Rooster Relief

About 6 weeks ago i left for a trip to new orleans to help a very pregnant friend during her brother's weekend (side note, my role in this whole shindig was basically to help her not go into labor or be her second set of hands if she did, and she totally had the baby 24 hours after we finished the trip. so i am super good at my jobs).

during this time, our dogs who have been playing rather nicely with the chickens in the backyard, decided play time was over and killed two of our birds.

we were not upset, but the whole thing was sort of a mess and a really great learning experience. my husband is very comfortable with killing the chickens now (one was alive and on his way to death so he put the poor guy out of his misery), and that was the only part i had been concerned about having a hard time doing. we are set for meat birds!

E can't tell the birds apart. we have 2 buff orpingtons, 2 rhode island reds, 2 lavender orpingtons and one silver laced wyandotte.

bu some odd act of fate, BOTH of our lavender orps ended up being roosters. but one had been fairly sick as a baby and developed about 2 weeks behind the other, even though they were born around the same time.

in august one rooster--Hedwig-- began trying to crow and his comb started getting obscenely large. reptar's comb stopped growing and he made no attempt to make a single sound.

it may be a bit hard to tell, but the more upright one is Hedwig and the one laying lazily around is Reptar. you can see that his comb doesn't extend as high. but you can't see that his comb has more points to it.

Hedwig=dominant roo. reptar=laying down most of the time looking depressed and mangy.

ok, not mangy, that's rude. but he looked thin and somehow deflated all the time.

well, reptar got taken by the dogs, as well as jane, who was VERY high in the pecking order, if not at the top just because she was so.very.fat. she was the chicken who would run through the whole flock of ladies when they were resting, just so she could take someone's spot.

i got home 2 days after the massacre and it wasn't until 2 days after i got home that i realized something:

i hadn't heard a single crow.

normally hedwig crows in the morning, throughout the day when the girls lay or he finds something delicious to eat, and at night to round them all back into the coop.

it wasn't reptar who died. it was hedwig.

we lost our 2 dominant chickens.

some thoughts went through my mind.

1. the dogs managed to kill BOTH dominant chickens, which is impressive no matter how much you didn't want it to happen.

2. i cannot believe reptar is alive

3. this means that the entire pecking order will need to be re-established

here's the thing: i've never heard reptar make a noise, and he has never tried to mount a chicken. never. so i had this nagging concern that we have a rooster who might not know he's a boy, or might have been sick because he's somehow both genders, or might be brain damaged, who knows.

we have been counting on a rooster making it possible for us to have baby chicks, thus producing baby roosters who can be rooster dinners.

at the end of the first week, i noticed that he had put on some weight and was walking upright quite a bit more.

in the second week, his comb began to grow, i'm not even joking.

and this morning i watched him very clumsily (and with much protest from the lady herself) mount and successfully mate with rosa parks.

he still hasn't crowed.

i think our dogs left us with a rooster who can make babies but doesn't make noise.

i feel like i should buy the dogs a thank you card…..

The 7 Year Itch

today is our 7 year anniversary.

by all accounts, this anniversary should not be happening. for many reasons, and i will not go into all of them. mostly because airing your own dirty laundry is smelly and a ridiculous idea when you have a fancy, fully functional washing machine inside.

this will not be a laundry analogy.

last year, on our 6th anniversary, we had drawn up a separation agreement, were living in separate rooms, my rings were at a consignment store 70 miles away and we had been to the divorce class through the army's legal department, and were looking for a place for E to live nearby.

neither of us was being self righteous, we weren't being disagreeable, we weren't fighting. since we couldn't make choices for each other, we agreed mutually to try to make each of our own choices based on what we believed was best for our children, and thankfully we were both always on the same page in that regard.

from the moment we got married, we had always agreed that as long as we were both willing to work for it, the marriage would stand, even when everything tried to pull us down. overall intent would mean more than individual transgressions.

