Wayward Chicken

We lost a chicken.


There I was, working out, and the husband went out to feed the chickens.  Our house is set up in such a way that we have a projector room in the basement, in the room that leads out to the back yard.  We have a curtain that covers the back door so that it's possible to run the projector in the day time.  Thus, the husband had to sneak past into the back yard and flash some light on my work out.


I was happily air boxing to the Wii, and it takes about ten minutes, and I had just started. It normally doesn't take that long for the husband to feed the chickens, so when I was finished, I went to the door to let him know, thinking that he didn't want to disturb me.  He was all the way past the fence and into the wooded area of the yard, but he still heard the door open and he looked over to yell, "We're missing a Rhode Island Red!"


"I'll be right out!" I responded.


I ran back inside, threw on some more clothes, because it is winter and I wasn't dressed appropriately.  I hurried outside and began helping my husband search.  We've gotten rather attached to these chickens and a number of horrible scenarios went through my mind.  In fact, I was convinced that something horrible had happened and I went searching for her, because if she wasn't yet dead from whatever had befallen her, I was going to make sure she didn't suffer.


The husband and I searched for some time before finally giving up and heading back up the hill to the house.  When we got past the trees and into a clearing, the mom was at the top of the hill and she yelled, "I found her!"


The husband is much faster than I am and he took off towards the mom while I yelled out, "Is she alive?!"


Mom responded, "I think so!"  That spurred the husband to move even faster and I had no hope of catching him.  I huffed my way up the hill.  On my way, I saw the missing Rhode Island Red run from the mom and the husband, looking very disgruntled.  Then I heard both of them laugh aloud in delight.  


"What is it?" I managed.


"I just found nine eggs!" the husband roared.


We'd been under the impression that egg production was down as we were only getting three eggs per day rather than our standard five or six.  Turns out our enterprising chickens were hiding them under a fallen tree and the "missing" chicken was attempting to brood them.  This would be a fine plan except for the fact that they go into a coop at night and the temperatures have been well below freezing for several weeks.


Needless to say, we were thrilled to find our chicken alive and well and to get the early Easter bonus of nine eggs.  We have some awesome, though nutty, chickens.

Back By Popular Demand

Five different people have asked me what happened to the blog and were they missing updates? I had no idea that many people were actually reading this thing, so yes, it's enough for me to feel popular, and I really do wish to keep those of you who are interested, informed of our goings on.

For awhile, not much was happening.  I didn't have the heart to write blogs about how the husband and I spent the day at our respective computers waiting to get some money in the bank.

Then we were swept up in Christmas which included having lots of family and friends over as well as giving the husband the American experience of going caroling. A good time was had by all, even though I would have preferred snow to rain.

It is now January, and we are fast approaching our first festival.  We still haven't narrowed down exactly which one we will do first, but we have narrowed down a menu.  So I'm busily calculating all the costs and working on the supplies needed for our first outing.  Next month, I'll be taking a food safety course, both for information and for regulatory purposes. The month after that, we have the delightful event of serving dinner to a group of six - a dinner that we auctioned off for a charity that helps domestic violence victims here in the valley.

In other random news, the husband has the mom and I on a really healthy diet.  By diet, I mean nutritious food that tastes good, not deprivation and calorie counting.  Essentially, we use portion control and exercise.  We've both been a bit spotty on the exercise, but it was enough to keep us from gaining weight during the holidays, and we're experiencing weight loss here at the beginning of the year.  This makes me particularly happy where the mom is concerned, as I hope to keep her around for another few decades, and I'd like her to be enjoying those decades.

I promise to work harder on keeping this blog up to date.  I guess that's my one New Year's Resolution this year.

Hope you all had a fantastic holiday season.

Fall Surprise

It's been awhile since I posted, primarily due to the total lack of anything interesting happening.  We've been playing the waiting game in terms of finances and all related projects, and I saw nothing interesting about continuing to detail it.


