.

Pandora Music Box Tribute

Meatloaf. I love meatloaf. I know you’re thinking that’s an odd thing to mention, as if I were hoping someone out there in cyber space would invite me over to dinner since they know I love meatloaf. Ah that makes me feel old, jumping to the conclusion that the meatloaf in my life is not a concoction of ground beef, eggs, onions and spices and copious amounts of Heinz 57.

My pronouncement of love for meatloaf is over the strong vocals, long hair sweat man, Meatloaf. When I didn’t have the words for my teenage angst, I took the words out his mouth. I lost my virginity to a Meatloaf song. I want to say it was to Paradise by the Dashboard Light but I think it was over before we got to that song, but I do remember sobbing in his arms many times when Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad played endless on my record player. Which was finally explained when I found out a few years later that while he wanted me and needed me but he was never going to love me, since he loved men. It happens more often than you might think. It’s happened to me twice. I’ve recently gotten in back in touch with this man, and despite a nearly twenty year separation, and I feel like we’ve not been separated for very long. He’s still easy to talk to, smart and still gorgeous….all the reasons I loved him in the first place.

I’ve always been attracted to smart, sensitive beautiful men. My first kiss, the kind of kiss that made my stomach flip flop and girly parts heat up, was with a sweet, smart boy with the biggest eyes and fullest lips. Our song was Crazy Little Thing Called Love. I’m not sure he knew it was our song, but I heard it on the AM station every morning as I was getting ready hoping to see him on the way to school. Sadly our little love affair was short, as his slightly bigger, more aggressive twin wanted to play too. While I loved the sweetness of one, I still had a thing for bad boys, if only for one night of playing hid and seek in my backyard.

What is really spurring this dance down memory lane is the online radio station I’m listening to. To set up my profile I was asked my favorite artist. I’ve not really listened to music since 1994, soI fell back on my classic answer to the question, “If you could only have on CD (formerly, LP) on desert island, what would it be?” Meatloaf’s Bat Out of Hell. Now armed with Meatloaf, Pandora Radio is trying to map out my likes and dislikes, which I’m going to have to say is pretty spot on. I’ve been bounced from one relationship to another in my music memory tripping.

I’ve been back to dance in the 8th grade with Rod Stewart, a spin the bottle party with Steve Parry and the boys from Journey, crying because of god knows what with my headphones on with REO Speedwagon. Whenever I hear music from my childhood I’m brought back to that time. Jessie’s Girl just came on and now I’m at the Hard Rock Café in Vegas dancing with my husband, who, just months before told me he too liked men. Loving smart, sweet, sensitive men…my growing up was never dull and I have music to thank for reminding me year after year.

Dozens and dozens

The State of New Hampshire is now enforcing a law that you buy 12, chicks or ducks or a combination of the two. I can’t seem to find a reason, beyond it’s a law from 1985 stating an individual has to buy at least 12 chickens, rabbits, ducklings or goslings less than 4 weeks old. Well, I don’t think you can buy bunnies under 4 weeks old, but I’m new to this farm thing. Besides, my bunnies were 5 weeks old.
Damn you crazy people and your just buying one chick for Easter and now all the rest of us, the chicken farmers, reluctant and otherwise, have to buy them by the dozen. What if I don’t want another dozen chickens? What if I want or need only three? Sadly last year’s chicks didn’t make if a full year, due to too much free ranging, dogs and the usual critters crawling into the coop. This year we needed the twelve to restock, but what about next year? What if we only would like to add a couple? Will we have to hit the black market? Will the Chicken Swaps go underground?
And what if the Chicken Swap does go underground? Will be have meet in the parking lots of less reputable establishments, all wearing dark glasses and trench coats to buy, sell and trade our less than a dozen fowl and furry friends? Will the quality of the chicks go down? Will the local farmer loss out on chicken sales do to internet sales? What will be do?
As a reluctant chicken, duck, bunny and soon to be goat, farmer, I’d like to keep it simple. But that never seems to happen! With my family and their need to continuously add to the household, I imagine picking up a dozen birds every spring will most likely be the norm and I have no reason to feel this tension about acquiring my birds next spring. I just hope I won’t need a license for my hobby farm! That would send me over the edge, again.

Holy Cheese, the Cheesin' chick is missing!