E had decided he no longer wanted to work. his intentions, his long term plans, had not had me in them for some time and he had been trying to get us both to a place where that transition would be "easier", whatever exactly that means.

what eventually happened, about 3 months into this mess, could be summed up as a divine intervention. the more complex list would be

1. E got a medication change for his anxiety medicine and started seeing a real therapist.
2. somewhere he realized that he probably wasn't going to get a life or wife much better than the one he currently had
3. i realized that my marriage vows didn't include a caveat of "unless we divorce" or "i promise, but if he breaks his vows, my promises become null and void".

i kept trying to live out my vows to do what was best for him, to support him, because no matter what, at the end of my life here on this planet, nobody will answer for my actions except me. i will certainly not be allowed to say "i sat by while the father of my children fell apart and did nothing to stop it, but he broke his promises first, so i am justified." he was genuinely still trying to be a great father.

about 6 months in we started thinking we might talk to a counselor and see if we wanted to work through this or not.

around 8 months in, we started seeing the counselor.

9 months in i moved back into the master bedroom with him, and it was a hard transition. it felt like being taken from my space and moved into his, even though i had lived there before.

all this time, i never got my rings back. the thought of them was very painful. they were a physical representation of what i felt was more lie than truth. they were never the rings i would have picked for myself, but they were what HE picked for me. i didn't want the future he had picked for us the last few years, and i did not want a reminder of that on my finger. i hadn't received a check from the consignment store.

about 10 months in, E put his wedding ring back on without warning. i was upset. i can't explain why, it was certainly irrational. i didn't want him to take it off necessarily, but when i saw it, i felt obligated to wear my own ring, which i still couldn't stomach.

i wanted a new ring. a new beginning.

i talked to some girlfriends (wonderful ones, i will add) about it and came to the realization that i was being unfair. i chose to be with him. i chose to stay. that means i chose the whole 6 years, and all of this is part of our story, part of the ring. i cannot choose which parts i want to keep and which i don't. that wasn't the deal we made with each other or the Lord.

i tossed around the idea that 60 years from now, i would probably want the ring. when all of this was a mere blip in the story of our lives, i would want to remember.

it took me another 2 months or better to convince myself to make the drive up. i wrestled with the decision so much.

 a week before today, our 7th anniversary, while in new orleans with another dear friend and as homesick as i've ever been in my life, i knew it was time to shit or get off the pot. i resolved that i would have the ring on my finger by our anniversary.

this morning i lied to him about my day's events and i drove up. i was anxious. the plan was to get them back and wear them out to dinner. surprise him.

the whole drive up i thought about this blog post. about what i would say on what feels like a very pivotal anniversary. and what it came down to, on that drive, was that i had to remember intent.

the intent of the ring was never bad. his intentions were never malicious. he intends now to make this marriage work. i intend to do the same.

intentions matter.

i walked into the store and explained why i was there. they took my name, pulled the inventory list, and went back to find the rings in stock.

out came the woman who co-owns the store with her husband.

"leanne?"
"yeah!"
"well, the items you asked about are on layaway and will be paid off by december"

did you just gasp?

i gasped.

"both? the band and the ring?"
"yes, they were purchased together. was that a good gasp?"
"no…. no, i came to get them back because i'm not getting divorced. it's my anniversary today. it was supposed to be a surprise"

i went through about 6 emotions in a split second, but the end reaction was laughter.

OF COURSE this would happen. OF COURSE. i no longer have a wedding band or engagement ring.

but what dawned on me next was sort of splendid.

"paid off by december."

someone was proposing at christmas. someone spent months paying for this now very important, beautiful, wonderful part of their story.

in all of my shock, she said they could give me store credit now for the rings and add 10% and maybe i could look for a new one.

i finally called E.

his response? "yeah, you should. it can be my anniversary gift to you! if there's any leftover, can you get me a watch?"

seriously.

this has now turned into one of the strangest days of my life.

the woman whisked me around the counters and i picked out real jewelry for the first time in my life. i want to go into detail about this whole experience, but this blog post has already gotten way too long.

in the end, she found a ring that finally made me weep.

underwhelming, until you look closely. 

pretty good representation of the person who wears it now.

i drove to the shop today prepared to bring back a set that i have heavy feelings toward, because i was fully prepared to accept the intentions behind the ring over the ring itself. 

now i think that was all i was supposed to do. it was never about me wearing my engagement ring and wedding band again. it was about being willing to, even when the circumstances weren't ideal.

it was about my intentions. 

our marriage is about willingness, even when the circumstances aren't ideal. it's about intention.

here's to 7 years down and more to come, love. 