Last week, I heard from a friend who was eagerly awaiting the next chapter in what should possible be renamed Misadventures in America.  He is in luck, because the Universe was poised to give us our next lesson in surviving adversity without a whole lot of hassle.


Here in the U.S., autumn is often referred to as fall because the leaves fall from the trees.  Last week, the term fall got an addendum.  Not just leaves falling, but snow. It was first forecast early in the week by some European meteorologists - meteorologists who were greeted with amused disdain by reporters here in the U.S.  


I know better.


Not because I have more faith in European meteorologists.  From what I can tell a lot of meteorologists from across the globe throw in a bit of psychic prediction to make up where the science is lacking, and so I don't usually trust any of them more than a day or two in advance.  But this time I did my research.  There has only been snow accumulation in this part of Virginia in October on five different occasions in the last 130 years, thus making it highly unlikely, thus convincing me that it would definitely happen, because if it's an unlikely weather pattern and my husband & I are in the vicinity, you can just about bet it will happen - unless we want it to.


Examples include: 

• One of the worst bushfires in recorded history 
• The hottest day on record shortly after arriving in Virginia 
• An earthquake in Virginia where they rarely happen, also shortly after we arrived 
• Really bad flooding in Queensland, known as the Sunshine State in Australia in the middle of summer when it's not supposed to rain, right as we decided to take our first vacation since our honeymoon

I'm sure I could come up with more, but the important thing is that I was certain it was going to snow long before the U.S. weather service started warning us.  And snow it did.  We got between four and six inches here. It started Friday night.  It was beautiful, right up until Saturday morning when the power went out.  

You see, it's supposed to snow in winter not autumn.  When it snows in autumn, trees that haven't yet lost their leaves catch even more snow than they normally would, but they don't have the strength to hold that kind of weight, so they break all over power lines.  It caused a major disaster up and down the eastern seaboard.  

But I can't really complain.  We spent a lovely day playing board games and drinking a combination of beer and brandy to stay warm.  We laughed until our sides hurt.  We took pictures.  We drank hot chocolate.  We even had a pizza delivered from the next town where they still had power. We slept in cozy beds. 

The next morning, we began to stress a bit as without power, we had no water, and we aren't in a financial position to buy a generator or go to a hotel.  We put our heads together and worked out a plan that started with me gathering snow into a bucket so that the toilets could be flushed, and the husband cooking a yummy breakfast on the barbie on the front porch.  Then we would worry about other supplies.

To our delight, the power came on in the middle of cooking breakfast, and it stayed on. Now, aside from tree branches all over the neighborhood and one on our roof, you would never know that it had snowed.  We're right back into sunny autumn weather.  I can't help hoping the luck holds and we have a mild winter.

Blood Spatters

In terms of weather, today was a perfect autumn day.  The husband, the mother and I were all tired from working hard in the yard yesterday, so we spent the morning and the early afternoon working on theater and charity work.  

At about 2:00, I realized we hadn't let the chickens out, so the husband headed down to the coop to do just that.  When he did, he realized that one of the chickens was not doing well.  This particular chicken has always stood out from the rest.  She was a big white chicken and she had been bred specifically for meat.  When we purchased her, we didn't know exactly what that meant.  Through research, the husband soon discovered that it meant she would only have a lifespan of one year, and it meant that she was going to get fatter and fatter during that year.  We owned her for a total of two and a half months, and though she was a total bitch to the rest of the chickens, prompting jokes about eating her and the nickname of a certain unsavory character that one of us used to work for, she was always nice to us.  

And she enjoyed her life.  She ran around eating and searching for bugs with gusto.  Over the last three weeks, she began going downhill.  Not sick.  Just aging basically.  We debated a lot about the best time to dispatch her, and we all agreed that we wanted to do it before she did much suffering but not while she could still enjoy life.  Today was a crossroads.  She was limping a bit, and she fell over a couple of times.  So we decided it was time.

