Too Many Chickens » Ramblings

Imps abound (the war begins)

alphawolf — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:45:57 +0000

I know it has been months since I have posted anything and I apologize to everyone who reads my ramblings. My creative juices seem to stop flowing when my chickens are forced to stay cooped, and I started a job where I was working 14 hours a day 7 days a week so I barely had time to bathe, eat, and sleep. During the time I was working 95 hours a week it seemed like everything I owned either fell apart or stopped working.
I stumbled into the bathroom at 5 am one morning and found myself standing in a puddle…a tiny trail of water was creeping out from under my washer. After rubbing and blinking my eyes into focus…with no caffeine intake this took a minute…I began the investigation. It turned out that the hose had rusted where it attached to the water valve. In my attempt to tighten it to stop the leak, I managed to break it some more and in return received an unplanned cold shower. I stumbled out to the water meter and finally coaxed and cursed the valve into the off position. The only thing that saved me was that I had set the timer on my coffee pot the night before so it would be waiting for me when I got up. Since a shower was now out of the question…I had more time to relax and enjoy a whole cup before rushing out the door. My son came to my rescue…he cut the line and capped it off so I could have water again. The only problem was that now I only had hot water to my washer, so that meant washing my work clothes was now a much longer process. I had to fill the washer with hot water and let it sit until it cooled off…wash the clothes…take them out and pile them on the sink….fill the washer back up with hot water…let it cool (and it is amazing how long it takes water to cool off when you are waiting on it)…rinse the clothes, and then start the whole thing over. So, if I timed it right, I could finish a load every other day.

After a few days this began to fit into the flow of my life…but the appliance imps could not tolerate this and decided more chaos was called for.

While foraging in the fridge and coming to the realization that the slightly green tinted contents in the remaining container did not contain broccoli and therefore the resemblance to the fragmented florets meant that my repurposed plastic had become a habitat to a completely different botanical classification…I had to accept the fact that if I wanted to eat…I had to stay awake long enough to cook. This might not sound like a huge feat for most of you, but the fact that I have in the past fallen asleep while standing in the doorway…in the middle of a conversation…and slid almost all the way to the floor before waking up, made it a big deal for me! I decided that the quickest and easiest path to food would be to throw something in the oven while I did the laundry switch out process and showered. As I turned the knob to start the oven, the stove started beeping and flashing like I had set off a car alarm. I turned it off and on a few times in the hopes that it would shut up and work, but each time just yielded the same response. My frustration level rose with each turn of the knob, and I started pushing all the other buttons in a futile attempt to win the battle of woman verses machine. The stove retaliated by getting louder and changing the flashing message to read F1 over and over again. My dignified response was to start stomping my foot and screaming, “WELL F U 2!!!!”. The machine thought it had won, but at this point I pulled out my secret weapon. I stopped waving my finger in the air (which I had felt necessary to emphasize my ranting) and used it to flip the switch in the breaker box…a small victory in a war not yet won. I decided that what I had really wanted all along was the peanut butter jar and a spoon.