The Lorax. Or in This Case, the Lexus

When house hunting last year, we narrowed down our options for locations based on the following criteria, in order of importance:

1. Price
2. Crime rate
3. School district
4. Distance to work

The rest was more or less details. We ended up in a house well within our price range, less than a half mile from a firehouse, 2 doors over from a fire chief, across the street from 2 police officers, a half mile from our boys' elementary school, a quarter mile from the library, and 10 minutes from my husband's work.

We are living a dream.

We knew our sons would walk or ride to school. We also knew that it would be a struggle because the roads leading into the school no longer carry country life traffic, and this area seems especially irreverent when it comes to school zone traffic laws.

Our son is one of 4 children I have seen walking to school. It is not a small elementary school, friends. Probably at least 350 students or more, and the attendance area is all in very close proximity to the school. Our kindergartener's bike with training wheels is the only one I've seen in the bike rack since school began 2 weeks ago.

I have made numerous remarkss on facebook about the lack of attention paid by drivers, the number of people speeding. We had an accident happen within 100 feet of our children and myself and the driver claimed he rear ended the car in front of him because he was watching my kids to make sure they didn't run into the road.

they were not even moving and certainly it would have been more diligent to slow down and keep an eye on all of your surroundings than to keep your speed and watch children 10 feet off the side of the road, but I digress.

Many cars have made the right turn, directly in front of us, after the crossing guard had walked into the intersection and raised her sign and whistled. I have engaged in ominously assertive yelling at that intersection.

I think the question most people must be asking at this point is "why are you still walking if it's that dangerous? We wouldn't walk. Obviously, lady, there is a reason so few families are walking or biking to school"

Well, for starters I'm just stubborn.

I believe this is important. I believe what we are doing each morning is vital to his overall wellbeing, his development, and his success in school and the future.

There is now a daily recommended amount of exercise for children. You may better know it by the name Play60. We have had to tell parents "your kids really should be playing, actively, for 60 minutes a day".

Recess was not 60 minutes long at my school. Even recess plus PE was not daily 60 minutes worth of hard play.

You cannot just blame schools.

But, school was not so rigorous when I was a child. I wasn't put through a 7 hour kindergarten day, with once weekly PE and 20 minute recess, and I did not go home and veg in front of electronics.

There are strong correlations between physical activity and children's ability to learn. Proprioceptive stimulation (anything that essentially sends them flying think cartwheels, swings, flips, balancing on a bike, etc) is an effective tool for raising endorphins and tiring the body out.

People go on runs to clear their minds. Imagine the effect it would have on a child to flip and jump and run and bike, wake their minds up and settle their bodies, and then sit down to work? Those bodies are tired enough to sit and their minds are alert.

Cross body coordination movements (crawling, climbing, throwing a ball, hopscotch, most of the blacktop games we played as children) are suspected to have dramatic, invaluable effects on literacy and language processing.

Social interaction through play is how children learn conflict resolution. (note: i will admit this article is less specifically supportive of the assertion that play is vital for conflict resolution. but broad conflict resolution skills require encounters with a broad variety of conflicts and confrontations. what better place for that than among peers? how often in life do any of us go long periods without dealing with excessive noise, movement, or people? a playground seems like a great place to me to cultivate problem solving skills)

The simple act of biking to school teaches my son about directions, rules of the road, awareness of surroundings, and a sense of responsibility and pride.

My 5 year old boy is expected to be in a classroom, learning the things I learned in first grade, for 7 hours a day. Of that time I would wager at least 5 hours are devoted strictly to learning and I would also venture to say that his teacher doesn't expect all 5 hours to be silent or still.

I also am not sure if I am entirely against pushing children to these higher intellectual limits as a general society, but that is another post.

Even with those concessions, it is still a lot.

We are expecting superior mental stimulation and performance at the expense of physical stimulation and performance.

I don't believe all children should be great in all areas, but I do believe that ignoring one entire part of our being, or suppressing it in favor of another part of ourselves, is a detrimental stance. I believe public school is vital for society, and I do not for one moment believe it is the job of the school to provide for every need that my child has. We are a team. They are pouring knowledge in to him, I am helping direct the flow through the specific course of my own child's mind. Their task is large and difficult.

It is not difficult for me to help my child move. Movement is inherent, ubiquitous.

So we will walk, and we will bike and we will run. And we will teach him to jump and leap and somersault and swim. We will activate his mind and his body.