The husband sharpened up a knife and cooked up some spaghetti.  Spaghetti wiggles like worms and the chickens just love is.  We decided it would be a nice last meal for the white chicken.  Mom distracted the other chickens with their portion of the spaghetti.  The husband and I went over to the white chicken, who happened to be on her own.  We fed her some spaghetti.  She was struggling a bit with eating, but she enjoyed it.  After a few moments, the husband picked her up, and we carried her to the bottom of our property out of sight of the other chickens.  

The husband covered her eyes and did the deed.  It was fast and she didn't make a sound.  She didn't struggle.  I was amazed to be honest.  Maybe it was overkill, but the husband held on to her head, eyes covered, and stroked it soothingly until we were certain she was completely gone.  We stood and watched as her body flailed around managing to land in one of the more difficult spots to reach in the woods.  

It was then that I realized I'd forgotten the pick with which we planned to dig a hole for the remains.  I went back to get the pick and the husband began the butchering process.  She wasn't sick after all, just old.  And though we liked her, it would be an awful waste of meat to just bury her when we could all benefit from her.  

I walked up the hill, grabbed the pick and turned back.  There was the husband, walking up the hill, empty handed.  I walked over, still a bit dazed from trying not to be emotional regarding the chicken.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"Not much.  Just need a bit of medical attention."

"Why?"

"I cut my finger."

"How badly?"

What followed was a dialogue wherein my husband insisted that it was merely a flesh wound (he cut it to the bone), I worried and helped him clean it up.  He made fun of me because I used to be a medic.  I declared conflict of interest.  We both found out that the mom had no first aid supplies on hand, a holdover from her days in the word of faith movement.  Long story.

Thus, I found myself driving to Walmart with the express intention of getting two bottles of wine and plenty of bandages.  On the way to Walmart, I tried to calm down. My rational mind told me he was going to be just fine and that he didn't really need stitches.  The wife in me wanted to sob and freak out, partly due to the effort of being tough while assisting in the dispatch of the chicken.

Just before arriving to Walmart, I found myself thinking about how amazing it was that he'd cut the head off that chicken and there hadn't been a spray of blood.  Then it occurred to me that was impossible in a live chicken.  I looked down.  Sure enough, there were blood spatters all over my jeans.  I thought about the lovely emails that go around showing the "typical" Walmart shopper. Then I thought about the fact that it's almost Halloween.  Then I laughed, hopped out of the car and went in.  I have to be honest.  I wasn't the least bit surprised when no one in the store noticed at all.

I got my supplies and drove back home.  Due to the circumstances of the husband's screw up - yes, he was cutting improperly and did this to himself - the mom had the fun job of plucking and butchering the chicken.  She didn't want to screw up and make a mess that couldn't be cleaned up easily, so she hopped in her tub and did the deed there.  When I went downstairs, I wondered how she had avoided throwing up.  The husband couldn't even smell it.

Now, the mom and I are relaxing with a glass of wine while the husband drinks his wine, nurses his finger, and cooks up some yummy chicken chili.  When we dine tonight, it will all have been worth it.  

Brand New Day

I haven't been in the habit of posting two days in a row, although that was certainly my original goal.


After last night's rant, however, I feel the need to post again.  Yes, I needed to rant.  For me, an occasional rant is cathartic.  And I achieved the needed catharsis.


Today is better.  Everything is better.  The rain is gone.  The chill in the air is gone.  The Indian summer is here.  We have blue skies and sunshine, and I'm a sucker for that combination.


Last night, and this morning, I figured out a way to juggle our finances so that we can do something with this Indian summer other than admire it.  The husband has gotten a fair way into fencing the backyard.  We had intended to do that a bit later, but the chickens made it an urgent priority.  They weren't content roaming on an acre and a half.  Oh no.  They had to go into the neighbors' yards on both sides.  Now, they cannot access the neighbor's yards, and they cannot access our front yard and front porch.  This is a boon as we are not particularly interested in fertilizing the front lawn.


