A Chicken Miracle.

A miracle has occurred here in Edison. And I'm only half-joking.

Yesterday, Wes let the chickens out of their coop to wander around the place (read: poop all over my yard.) Usually, they make their way back to the safety of the coop as dusk approaches. Well, yesterday only 3 of the 4 came home. And they were huddled in the doorway, clearly discussing something of concern. We were missing a girl - a pretty, fluffy, well-mannered Barred Rock. (a.k.a. Plymouth Rock; black and white in color.) Sad. Not good.

I was in need of some fresh air. I had caught the most recent cold that Buck the Preschooler had to offer, and I'd been cooped up (pun intended) all day on the couch. I'll walk around the block, I said, to look for her. What I found was a suspicious smattering of black and white feathers in the alley, but no girl. When I reported this, we clucked and worried and surmised that likely a bird of prey had taken her. They are abundant in these parts, and particularly the bald eagles are starting to hand around this time of year. A dim fate, but, we hoped, a quick one. Well, we'd lost many a girl in the past. This spring we'll definitely get some chicks. Its been a number of years since we've filled the ranks. Yay chicks!

Well. This morning, Wes informed me that we had a chicken miracle on our hands. For, in the coop were 4 girls, including our missing Barred Rock. She looked to be missing a good deal of feathers, but otherwise hale and hearty. Where on earth had she been?! A night of carousing? A vision quest? A desperate tussle with some dog that led her to hunker down out of sight till she had her wits about her to return home and somehow get back in the coop? We'll never know. Welcome back, girl. Lay some eggs.

In other news, today is my 40th birthday.

Hounding

I want an Irish Wolfhound. My birthday is coming up, so I've been snuggling up to the husband and suggesting gifty things here and there. Tonight, as we watch the Saints play the Falcons, I snuggled up and told him in low tones that I have a suggestion. I suggested we get a wolfhound. I heard the following:

"I would rather adopt a kangaroo."
"I would rather adopt a Somali warlord."
"I would rather adopt a mink farm."

So then we discussed that the real solution involves us owning another home, where I would live with Buck and the wolfhound. This home would be a large stone cottage (read: small castle) on a good chunk of land (not too much, though), abutting some woods. These things could totally exist around here. And I would live there and go for trail runs with my well-tempered wolfhound. The rest of the while, the hound would defend us and/or sleep by the fire. Done.

I'm not sure where husband will be. He'll be here in Edison, I guess. He'll come up the road to visit. UNLESS! OMG, unless the large stone cottage were in France! Somewhere in the Dordogne, perhaps. Close enough to a train station so we could jump on the TGV to Paris, where we'll also have a pied-à-terre. Of course, the hound would not want to be in our tiny apartment in Paris, so we'll need someone who can keep him company at the cottage when we're not there. Shoot. OK, so I need an old, grumpy Frenchman to live there on the property with us. I won't be able to understand him very well, but he will be devoted to the wolfhound, and will sneak rich meats to him. (wolfhounds shouldn't have a heavy-protein diet). Wes will like the grumpy old Frenchman because they will sit around and occasionally drink too much wine together. Ok. I'm going to go update Wes with this more elaborate plan. Wish me luck.

Today, driving in the car, Buck: "It's a sunny day on Earth."

Me: "It is."

Buck: "Yeah! and when when nighttime comes, the darkness will come from outer space."

ReMemory

I didn't see much footage at all of September 11. Not on that day or the following days, weeks, months, years to follow. On that day, and that week following, my then-boyfriend and I were on vacation and for the most part we weren't near a tv. For a bit on that day, we saw some tv footage; I remember having a hard time watching. I knew people were jumping from the Twin Towers and I was afraid I'd see them, so I avoided looking. Then, we were on the road, listening to the radio. Eventually, at our destination, we had a tv but it only had bunny ears and could only pick up the audio. So we listened. We listened to Peter Jennings on and off for days. We made phone calls to check on loved ones and wondered at how quiet the airspace was as no airplanes were flying. Frankly, I was grateful we were isolated.

Over the years, on the anniversary, I have continued to avoid any footage. I've been too wary; I'd caution myself against gathering any unshakable memories. Sure, I'd read and seen some specials about more oblique subjects such as memorials, or where-they-are-now pieces. But images I've been avoiding.  I told myself that one day I would sit down and watch something - a documentary perhaps - so I could join the rest of my fellow Americans in these visual memories. Its hard to avoid, year after year.

Today, this evening, just a bit ago, I turned on the tv. I don't normally do that, but we do have cable now, again, because of - duh - football. (go Hawks) I was going to watch Jeopardy because I'm a dork. But it opened to the History Channel, deep into a minute-by-minute special about the terrifying demise of the World Trade Center. And I was engulfed. I froze. I watched the whole thing. And then the following thing about some New Yorkers and their personal footage from that morning. And now we're watching a special about some firefighters who survived the collapse of the second tower. And its hard damn work to watch. But I'm not going back. And I feel so very badly that it took me this long.