Sprouts of Spring

alphawolf — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 02:11:59 +0000

I LOVE SPRING!!! Ok, I don’t love every aspect of it…like the tornados and floods and spiders and mosquitoes…but I always feel so alive and full of hope and promise when the world starts turning green. As much as I complained about working on the farm when I was growing up you’d think I’d be glad that I live in town now (if you can really call the spot in the road where I live a town…lol), but there is always this compelling urge…a deep undeniable yearning for creative cultivation. Starting in early February I begin collecting this stack of catalogues from the mail…full of pictures of flowers and trees and vegetables and growing supplies…some even come with planting diagrams…which I always find fault with and can spend hours improving…on graft paper that I keep handy because I never know when I’ll wake up in the middle of the night with a blueprint I’ve dreamed up and need to sketch before I fall back to sleep (my chickens never roost!…lol). Anyway…I devour these publications…slowly savoring the selection of shrubs…perusing perfect perennials…envisioning a voluminous variety of tasty tomatoes and succulent squash. I leaf through them again and again…comparing prices, colors, heirlooms and hybrids. My yard is, for the most part, a sad combination of ash and clay…I can’t seem to use enough Miracle Grow to coax the tiny sprouts into adulthood. One year I went as far as to buy a truck load of landscape timbers and bags of topsoil to build a small raised garden out back. I’ve never had such a fine crop of dandelions as I did that year…lol. Last year I decided that my grandson was old enough to appreciate this miracle of nature and wanted to share the whole experience with him. He has helped me in the yard since he was big enough to walk…pulling weeds (and the occasional flower…lol)…raking up the leaves so we can play in them…and packing sticks after a storm (which we have had more than our share of lately). He loves watching the flowers turn into berries in his little strawberry patch, and can’t wait for the tiny green tomatoes to show up so he can pick them off and throw them…lol. I got a couple of the cheap plastic starter boxes…the ones with the peat pellets in them, some tomato, zucchini, and yellow squash seeds, and mentally prepared for science class. It wasn’t long before he got bored with the planting process…I mean after you stick a couple of seeds in the peat it gets kinda repetitive, and 3 yr olds aren’t known for their long attention spans (especially in this family!!!). Every time he came over he would run to check on our project. I know the days it took for those seeds to sprouts were years in his world. When anyone came to the house he would proudly show off our garden to be and tell them all about how we stuck the seeds in the dirt stuff and he had to make sure they always had water and that we were gonna put them outside when they got bigger. When the day for transplanting finally arrived we gathered our tools and sprouts and got to work. After the ground was ready and the seedlings were gently placed in their holes, I left him to stand guard while I went back in to get more water. When I got back he proudly showed me that he had helped while I was gone….he showed me how he had stepped on each tender delicate plant so that he could push it in the ground better for me. The glowing smile on his face kept the dismay I felt from showing…I thanked him for trying to help and explained that next time maybe we shouldn’t push them in so hard, and with a resigned sigh…made plans to buy seedling and replace them the next day…lol. I can hardly wait until my granddaughter is older so I can share my love of nature with her as well. I’m really missing my daughter right now because (even though she fought it for years…lol) she shares this need to work the warm earth…to touch the renewed life of spring. And it isn’t truly spring until we squish mud between our toes…lol.

health

alphawolf — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 23:12:08 +0000

I just found out that I have health issues that I knew nothing about and now I get to take a pill every morning for the rest of my life or at least until GOD decides to fix me. I…like so many other people I know…don’t have any health insurance so I don’t do the whole preventive yearly check up and stuff. I had signed up to be a lab rat for a study this research center is doing (I gotta make some money somehow…lol) and they had to do some testing to make sure I qualified. It turns out that this time I actually got paid to go to the Doctor instead of paying him…the ultimate health care plan…lol.
Speaking of health care…I don’t want to get into a huge political statement kind of thing because I am not as informed as I should be (I tend to lose focus when I try to read articles about politics, and all the blah blah blah spewed out by the media just pisses me off!) but I do have my opinions about what the government should be doing for us and it ain’t happening. Sometimes it seems that public officials spend more time making sure they’re saying politically correct things and shaking the right hands than they spend doing the job we hired them to do. It actually scares me to think where this country started and where it looks like we’re headed. The concept of freedom has been twisted to fit so many platforms that none of us are truly free anymore. I am nondenominational and nonpartisan…I think that if we spent less time segregating our beliefs and values, and more time using moral common sense it would make a huge improvement. As long as everyone keeps looking out for themselves with no concern for the people they stomp on along the way, things are only going to get worse instead of better. I’m not sure that society really understands or even recognizes the blurred line between right and wrong anymore.

Piles and Boxes

alphawolf — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 15:48:03 +0000

I have decided to stick to my hunt and peck style of expression for a little while longer..I can’t afford a new laptop and if that stupid voice recognition progam keeps up it’s rebelious attempt to prove me inferior I may throw it across the room and jump up and down on it!!! After completing the redundant tutorial and spending over an hour reading to my spiteful little computor…it still refuses to accept my drawl or acknowledge my sincere attempts at interactive communication….I’m ready to stick my microphone up its output jack.