While the husband was working on the fence, I started on cleaning house in preparation for the mom's birthday.  Tomorrow is her birthday, and we are going to have a mighty fine meal.  As I said before, the husband is an expert at whipping up gourmet offerings on a very tight budget.  Tonight, we're headed off to see the play Sylvia at Theater Shenandoah, and I'm really looking forward to it.  The mom and I joined this theater just over a month ago, and we are very excited about the creative energy we've found in this valley.


Yesterday, I was sad over the fact that we aren't going to do anything really exciting on my mother's birthday.  Today, I'm happy that I get to spend her birthday with her, and we all have our health back.


One thing is for certain - I do occasionally get down, but when my best friend describes me as "insatiably cheerful", she is not wrong, and I never stay down for long.  Though we've run into a brief delay in terms of the business plan, we'll be right back on track come spring. 


As I sit here watching our kitten, Spaz, live up to her name, and I gaze into the kitchen at the best husband in the world as he prepares some yummy pork curry, I am well aware that I have a very good life, and while it's perfectly okay to rant when things get me down, you won't find me wallowing.


I leave you with this:  I Can See Clearly Now

Rant

The last few weeks have been hard.  Really hard.  I know I can find people who have it much harder than me, but sometimes - like today - that's not enough to make me feel better.


And since the purpose of this blog is to show what it's like trying to succeed at a dream, I'm not going to shy away from the hard aspects. I'll sum up why it's been hard.


1.  Our favorite chicken, named Bronson, died last week.  He was one of only two that we named.  He turned out to be a she, and we ended up naming her, briefly, after a good friend of ours who's name sounds remotely similar.  It was sad.  We gave her every chance, and she fought hard to live, and she seemed to be doing better.  On the day she died, we found her lying in the path unable to move.  We gave her a bit of water.  The Husband, believing he was going to have to put her down, did some research to see if there was any last ditch effort that could be made.  She died while he was researching.


2. Mom ended up in the emergency room for the sixth or seventh time in the last year.  We believe she's developed an allergy to some insect that bites in summer.  Not mosquitoes, but something along those lines in that it's generally harmless to most people.  In my mother, it results in severe cellulitis.  This translates to her swelling up in scary proportions wherever she's been bitten.  This resulted in two doctor visits and two antibiotic prescriptions as well as injected steroids and three days of looking like some sort of alien being.  


3. I have been struggling with feminine issues.  It's never really possible to discuss this sort of thing without falling into the realm of TMI, but suffice to say that I have been bleeding a ridiculous amount with heavy clotting.  Not conducive to getting anything done and costs extra money in feminine products.


4. Speaking of money - we don't have enough.  We can foresee a time in the not to distant future when we will have enough, but it's been two years now of living hand to mouth, and I mean that literally.  I juggle every month to make certain we can survive on what my mother is bringing home.  Naturally, the house is taking forever to sell.  I personally believe it won't sell until we don't actually need it to.  Each time something unexpected comes up - even something that costs as little as a hundred dollars - we get completely thrown off our budget, and I'm left scrambling to make certain we don't owe ridiculous fees to those bottom feeders we have here in America - the bankers and the credit card companies.  For my non-American readers, what I mean is that if I screw up the slightest bit, it will cost me, at minimum $35.00 per screw up.  When you're already broke, a $35.00 ding makes it damn hard to catch up.  It usually results in a spiral effect of more $35.00 dings, a vicious cycle that I've experienced in the past but managed to avoid this go 'round.


6. Today, the coffee maker broke.  The car is leaking oil like a sieve.  The chickens keep getting into the neighbor's yard.  The toilets back up on a daily basis.  The husband is having regular back trouble.  I think that's everything, but yeah, it's piling up.