The cars are going to learn to stop for us. Children are our most valuable treasure. I will shout, I will slam car hoods, I will go to the school board, the police station, the city hall, I will go to reasonable, but loud measures to remind people how to drive around children. I will not give in to fear, laziness, poor planning, arrogance, or mindlessness. I will teach my boys to be cautious. I will walk with them every day and be their extra eyes and ears and safety. We will walk in the heat, in the rain (within reason and with extra clothes in tow!), in the cold and on the beautiful days.

Most of the days are beautiful.

The media will tell you that my child will be hit by a car or abducted. The statistics from our law enforcement would tell you that the odds of him actually getting hurt from a car are minimal, and the chances he'd be abducted are lower than the chances he will break his arm on his bike. I'm certainly not going to stop him from riding his bike on the off chance he MIGHT fall and break his arm, and I will not stop walking him to school because the screens tell me that every car is waiting to fly off the road and hit him or steal him.

We will walk, we will smile at our community, we will invite them along, and I will fight to make it safer.

But we will not stop.

"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not."

Hurry Up and Wait

we've all heard it. "hurry up and wait." it's ubiquitous in the military community.

our oldest son has had developmental delays off and on since he was about 18 months old. i say off and on because this is how our life works with him:

realize there is a slight (6 months to a yearish) delay.

wait a few weeks.

see doctor. confirm delay.

put in referral for evaluation or therapy.

continue to work on delay at home while insurance takes its sweet mother effing time to approve referrals.

son very abruptly catches up entirely. sometimes in the course of a day, and i am not exaggerating.

see specialist. child is not delayed.

begin cycle over again in 6 months to a year.

this cycle was on of the large pieces in the pie chart of reasons why i wanted to get rid of our tv's. (i don't think i've posted about that yet. we got rid of our tv's. everyone is alive 9 months later) he needs more room than a lot of kids to let his mind grow.

our younger boy develops very typically. he picks things up more or less as he goes along and then we have occasional cognitive leaps. in contrast, with our oldest we pour information in over and over, repeat it for weeks on end and he shows no sign of comprehension. and then one day, or one week, everything we've been teaching him clicks and comes together and he can do all of it. months of information and work will come to fruition in a matter of days.

it is very frustrating. however, it is also something we are getting gradually more accustomed to and thus it is becoming much less stressful. this past time when the doctor put in the referral, we never went to the specialist. because i knew he would catch up. and i was correct.

granted, i was incredibly worried. as of july he was not prepared to start kindergarten. academically i no longer expect him to be front of the pack, but there were overall concepts, themes and systems that i didn't think his mind quite had a grasp on. lack of mental coordination to some extent i suppose you could call it.

one week before he was slated to start kindergarten, all the pieces joined together, in a matter of days. suddenly he was pretending to read, tracking his finger along with the words and making up the story based on the pictures (we have been working on this seriously since march. MARCH), he was paying attention to his brother's needs and helping us accommodate them, following directions, staying on one task for more than 5 minutes. he learned to swim and sound out SOME letters and began figuring out how to identify the starting letter of a word by the sound it makes. all of this happened, and more, in about 4 days.

hurry up and wait.

in the past 2 weeks or so both boys figured out how to swim (though the little guy can only swim with one breath. he hasn't figured out how to pop his head up, tread water and get another breath. that'll come!), the big guy has figured out diving and can swim the length of a pool. wild.

 big guy also lost his THIRD tooth. he's not even 6 years old yet!!!

note the coloring on the wall behind him. THANKS, KIDS!

and our chickens laid their first egg

it's super tiny for now. they get bigger as the chicken figures its life out

hurry up and wait. for the rest of our lives, it would seem.

Kindergarten

 5.5 years ago i gave birth to my oldest boy. i had no idea what to do with a baby. i had very limited experience with newborns.

i tried to listen to what everyone told me. i read so many books.

as it turns out, a lot of the books were right, and a lot of the people were wrong.

i likely won't dole out a ton of baby advice on here, but let me give you my three most important pieces of advice real quick before we dive into the rest of this.

1. you will in fact sleep after your first baby is born. you'll sleep often. because newborns are only awake for a grand total of about 20 hours a day in their first week or two, and not usually awake for even half of the day in their first month. and you won't have anyone kicking you internally. people make newborns out to be life draining monsters. don't believe them. but do sleep when the baby sleeps. (disclaimer: note that i said FIRST baby. when your second baby comes, you are in fact effed. but after a couple of years, when your youngest child sleeps through the night and you have a normal routine again, you WILL sleep.)