Anyway… I have been sooo busy trying to keep my life in some sort of order (as well as trying to meddle in my friend’s and family’s business) that I have completely lost what little ability I had to complete the smallest task. I feel like my feathered flock is in overdrive!!! My youngest child is getting ready to move across the country and has been sorting and packing for a month now. With me trying to help her, we have both managed to create numerous stacks of clothing and stuff that she may or may not take…as well as a couple of stack she is pretty sure she isn’t taking. She had her own house and it was full…now most of it has been moved here to my overly furnished home. The lines of ownership are becoming vague now because everything has begun this odd blending or melding process. We both suffer from packratitis…it seems to be genetic also…and I believe it is a side effect of the chickens because I have noticed a direct correlation between the size of the flock and the size of the collection. We can’t throw anything away because you never know when it may be exactly what you need and why would you want to have to go buy it again? And besides that…they might not even make it anymore so at that point you would have to completely redo it all. I know this disorder has been passed down through at least six generations and have personally seen it exhibited in the last five. I can remember my Grandmother’s collection of what ifs. She had a cupboard full of little butter containers, egg cartons, straws, rubberbands, bread ties, and other kitchen type collectables. One room of her four room home was dedicated to storage. There were all types and colors of fabric scraps for mending anything that come along as well as creating her handmade quilts…old broken wire hangers that wouldn’t support cloths anymore, but were irreplaceable when it came to repairing things…one cabinet full of wood scrapes that she had saved over many years, and there always seemed to be one just the right size to fix what ever needed fixing…and dusty overfilled boxes that I never got to the bottom of because I always got distracted by some treasure along the way. When my Mamma passed away at 101 years old, my Mother ended up with a lot of these boxes. She has them stored along with many more of her own, and I imagine that someday they will all end up here. Along the journey some things have been tossed away (not without reservations) and new things gathered, some generously bestowed to others deemed worthy, and some woefully misplaced forever. It is a rippling stream of history. Now my grandson enjoys going through my stuff and asking me about each piece as he examines it. Who knows…by the time he has kids it could be worth a fortune on Ebay!

What did I say?

alphawolf — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 03:43:37 +0000

I am trying to move up in the world of technology. I have just activated my voice recognition program for my computer. I’m not sure yet how I feel about this, but if it can listen as fast as I can talk , this could be great. I am having visions (or delusions) of blogs flowing onto the pages…my words magically appearing as I speak…witty prose composed effortlessly… So far, I have had to correct almost everything that I have said! I’m thinking that my computer just doesn’t speak Kentuckian. I am trying so hard to speak clearly and concisely as some old Solaris lamb and I’ll answer all of it last used out if not the case I really are out there she we’re called a valued as saying the debate…you can seat it is not working well for me!!! I will not surrender…I’m just not sure where to find the correct articulation for battle.

Good Morning World

alphawolf — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 22:51:39 +0000

I know most of my friends and family have a different opinion of sunrise than I do. It’s my favorite time of the day. I was not always a morning person…I used to believe that no one should be awake before 10 am nor required to move untill noon. But now I look forward to sitting outside with my coffee…watching the color of the light change from white to golden as the rays of the sun break the horizen…listening to the earth as it awakens. The early morning sounds may vary depending on my location, but they remain distinctly familiar… the chirp of a bird…squirrels chattering…the trees or plants rustling…the insects heading out to do whatever it is they do. I usually get to enjoy this alone because my family seems opposed to getting up at what they (not so affectionately) refer to as “the butt-crack of dawn”. It’s hard being a morning person in this family. The only person willing to get up with me is my 4 yr old grandson (and I reeeeally want that first cup before his feet hit the floor running). When my grandson and almost 2 yr old granddaughter spend the night with me, we all sleep in the same big bed. I am reluctant to even try to get up because I know I will wake at least one of them, so I just lie there and wake up slowly. Last time he stayed he woke up before me and whispered, “Mamaw, is it time to get up?”. I told him it was too early…the world was still sleeping. He was quiet for a few seconds and then said. “Well it needs to wake up cause I think I am already”. He likes to help me make the coffee and then wants me to fix his cup with his own creamer. I keep chocolate coffeemate put up for him and he has a little coffee in his creamer and warm water. I know he doesn’t need the chocolate or the caffine, but it is just a little and it’s special to him, so he gets it anyway. I try not to call anyone in my family too early, but I have a hard time knowing when it is late enough. At least once a week I call my sister and wake her up…she mumbles that she isn’t in bed…she’s just napping…for a few more minutes…till the alarm goes off again. I remind her that it is almost 9 am…how can she sleep? She says she wasn’t having any problems sleeping untill the phone started ringing and goes back to sleep. I’m not sure when my internal clock changed and I became unable to sleep in. It doesn’t seem to matter how late I stay up…I can go to sleep at 4 am and I will still wake up in a couple of hours. My body doesn’t switch to daylight savings time in the spring or change back in the fall…I just wake up with the sun. I have also noticed that there are a lot less chickens in my head in the morning…I can have intelligent conversations with myself with very little interuption. This is also the time I have meaningful conversations with GOD…thanking him for understanding our faults and loving us anyway (I know that my guardian angel works overtime). I guess I feel closer to GOD in the early morning…a new day is a new beginning…all fresh, shiney, and glistening with dew. It is my chance to do it right this time…and it happens over and over again…how fantastic is that!

