chicken love

I try. I really do. I currently have half a dozen posts sitting unedited, waiting for a far more careful eye than my own. My perfectionism pushes me to try to say something here every day. But doing so drives down the quality of the things said. I have to imagine (hard, I am imagining and hoping really hard for this) that the likes of Shakespeare, Dante, Steinbeck, Tolkien, and Austen had days where they talked about the grocery list or the weeds building up in their backyard. Or something like that. You know, something that makes sense. (Not that I am comparing myself to these writers in the LEAST bit, because come on. I'm just... not.)

The thing is, it's exhausting and pretty limiting trying to talk Big Things all the time. But a girl can still try. I also try to give myself license (let's be honest: PLENTY of license) to talk about the mundane, the trivial, the inconsequential, the meaningless items that make a single day simultaneously dull and also intrinsically unique. Don't look to me to find meaning in all of that meaninglessness, though. To do so would be beyond my powers and also exhausting.

Because sometimes, it's just about chickens. And that's it.

I have noticed that otherwise sensitive and intelligent people will go to great lengths to decry the love between a person and a chicken, claiming that, of all things, chickens are not smart enough to love. Well, I'm here to tell you: I've seen women passionately devoted to men who couldn't pile bricks, and whole families of slack-jawed nose pickers held together by "love," not to mention all those people who curl up at night with dogs that have gunk running out of their eyes, dogs who earlier peed where they were about to walk and spent ten minutes licking their own wormy butts. -Haven Kimmel, A Girl Named Zippy

Not to take anything away from the dog-lovers, of course. But there it is laid out before us: chicken love, pure and simple. Daily our stay at my parents' house was punctuated by visits from the chickens. Mom's face would light up and she'd stare out the window for a minute THERE ARE THE CHICKENS. Inevitably, Alice and I would mosey outside to visit the chickens. I'd be clucking and ch-ch-ch-ch'ing for Alice's sake. She'd be watching me and then would point as the feathery creatures crossed our path.

I am a city girl at heart, though I've spent a decent chunk of time in cow pastures, on a farm (Grandpa's in Idaho), and rambling through the country. Chickens are still a novelty.




This is my attempt at diversion. Diversion from a mind bogged down in tasks and to do's. How was your weekend? Did everyone survive? Have fun?

Yes. Us too.