2. always do what your heart says, not society. your motherly instincts will almost always be right. the most important thing for a new mom and baby is for a bond to be created and for nurturing to occur. trust yourself. your baby trusts you. do what is RIGHT for you, so long as it isn't abuse ;)

3. put towels under every car seat you ever use.

back to it. i have loved every stage of growth in my boys. i didn't find the newborn stage particularly awful, though it's not my favorite because they are really kind of boring, once you are done crooning for the day. we didn't have any true terrible 2s or 3s (my younger guy just turned 4, so i can't say anything about 4s for sure yet). we have trying periods, and we have good and bad days. but for the most part, i have loved watching them grow and develop.

i have often thought "holy cow, how did you get so big!?!?!" which is NOT the same as "where did my baby go!?!"

i have to admit that this may change and reverse when my boys are adults.

i do not look at my boys and see my babies.

when i look at my oldest, this is not what i think of:

i look at my boys and i am always seeing them in the future. imagining how their faces will grow and fill out and sharpen, how tall they might be, what kind of things they are going to be interested in, how they'll spend their time.

my oldest boy is going to kindergarten in 2 weeks. i doubt i will cry. i could not be more excited for him, for the life he is about to start. i realize that many parents cry out of excitement too!!

anyway, we as parents work so hard in those young years, teaching them to eat, to use a bathroom, discipline, to sleep well, kindness, their colors and letters, how to dress themselves, how to listen… we teach them how to function in social settings like classrooms and birthday parties. we imprint our values, our personalities, our moral codes, our ways of doing things on them, our music in the car, our favorite shows and movies. 

they know what we've shown them.

and now they get to go out and pull pieces from the world around them. they will be opened up to so many concepts and characters and topics, they will have a chance to learn from a different teacher, to open up new pathways in their minds. they will begin to find parts of themselves by themselves. some will be bad i suppose. it's a mixed bag, naturally. 

but what a truly magical thought: that we have begun a painting in these years, and now other hands will add to it. different brushes, strokes, color palettes, maybe entirely different mediums. all combining and mixing to make a collaborative work of art. 

i can't wait to see what gets added to this masterpiece this year.

Eggs

we are getting very close to having eggs!! our first group of girls are 18.5 weeks and our second batch of i'm-still-not-totally-sure-what-the-gender-make-up-is chickens are around 16 weeks. they have started this crazy weird moaning type of squawk and two of them are assuming the submissive squat position while just hanging out around the coop.

it's hard to see rosa parks back there, but she is definitely the youngest in terms of how close she is to laying. she's just a dainty lil lady, taking her sweet time.

i opened their nesting boxes 2 days ago and prepared them--they had previously been closed off so nobody would try to sleep or poop in them. i've also been searching around the run every day to see if they've picked their own place yet. so far, nothing. but i know it's coming!!

it's the two harry potter themed lavender orpingtons that are giving me fits. their waddles and combs seem far too big to be hens, and myrtle clearly has sickle feathers. i'm about 95% sure myrtle is more like a malfoy. except not evil.

hedwig up there, let me just tell you, is a giant, fat, ridiculous chicken. i have never seen a chicken so big. not that i've seen a lot of chickens in my day, but she is HUGE.

H.U.G.E. she has to be well over 8 pounds.

nobody is trying to crow yet, so we have some more time to prepare ourselves mentally for the possibility that one of those beauties is going to be dinner.

anyway, we are waiting very impatiently to see our first egg!! it should really be any day now, and i cannot wait to make a yummy soft boiled fresh egg with some cheddar grits. mmmmmmmm.

not much of an update. certainly a poorly worded blog to say the least.

can't all be winners!