Dolls and Mud Pies

alphawolf — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 14:05:54 +0000

I was watching a commercial on one of those chick oriented mostly movie channels the other night. It was for a movie about this young girl and a horse, and it looked like it might be good for filling some thought-free time. Well, turns out it is about a doll! I know there are a lot of movies out there about story book…cartoon…or comic book characters, but at least the majority of them (other than the super heroes) are animated. I started wondering about this doll and how she rated a movie of her own when I had no idea who she was. I was amazed to find out that she was only one in a collection of these feminine film stars. Most of you probably already know about them, but I was amazed and disturbed at the same time. They sell for an outragous amount of money, and have all sorts of clothing and furniture for each one. This furniture costs as much or more than my own eclectic shabby chic garage sale furnishings, and her clothes are far more expensive than my large discount department store designer apparel. I do not intend to offend any one with my opinion, but the disturbing part for me was the fact that they all come with their own story…a past history…relatives…everything!!! Now I could be wrong (it has happened a few times..lol) but to me, they seem to be created for spoiled little rich girls who are to lazy to use their own imagination. Why would they want someone to script ever aspect of their play time? More importantly why would they need it? I guess I am a little more of an independent thinker than some (I have been called strong willed…stubborn…and even ocasionally rebellious), but if I were playiing with one of these demure divas I know I couldn’t stay with the story line even if I tried…which I am pretty sure I wouldn’t. I hate to seem cliche’ but here goes…… I remember back when my siblings and I were young, we didn’t sit around bored waiting for something for entertain us, we went outside and entertained ourselves. I was still young when the Beatles hit the scene and the thing about them that stuck in my head was the place they were from. I used to spend hours of the day pulling my sister around in our little red wagon from our house to Liverland…you know…the place where those loud singin guys are from. We made soo many trips back and forth that if we had been getting frequent puller miles we could still be enjoying free travel abroad. I always had mud pies which I prepared before hand. I would put them on rocks along our path…baking in the sun…so they would be ready for her lunch. We grew concord grapes so I would add those to her snack pies and I mixed earthworms in the ones for her main meal. (Hey, protien and fruit are important parts of your diet even when you’re world travelers) And yes, I did really feed them to her even if she still swears she never ate them but in my defense I was only five years old. Anyway, we didn’t need to spend a thousand dollars for a doll…clothes…furniture and a prepared story line to follow. We had a fantastic time creating our own storys…at least I did..she may have suffered occasionally from unexplained stomach aches.