Tonight Peeka and I thought we lost a chick. Once I took their daily photograph, she put them on the floor and played with them for over an hour. They perched on her, pooped on her and played with her. There was also a great deal of hiding from her so they could get some sleep. They are after all still babies and need lots of sleep to get bigger and out of my office. When it was time to put them back in their little wood shaving bed we counted them. One through eleven. Eleven? There's supposed to be twelve. We counted again. We took them all out of the tote, one by one. Eleven.

Then the frantic searching began. We moved boxes, the garbage can, looked under the filing cabinet, my desk, out in Peeka's playroom, just in case the crazy chick squeezed under the door. No chick. Then I thought I might have lost my mind and there had only been eleven. I found one chick the floor this morning, given that my office door was locked, I assumed she'd been tossed by the other chicks. But maybe there had been two to get the boot, voted out of the tote. So I went to the photographic evidence, the picture I'd taken an hour before. Ten, eleven and twelve. Well shit, or as Peeka says, cheese. She's working on no swearing as much and using cheese as well as other foods to replace swear words. The other day she told me that someone called Danielle a slut. But she thought that was a bad word so now Danielle is a broccoli.

Anyway, there were supposed to be twelve chicks. Peeka's the chicken mom and I am, I suppose, the chicken grama. So once we looked everywhere and it started to look like maybe one of the beagles had a late night snack, we found the little chick. She was sleeping under an overturned dog bowl. Peeka picked her up, kissed her little beak and said "You scared your Momma. Don't you ever do that again. I was so worried. You're grounded. Now go to your room." She kissed the little chick again, said I love you and looked at me. "I told you we'd find her. You worry too much."

Heavy sigh. No shit, I mean, cheese! How can I not worry? There's so many things that can go wrong in the blink of an eye. So many times have I thought the absolute worse, when if I'd just turned over the dog bowl and avoided all the worry.

Chicken Momma

It's been nearly a year since I've been here writing about life, chickens and such. Have a missed it? Not so much. I write all over the place, but never seem to stay with it. My Facebook page is well viewed, maybe beyond well viewed...but I'm trying to keep in touch with family and old friends, make new friends, develop a platform so once I get my novel out in the world people will already know my name. And this my dear, takes a great deal of work! If only it was paying work. I'm thinking of it was more of an investment in my future. I just hope not to miss too much of my present.

Having said that, my office is once again the home of peeking chicks, squeaking ducks, two of the cutest bunnies in the world and a thrilled five year old who believes she's a cross between a mother hen and high-seas pirate teaching each of her little peeps to perch on her shoulder. Every day she begs to be a chicken momma, gathering the little peeping, pecking and pooping babies in her pouch. This is often her favorite dress or a once clean t-shirt. Either way, once she gets them safely tucked in, she sits. Sits still. It's worth all the chicken and duck poop on my office floor to see her still. She's never still. Always in motion, except when she's chicken momma. Then she's still. Tucked in safely against Chicken Momma, the peeps sleep. My girl is still and I am in awe.

We only have a few weeks of this peeping stillness, but I think I will do this every spring until she leaves for college. We'll have a shit load of chickens, but it will be worth the five minutes of stillness every evening I get with my daughter.

Oh yeah, did I mention the goats?

Desk Ducks

It's been a week. A whole damn week since I've written here. I made a promise to myself. I make promises to everyone, but the promises I make to myself don't seem to count. Like some how what I want to do for myself just isn't as important as all the shit I do for everyone else. Yeah, it sounds whiny, and you know what, it is. But if I can't whine here, were the fuck can I?

So the ducks and chicks are just about two weeks old. They've more than doubled in size and I can't imagine how we'll keep them inside for another six weeks. They're already hopping/flying out of their little box. I think we'll have to put a screen on the top by tomorrow, or my entire office will be covered in chicken shit. So far there are a few spots they've not pooped on. I'm hoping this little adventure into farming would be what I need to finally clean out my office and throw some shit away. (And not just chicken shit)

I want my office to be as organized as my mind. In my mind all my information is neatly shelved and easily accessible. My office, not like that at all. It's an amazing example of stacking, bridging and not moving too quickly. The only spot in my office that's clean is the place were the desk ducks sit!

Chicken fingers

We had chicken tonight. No big deal. I thought so, but Peeka didn't agree. She was very upset to think we were eating her baby chickens. Yikes! How come I never thought of that? Why wasn't I freaked out we were having chicken when I was just photographing and gently patting the little chickens in my office? Is it comparmentalizatoin at it's best? I'll just have to see how eating the chicken wings tomorrow works out!