Decade

july 14, 2005 is the day my brother died at 17 years old because of a water park accident in Ponca City, OK. the accident was due to the perceived invincibility that 17 year olds have, and gross negligence and childishness by the owners of the park.

his birthday was july 1.

the first couple of years july was simply a hard month. it's a lot to reconcile yourself with in 2 weeks. sadness at the passing birthday, but also wanting to celebrate the life you had with someone, followed immediately by the day that stole them from your life in a fantastically precise sequence of random events.

it sets a tone. your mind and body remember that turmoil of emotions and you become pavlov's dog. each day rings out and you salivate and then gorge yourself on grief.

it's hard to break that cycle, especially when everyone surrounding you is victim to it as well. it seems normal. it seems impossible to defend against.

i was very lucky last year to have a friend who had lost a sibling around the same ages that my brother and i were when he left earth. a friend whose family had come well out the other side.

someone who graciously and gently reminded me that it was simply a day. and that i was giving it control over me.

i think i began crying some time around 11:45 the evening of july 14, 2014. by far the longest i had ever made it in the previous 9 years. i didn't have much energy left to process that milestone, but the last year has given me plenty of time to mull it over.

i came to realize that it WAS just a day. just july 14. a bad day for our family, yes. but probably a miraculous day for so many other families. we have dark days scattered throughout history. i certainly don't break down every year on the anniversary of the oklahoma city bombing, though that event was the first major disaster that i had full cognition of and made a huge impact on my childhood. the loss of my brother was much more profound than the feelings stirred in me on april 19, 1995. but i deeply grieved my brother for much longer than i grieved the victims of OKC.

i have never believed that my brother was gone. gone here in front of me, yes. but i have, from the day he died, believed that he was still with me because of the great gift of communion with the saints. i call him the patron saint of peanut butter.

(side note: in catholicism, theoretically everyone who gets through purgatory and into heaven is a saint. we just assume that some people make it through purgatory with rapid speed and have reasonable faith that they are in heaven because they performed miracles and thus appear to actually have undoubtedly had God's favor, so we canonize them. the pope will never canonize my brother and label him the patron saint of peanut butter, but i like to think Jesus fist bumps me whenever i say it)

i talk to him often and i visualize him here with us, guarding us and witnessing our lives.

he sees us laughing, loving, growing our families. he hears our jokes and sees our hugs. i'm sure he laughs when i use mom's lines on my own kids. he sees us lively, light, and joyful.

and then he watches us allow it to abruptly come to a massive, screeching halt.

because of him.

i would never want that for my family if i left them here on earth.

the inexplicable days where it's just too much, i would understand and feel sorrow. i wouldn't want my family to be in the throes of summer exhilaration, only to feel obligated to interrupt it so they could put on a mourning cloak for me and give power to the day i died.

beyond that, i came to what i can only call a very catholic conclusion: this is one day. july 14 was one day in AJ's life. arguably the darkest day. the last day of his physical life. and that is a big deal.

but it was not the last day of his spiritual life. it honestly may not have even been a profound day for his soul. it very likely was not the darkest nor the most profound moment in his soul's existence.

if i believe his soul is still pulsing through eternity, there is no reason to treat this day with such somber reverence.

on earth this day may signify a great loss. but in heaven, for all i know, today he is having a peanut butter party with our dog beaker and my grandma b and his cousin A and L (our sister's mother in law).

i expected the 10 year mark to be earth shattering. to be as painful as our 10 year wedding anniversary will be joyful.

instead (thankfully), it is just a tuesday. we're getting groceries and i taught the letters A and M to the kids at the gym. we ate lunch as a family and the kids got covered in dirt and sand. my first thoughts this morning centered around figuring out the schedule for the day and lamenting my stupidity for staying up until 3am to read.

and for coffee. my first thoughts are always for coffee.

rather than feeling guilty, i am finding that i finally feel free.

and i find myself hoping and wishing for that freedom for everyone. not only for us, but for the loved ones we've all lost.

i think they would want to be remembered for the life they led, not the day that life stopped on earth.

at least that's what i want.

Buck Cluck Squack A Doodle Do!

sustainability has been heavy on my heart for a good while now.

it's a common word in our culture today with the rising focus on green living. it's a great word, and one we should be focused on.

i'll have other posts about this, but i've been trying to approach most things from a sustainable viewpoint.

are my health habits sustainable? am i engaging in physical activity and nutritional intake that can be healthfully continued for years to come? are those activities feasible for the earth's continuance as well?

are our food habits sustainable? are we eating seasonally, are we composting and putting discard back into the earth?

are our financial habits sustainable? are we living within our means, are we planning for the future?

on and on and on.

one answer to these questions is our new friends:

In no particular order, Raven, Oriole, Blanche, Jane, Hedwig, Myrtle and Rosa Parks

after minimal research and maximum spontaneity, we came home one afternoon with 4 baby chicks. the brown and tan ones.

guys, they were the cutest thing that has ever happened.

our oldest. he would sneak into the bathroom where they were living every morning to hang out with them

SERIOUSLY CANNOT CONTAIN THE CUTENESS

guess what? chicken butt. get it?

obviously i was smitten. they're easy to care for and they have great little personalities. from the beginning i could tell who would likely end up being the top chicken in the flock order, and i was right.

it's jane.

how did i know jane would be in charge? because jane would wait for everyone to fall asleep. cuddled together. ball o' adorable fluff.

and then she wold open her little eyes ever so slightly. and look around, very gently.

and then take a running nose dive underneath everyone, waking them up and sending them scattering and then she would sleep in the middle of where they just were, nice and warm, as though nothing ever happened.

born politician, that jane.

"but wait," you are saying to yourself. "i see only 4 chickens in those pictures. there are SEVEN in your first picture. i just went back and double checked and there are 7 names as well!"

well done, observant one.

i couldn't control my feelings toward the cuteness and i bought 3 more.

the gray one and the black one were added to the flock when the bigger girls were about 2-3 weeks old.
jane was a dick about it and i took her out of the cage and made her watch everyone eat and she was
PISSED about it. but then she stopped nose-dive-running at the new babies and they were able to eat.

we had to get the next 3 as a straight run, which means we had no idea if any would be roosters.

turns out one is.

roosters are against city ordinance. but it's hedwig, and i love him, and he has ridiculous swagger. so we are going to put a crow collar on him and hope for the best.

so this brings me to sustainability again.

chickens are a sustainable thing. they eat tons of table scraps and their poop is great for compost, and they give us eggs. it's a win-win-win. sustainable system.

EXCEPT.

when one of the people in your house goes overboard and gets 7 chickens and then goes to the backyard chicken class at the extension office AFTER getting attached to 7 chickens, you find out some interesting information.

such as:

the breeds of chicken we have usually lay about 6 eggs per week. each. each chicken. 6 eggs per week.

obviously the rooster doesn't lay eggs.

we have 6 hens. 6 eggs a week per hen.

36 eggs a week.

friends.

that is not sustainable. WE WOULD ALL HAVE TO EAT 2 EGGS A DAY TO KEEP UP WITH THAT AND THE KIDS DON'T EVEN EAT EGGS!!!!!

but now i love the chickens. so the sustainability picture expanded to include sales and barters. whatever.

next problem.

the rooster.

who we are not supposed to have.

it got me thinking. chickens were made, like all other animals, to mate. studies and experience tell us that flocks are more complete with a rooster among them. roosters offer protection and are part of the flock order. and reproduction is certainly wise when it comes to a sustainable lifestyle.

if we can keep the crow quiet and don't get in trouble with the city, and we let the chickens sit on some eggs every now and again and turn them into babies……

well, then we can pick out the weak or aggressive chickens, or the extra roosters, and we suddenly have dinner. which, yes, means we have to kill chickens.

suddenly, even though i'm not necessarily excited about killing chickens, i saw the system from a much more primal stance. this is how people survived. daily eggs and what can be hunted provide protein. the chickens eat the scraps and produce poop and waste that become compost, which feeds the soil to grow better crops. the crops feed the family and the scraps feed the chickens. chickens who are poor producers, weak, or mean get killed and eaten because it's better not just for us, but for the flock. a chicken who is making no eggs is making no babies and is just eating food that could be going to productive ladies. mean chickens and weak chickens are a threat to their own flock. the rooster protects and fertilizes. two roosters in a flock is a mess. they fight and harm more than they serve.

it works.

it makes sense.

we don't need factories to feed us.

granted, balance is nice and i'm sure pioneers would have loved to have loved a hungry man or two on harvest days when mama was too sick to make dinner.

we survived this way for thousands of years.

we won't be killing the original 7 any time soon and we are a good 6 months away from the first time we will be looking at killing a chicken for dinner. i'm sure i will write about it.

i know we will face a lot of confusion and possibly a wee bit of backlash. but i hope more than anything that we can be part of a shift in this world. that we can be part of a generation that returns to the roots of ourselves, that values skill and knowledge and work, that remembers self-sufficiency and teaches it.

if not, i'm sure i'll end up homesteading somewhere, as a total social outcast :D

I'm Not Going to Apologize

i think that's common protocol to apologize for a blog absence.

i won't.

this is the internet.

