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.

hot

Sweaty weather. Less-clothes-is-more weather. Wishing-for-air-conditioning weather. Grilling-in-the-great-outdoors weather. Melty ice cream weather. Can't move weather. Please-open-the-windows weather. Don't-open-the-windows weather. Dry grass weather. Burning-up weather. Limp weather. Hide-out at the mall/movie theater/underneath the neighbor's car weather. Popsicle weather.

Whimsy's Fruity Frozen Ice Pops

Take one Ikea shaped ice cube tray
Fill it with your favorite 100% organic juice (our choice, at least)
Freeze
Remove ice pops from tray and store in plastic bags in freezer

Feed fruity frozen ice pops to teething toddler and barely moving husband (couch bound, with added headache from HEAT)

three things (the second)

Tomorrow we are fleeing the firestorm. How's that for overstatement? Actually, we're headed to a Fourth of July celebration that's held in a nearby town. The second best part is that we'll be staying in a hotel Saturday night. The best part is that we won't be coming home Saturday night. Why is this so good? Because we seem to live in the last corner of the Wild West where firearms and fireworks lovers roam free between the hours of 2pm to 4am July 4th through 5th. Think I'm overstating? Wandering Nana happens to live very close to my neighborhood, and last year she considered taking a tape recorder outside so that her family would believe the stories she told afterward - mainly along the lines of OH HOLY MOLY WHEN WILL THE NOISE STOP. My description of our neighborhood being the last corner of the Wild West isn't too far from the truth, since we actually live in an unincorporated section of our county. It's like no one wants to claim us or something. Misfits! All of us!

That, and everyone buys fireworks and fireworks and yet more fireworks (from local Indian reservations - consider the irony) to fully reenact those battles for independence (or so I like to believe... tangent: Chip and I have different worldviews and really mine can be summed up in GLASS HALF FULL when it comes to people and their intentions - I really do want to believe that people buy all the fireworks to at least approximately celebrate our country's independence; Chip, on the other hand, tells me that it's just about blowing stuff up and drinking lots of beer.) So tomorrow we're fleeing the wild west to celebrate in the more settled and civilized proper King County. We will be joining crowds of humanity as they view the night sky with slack-jawed optimism watching the sanitized, regulated, and much more contained fireworks explode overhead. Just as our forefathers intended.

I'm excited to be fleeing the noise. Last year I was thisclose to personally launching some bottle rockets into some thick teenage skulls, if you know what I mean and I think you do.

So. In my two-week-old effort to rid the blogosphere of a drought (imagine I threw "pernicious" in there for good measure and to drive a certain reader crazy - ha!)--- here are my Three for Friday picks, fresh off the picking truck:



I have a blog-crush on Kacy who is so funny and also an acquired taste. But I think you'll like to read this post, I don't know about you. It made me laugh out loud. If you're still in a Kacy mood, keep reading the rest of her blog.

This is actually a RECENT entry, like WEDNESDAY RECENT. I'm so proud. To share this post from Karen Schindler - another VERY FUNNY one. I'm on a funny kick this week, can you tell? I think I'm going to post three great advice links next week. Now go read Karen's post about a giant spider.

And number three is this post from Nutmeg at Simply Nutmeg. When I walk by this particular item at Target (or Walgreens or the grocery store or see it on tv or EVERYWHERE), I think of Nutmeg. I have a feeling she wouldn't want to be brought to mind for this item, but what's a person to do. When someone writes something this funny about, um, this thing, she's bound to it.



And more, from these fine folk (if you're wanting to participate today and you didn't say so earlier, comment here and I'll link you - OR if you did notify me earlier and I spaced and didn't list you anyway, let me know - and then forgive me because I'm so beautiful):

More Three for Friday goodies:

M at Burnstopia
Amy at One Day at a Time (not a slacker!)



Happy Friday, dudes, and Happy Independence Day! Please be careful and no one do anything crazy like cradling a firecracker in your hand. How about you swing some sparklers in the air and then light those charcoal-y snake things on the ground. (Do they even sell those anymore? The looked like little pellets and you'd light them and watch as they just sort of grew before your very eyes. Sometimes they belched out colorful smoke. It wasn't interesting in the least. And yet, we got them every year.)