Happy Birthday Son

alphawolf — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 05:05:13 +0000

Yesterday was a day for reminiscing. My middle child turned 30 yrs old. I have so many memories of him growing up. Of my three kids he was the one who always kept me on my toes. I’ve heard a lot of psycho babble about the trials of the middle child, but I feel quite confident that he would have been the same regardless of the birth order. He has given me soo much joy and has also caused me more than his share of pain. During his childhood years he was the one that everybody liked…everyone was drawn to him. It was so hard to stay mad at him when he screwed up because of his disarming charm. I still remember the time he stole some gum from the grocery store. He was three yrs old and had these big innocent blue eyes. When I made him return the gum and appologize to the manager for taking it…the manager wanted to just let him have it because he was so cute and sweet. He took advantage of this many many times over the years. But, sometimes it didn’t work for him…like the time he wanted some of those horrible disgusting garbage pail kid cards and didn’t have any money left. He got into my purse and took what he thought was a five dollar bill….it turned out to be a fifty. He went to the convenience store around the corner and bought a few packs of the cards. When they gave him the change back he realized how much money he had and started worring about the fact that I was definately going to miss that much money. When his big brother found out that he had taken my money, he gave him a twenty to keep quiet. Later that day I noticed the money missing and my oldest son…who would never pass up an opportunity to bust out his brother…quickly brought me the hush money and the cards. I couldn’t return them because they had already opened them and chewed the gum. Those stupid disgusting cards are collectables now. I have no idea how much they would be worth if he still had them. It almost seems a shame that he and I spent the rest of the afternoon sitting outside with a big metal pan…a spatula…and some charcoal lighter fluid…watching his ill-gotten gains burn to ashes. I don’t mean to insinuate that he was always in trouble…he was good more often than he was bad, and has such a huge caring heart. In his teenage years, while most of his friends were enjoying school breaks, he would spend his time caring for his great grandmother. She was in a wheelchair, and at that point was living a few states away, but she always came back home for a visit in the spring. It usually worked out that he was out of school then, but even if he wasn’t, he would take the week off to go stay and care for all her needs. They had a special bond and he now has a daughter who is named for her great great grandmother. Through all the laughter and the tears he has been my protector…my challenge…my confidant…my wonderful baby boy.

Why Are There Too Many Chickens

alphawolf — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 13:23:35 +0000

Maybe I should start by explaining the significance of the “chickens”. One day I was flipping through one of those catalogs you get in the mail that you should immediately pitch in the trash but you don’t cause there might be something in it that you just have to have and will never find again anywhere else and could spend the rest of your life not knowing that you could have had if you had only taken the time to look at the junk mail. Well anyways, I couldn’t take that chance! While oohing and awwwing over all the marvelous items I was sure I needed, I ran across this T-shirt. It said, “People tell me I have ADD but they just don’t understand OH LOOK…there goes a chicken!” I laughed sooo hard I had to run to the bathroom cause I was gonna pee on myself (a lovely side effect of hysterectomies, but wait, that’s a different story).

You would have to sit back and observe my family dynamics in action to truly appreciate the multitude of feathers flying in any given conversation. We don’t just have a chicken or two; we have flocks …whole herds of the noisy cluckers. We can start off having a perfectly normal conversation and end up with a dozen side stories which are clearly not related to the subject matter. (You have nooo idea the amount of stress I am under right now from trying to stick to the subject matter!!!) If more than two of us are involved in an important conversation, it frequently becomes necessary for someone to invoke the chicken wire rule. This means that only one of us can speak at a time, and must complete our thought outloud before the next person starts. (most of the time the chickens knock down the wire and get out anyway and we spend the rest of the time chasing them…lol).

For example, I just got off the phone with my sister. My grandson had a pool party a few days ago for his 4th birthday…there was snow and freezing rain outside while everyone played in the heated pool inside. We started with – Are you still in bed? I figured you were getting ready for church? And ended with – Ever since Sam Walton died she’s had to take sooo many things back to the store. The banter in-between included sick kids… money… our recent trip to Las Vegas… guns… internet passwords… firewood… the party (which was the reason I called)… and the whole conversation only lasted 6 minutes and 42 seconds!

Welcome To “Too Many Chickens”

alphawolf — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 05:51:28 +0000

This is me….and some of my disjointed ramblings about my daily life.

The phrase Too Many Chickens has special meaning in our family. It’s just our way of describing the flighty fragments of our thoughts and conversations. Every family has at least one person who is known for their rambled reasoning. Well, almost everyone genetically related to me falls into this catagory so when we start thinking…it’’s Too Many Chickens!!!