Wes has joined me. Buck is bouncing around, trying to get our attention, but I'm determined to take this in. I pull out a Curious George board game to play with him, his back to the tv. For a moment, I feel parental guilt about my screen time competing with Buck's attention, but then, whatever. This morning on cnn.com I read a piece about a woman who lives in Greenwich Village and who reported from Ground Zero that day. She has a 2nd grader now and she is trying to find a way to convey the story/history of this horrible thing to a child.  How to talk about bad guys and scariness and how to remember the departed, how to inform the future. Maybe that essay galvanized my intentions tonight. Brazenly, I kinda don't care if Buck sees the screen.

Buck gets bored with us. He's doing his own thing elsewhere. I'm taking it all in on the television, trying to make up for something. Those poor people. Their absurd, heartbreaking fate. I'm so sorry.

Intruder

Things I hate:
Spiders
Spiders in my house
Spiders in my house that bite my little kiddo multiple times under the cover of darkness in his Thomas the Tank Engine sheets as he sleeps innocently.
Hell-spawn evil, I hope you are very very dead in an uncomfortable corner of my house somewhere.

The Wild West

Greetings. Long time no see. Almost two years, in fact! I have been meaning to jump back on the blogger wagon for a few months, as Buckaroo and I have quite a nice little routine and I find myself with (gasp) a few minutes here and there where I'm not desperately trying to catch up on sleep. In fact, these days I actually feel pretty well rested. There was a long stretch there where I didn't believe it possible, and I didn't understand how other humans have the wherewithall to have more than one baby. But I'm now starting to understand. Not enough to have another baby, mind you. I feel a bit too old for that (which is my experience and perhaps not everyone's). Nevertheless, yay sleep!!!

Speaking of Buckaroo, I learned something fabulous recently. See, back in January, we took a trip to Redmond, Oregon, to spend a week with one half of the Woodworker's family. It was a busy, hilarious, love-filled convention of various families shacked up at Grandma and Grandpa's. Central Oregon has enough of a different climate and landscape to make us feel like we were truly far from home, which I find essential to a good vacation. The air there is crisp, cold, clear, and the vistas more broad and western-like than here in the verdant Puget Sound region.

So! One thing we did, just the three of us, was venture to an amazing place called The High Desert Museum, just south of Bend.  Equal parts indoor and outdoor exhibits, it was fascinating for all of us. Indeed, there was a section of one exhibit about cowboys which absolutely thrilled me: I learned that the word "Buckaroo" is a derivation of the Spanish word "vaquero", which basically translates as "cowboy" or "horse-mounted live-stock herder." (wiki yada yada here.) I always kinda knew that the word buckaroo had to do with being a cowboy and old-timey wild west stuff, and I've known forever what vaquero means, but I'd never made the connection. Isn't that cool?!?! And aren't I annoyed that I didn't know that before?!  So far Buck has not so much as sat on a horse, although I do have a old picture of him touching one! See:

 [Winthrop, 2010]

  But I think he was more interested in licking the Bjorn. Wow, he looks little there.

And then, of course, here he is as Sheriff, and he is, in fact, seated on a saddle, so maybe that counts for something: 

[same trip to Winthrop, 2010]

And here is a pic of Buck at the sled park near Bend [2013], thought he looks more like a jedi than a cowboy, I'd say.

I dunno. Maybe we should get him a lasso.

At any rate, it was a splendid time in Redmond. I had way too much fun with my sisters-in-law. We took our job of wine criticism very seriously that week. No pictures of any of that.  And, oh!, how could I forget? I skiied for the very first time. Well, actually for the very second time. There was that one day at Vail when I was a freshman in college, but that is another story for another day, and one I'm still healing from, so forget it. 

I took a beginner's class with my nieces and I stuck to the bunny slopes, mostly. Here I am celebrating the fact that I came off the lift without falling: 

It was beyond delightful to spend the day on the slopes with my husband. Recreating is fun! I'd never actually seen him snowboard before. I knew he was  awesome and stuff, but I'd never seen it. I was so impressed, it made me have a big crush on him all over again. And riding the lift with him, I felt like I was satisfying school girl fantasies, like I was hanging out with the cool guy or something. I, however, learned Right Away that he was not allowed to coach me, and that if he wanted to be on the slopes with me, he'd have to put up with the AARP slopes. Otherwise, I felt all intimidated and weepy and cross with him. There is some right hilarious footage of all this, but you don't get to see it.

The next day I was an unholy mess, and could barely move. (some of which might have been attributable to the fact that my sisters-in-law forced me to hang out with them. And some wine.) But I got a fabulous massage and took a bunch of arnica and ibuprofen and complained a good deal and eventually felt better.

Not to be excluded from these anecdotes is one that we reveled in: we drove all the way down there. Buck was a very decent human about the whole thing. (And thank merciful heavens for portable dvd players. I once sheepishly opined to my mom that perhaps we as parents are taking the lazy route by using the portable dvd players during travel, and that we all managed to get by with only our wits and whatever back in the day, etc. But then my mom said: "Are you kidding me? I would have killed for one of those when you kids were little.") Woodworker and I talked a lot about the success of the roadtrip, particularly in comparison to the first year of Buck's life when he screamed his head off without ceasing the entire time he was ever in his carseat.  We (really, meaning I) never went anywhere, and it was generally awful when we did. Just had to state that, for the record. 

In closing, thank you Grandma and Grandpa for welcoming all of us and fostering all that merriment and letting us generally deplete your resources. What a blessing.

Onward!

-nellie