We'll be doing this whole Three for Friday thing again next Friday - stay tuned.

shining, gleaming, streaming, flaxen, waxen

Despite several warnings to the contrary, all of my shoes still fit me. I don't have new tastes for foods that had always been awful or delicious. As before, I still hate cilantro with the white-hot intensity of a thousand burning suns (a certain blogger calls it the Devil's herb and who am I to argue with her). I still love sour cream onion dip like the day is long. I don't have any new allergies. I don't sleep differently or wear my clothes in a way that would indicate my hips had shifted or something (though seriously, let's not talk about the size, okay?). Even though an old boss of mine insisted that the entire composition of my skin would change after pregnancy (magically transforming from chronic dry, dry-as-the-sahara-dry, dry dry dry DRY to something more along the lines of normal dry) - it hasn't. Same old skin. Same old massive investment in too many bottles of lotion.

What I do have, what I continue to experience is this: MASSIVE GROUP HAIR EXODUS. Has this happened to any of you out there? Hair as thick and full and lush as can be while gestating the Bean. And a few months after her birth - goodbye to hair in thick handfuls. Scary large handfuls. And then it sort of tapered off... back to normal amounts. But every few months, I get this Massive Group Hair Exodus again.

My theory? Because so much hair did the Planned Exit at once after Bean was born, the hair that grows in and later falls out is all on the same growing/falling out schedule, if you get my meaning.

It's weird.

I'm weird for sharing this with you.

Though I am now challenging you to tell me your weird Thursday thing. Whatever that might be.

Also: reminder that tomorrow a bunch of us are doing Three for Friday. If you want to join in, email me at whimsyattack AT gmail DOT com. Or comment tomorrow on the post, which also works. Hopefully I won't be BALD by tomorrow.

sometimes it's like this

You are sitting on the dining room floor, shaking your index finger as hard as you can - nose-to-nose with an equally angry toddler. You are saying NO NO NO and she is jabbering back at you, eyebrows furrowed together, lips jutting into a pout, her fingers splayed before her, desperately trying to grab the chair an d push it over backwards.


You are standing on your driveway watching your girl explore the terrain. So far you have stopped her from eating gravel, dead leaves, a cast-off iris bulb, a particularly interesting clod of dirt, and the neighbor's cat. You try to let her learn, but there are some lessons too costly, some things that just shouldn't be done within the mama's eyesight. She sees that you are watching her and she crouches down for a closer look at something wriggling on the ground...


You drive one-handed. The other hand reaching back to her car seat, jiggling her leg - telling her we'll be home soon soon soon, don't fall asleep, don't fall asleep, DON'T FALL ASLEEP! At the traffic light, you turn to assess how deeply she has fallen into an ill-timed nap. A nap that will surely take the place of a much more restful and long nap at home, in her own bed. Her head is dropped to the right. Her fingers still clutching the bright blue radio you tossed to her ten minutes ago in a vain hope that she would fight dreamland to keep playing. If you could only reach the handle---- maybe you could---- start up the music---- get her to wake up---- and as you fail to grasp the radio, the light changes and you turn back to the business at hand: driving home.


You are rushing through the family room as your little girl naps fitfully upstairs. You have ten minutes to get this room in shape before something else needs your attention: cat, phone call, dishes, checkbook, email, laundry. There are broken bits of cracker underfoot and you do your best to gather up the biggest pieces with your fingers. The rest will have to wait until later, when the little one is awake and fully able to be terrified of the vacuum cleaner. You're a kind mother that way.


You are playing with her blocks. By yourself. It was supposed to be a joint venture, but after a million grunts and waves and tugs on the bag that houses the blocks---- when you finally relented and pulled them out to play, your little one took one look at the blocks and decided that the fistful of discarded cat hair she eyed in the screen door was MUCH more entertaining.


You are doing everything you can to be helpful, to be patient, to be the kind of mama that she wants to run and kiss. The kind of mama who understands that it's not easy being a toddler. The kind of mama you really truly want to be. But sometimes, sometimes it's more like this.