1. nobody cares that i didn't write for whatever number of years
2. i don't care
3. blogs are for A) cathartic release, like a journal, or B) informative purposes, like an excessively drawn out, but free, how-to book. mine is a journal, so i have the right to forget that i even had a journal for 3 years.
4. meh

there are a billion places to begin.

my marriage has been in a precarious state for a number of years and it came to a big, pus-filled head last year in september. i saw a counselor who told me something to the effect of "the problems your husband is having are too big for you to handle. you are not big enough for this. God is sitting behind you while you claim that 'you have it under control and you don't need help and you'll figure it out', and He is waiting for you to say 'I don't have the skills or the knowledge, and i need someone else' so He can step in and do the dirty work."

at the time i very conscientiously knew what she was saying. i went home and relinquished control over major things that most people would have had trouble letting go of.

our marriage improved, he improved, and life has been good. i'm not going to break down the specifics dish out intimate details that don't need to be forever plastered on the internet.

in this last month, several major components of my life slammed themselves into a large brick. there will be a spectrum of damage, from shattered beyond repair to minor restorative work. what falls where remains to be seen.

i am tired. i gave all of my patience and understanding and grace and forgiveness, everything i had, last year when my marriage exploded. i have methods that i have grown accustomed to using in order to deal with stress. at least half of them are unavailable to me after the great brick wall incident of 2015.

i am tired and cannot see my safety nets. or the end of the tightrope i am walking. or how high it is off the ground.

i also cannot explain the situation in any literal terms, it seems. ANALOGIES FOR EVERYTHING!

on thursday of last week, my cognitive understanding of the wisdom my counselor poured over me last fall was swallowed by a deep emotional understanding.

it is not simply stepping back and releasing control over some things. demoting myself, or delegating responsibility to the Lord and taking what is left. delegation is still control. demotion still implies that you have a position within the system.

it is stepping back entirely, against my will, because i know i will fail if i stay here. it is putting my life, my responsibilities, my duties, my joys, into His hands with no knowledge of what will happen.

and then being covered with the peace that surpasses all understanding, right?

sure.

there is a peace. in the sense that the chaos is no longer mine. i am not sitting at the bed of the brick wall, sorting through pieces and trying to figure out what belongs where or is salvageable. my hands are not the ones bleeding. the gears of my mind are not the ones turning. the decisions aren't mine. i am back on some hill a hundred feet away, watching and waiting for someone to give me an update.

i do not feel blissful. there are no soft, joyful, radiant beams gracefully enveloping my spirit, warming me into transcendence.

i feel confident that in the end, what is left will be there because it was meant to be. i will always carry a strong conviction that there is a purpose for everything, because my God tells me so, my faith tells me so, and my life has proven it to be true thus far.

i am not sure that peace is necessarily a positive or joyful thing. peace after war brings joy, certainly. it also produces tension and anxiety. it requires that people create new cultural norms. it forces us to finally see the ruins around us that we had to ignore in order to survive.

peace can remove fear. that does not mean it removes pain.

i think that kind of peace is beyond comprehension. sitting a hundred yards back on a hill, terrified, solemn, aware that the pile below may be entirely destroyed, heartbroken and disoriented, and yet not screaming or impeding the work being done, not fighting the people trying to help you, not cursing them, not burying yourself in the ground to die, cannot be processed. that peace can only be experienced.

that kind of "peace" is the kind that tells you that the disaster will still be there if you walk away for a moment. it reminds you that you must trust the ones working, because you cannot do better. it reminds you that you cannot do anything right now. and it reminds you that at least once, maybe more, you were down in the shambles for someone else who couldn't do anything at that moment.

so i took a break from the wreckage and carted my peaceful ass to reconciliation for the first time in 5 years and sat myself in a pew for Mass.

and it helped.

and i have started praying the rosary every night.

and it helps.

because i don't have to make up any of my own words for Mass or the Rosary, and God knows i'm far too tired to even do that.

and then we will go to counseling and doctors and they will grind out plans that i will follow, and they will give instructions that i will follow.

because that is all i am big enough to do right now.

and honestly, i don't feel bad about it.

so i'm not going to apologize.