Finally, I tried to sell a couple items on eBay.  I've heard about people who do this very successfully on a regular basis.  Unfortunately, I am not one of those people.  And while I wouldn't normally be surprised or care, this time hit me rather hard.  I had listed a painting that is currently worth about $2000 retail.  So I listed it at $1000 with a buy it now of $1500.  Whether or not I followed all the little tricks necessary to be successful - and I don't know if I did or not - well, obviously I didn't, because I wasn't successful.  What got me was that someone was watching the auction.  I got it into my silly little head that this individual was planning to buy the painting at the last minute.  I even had little fantasies about them being a dealer and snapping up all of my other product as I listed it.


No. Such. Luck.


And Saturday is my mother's birthday.  She's being a real champion and telling me that it's okay that we've had to cancel our plans.  She's perfectly content sitting at home with me and watching a marathon of our favorite soap opera.  And, on some level, I'm certain she really is content because she's thrilled to have me here in America.  But she's turning 66 this year, and I'm really tired of her having to go without the finer things in life.  Hell - I actually fantasize about being able to get a haircut or buy underwear when I need it.


So, yeah.  I'm feeling sorry for myself today.  Well, I should say I've felt sorry for myself today.  I've spent the last four hours trying to get it together after that last disappointment, and I think this little rant ought to do the trick.


I will now head off to clean the kitchen.  Then, my husband will make a fantastic meal out of inexpensive ingredients, and we will watch something entertaining on our projector, and tomorrow and will be another day, and we will succeed at this dream, and that's why I want a record of just how damn hard it was, because I have a tendency to forget when things are good.  Not to mention, I've read a lot of success stories where they don't give the details of the hard stuff.  I will just take this moment to be grateful that I'm not homeless and I don't have children relying on me.

Delays

I'm sitting in my office, which is currently doubling as an isolation room for Spaz while we clear her (that's right, it turns out Spaz is a girl) up from ear mites, a bacteria I can't pronounce that is common to chickens and round worms.  it will be another week or so before we can introduce her to Gracie, but she is such a sociable little thing that I'm spending some time in here with her.


And I'm reflecting.


As per usual, none of our plans are going smoothly.  The situation is such that we are moving slower on the actual start of the business.  Our house in Australia has not yet sold.  When it does sell, we have to jump on a plane and go down there to remove our stuff and attend the closing.  


We considered the idea of a small loan to begin the business here, but it really would be scrambling, and all of us agree that we want to get this business started on the right foot, because we want our first contact with the public to be memorable for how awesome we are, not because we weren't organized.  On top of that, it is spring in Australia, and that is usually time when houses sell.  So if we get a loan and the house sells, we will have gotten a loan for no reason.


I considered getting a part time job, but Mom and the husband are opposed to this idea and wold prefer to see me spending my time writing.  It makes sense, because we are living in a very small town and sharing a car.  it is very difficult however to sit in this lovely house, see all the projects we want to do and know that most of them cost money.


Why am I sharing this?  Because too often, we hear success stories that don't go into the details of what it's like to sacrifice, take risks and prevail.  We are working to keep the risk minimal, and we therefore have to make some sacrifices in the short term.


For the record, all three of us have made much greater sacrifices in the past five years than we are currently.  My husband and I lived in a house that was being renovated for two years - two years that started with the world's worst bushfire, which delayed our plans to finish the renovation by a lot.  So I can't really say it's a sacrifice to sit in my nicely furnished home with all my needs met and a few perks.


it is worth mentioning in this blog only because our time frame for beginning the business has changed.


In the mean time, we are focusing on yard work, eating well on a budget, raising a kitten, taking care of chickens and getting in shape.


Ironically, this has resulted in even more creativity in the kitchen from the Husband.  We are even reconsidering what product we will be selling when we hit the festival circuit, so it's probably a good thing I haven't given out details of the product yet.


I also have more time to devote to my writing and to getting involved with the local theater group.  


I'll finish up here as Spaz is determined to help me write this blog, and I do not want it to disappear on me.