The $168 Chicken

So, vet day arrives. I put Butters in the cat carrier and drive. I have to say, chickens are a lot easier to ferry back and forth than say, cats. They generally hunker down and don't utter a peep. After the requisite wrong turns that seem inherent for any new location (for me), I arrive at the Exotic Animal Vet. The receptionist was the kind I love, especially when I'm somewhere for the first time. I'm here for a 2:30, with Butters, I say and she just looks at me. So, I go sit down. There's a lone guy in the tiny waiting room, with a small parrot on his shoulder. I'm sure he's looking at my chicken and thinking 'fffttt'. The receptionist rouses herself from her singular catatonia and gives me a clipboard with some crap to fill out, asking for spouses and family members and anyone else they can hound for the bill. After a fairly uneventful vet exam I go back out to the waiting room to wait for the results of the fecal float (which conjures up images of root beer and chicken shit). Some hipster dude comes in with a laundry sack containing some mystery animal. A mountainous man comes in to retrieve his Amazon parrot and I overhear (hard not to) the bill being discussed: around $900. Finally, the doctor comes out and says the crap tested positive for coccidiosis, which is no big, but it's better not to have it. So, antibiotics for Butters (translated: they don't have a clue why she's limping), stuff to put in their water and $168 poorer, I left, blinking. Oh well. I've decided that what I don't know about chickens, I'm going to learn so that I don't feel so mystified every time something goes wrong with them. But in the end, I have a new catch phrase. When someone posits an unanswerable question, I will now say: Well, that's the $168 chicken, now isn't it?

More flack with the flock

Apparently, after last weekend's fretting about Ester and Beulah, respectively, Butters was feeling neglected, so she decided to develop a limp. This has happened with Ester before, but it cleared up in a day. Butter's been gimping around for 2, so today I made my first appointment with the only (so far....) vet in Seattle who sees chickens. So, hopefully, they will know their stuff and I will have a resource for future issues. As is, I feel like I've been in an intensive animal husbandry class but forgot to study. Or something.

No thing is 'just' anything

From the beginning, Ester's appearance in my life was clearly significant. I am of the school of There Are No Accidents. She was as meant for me at that moment as I was for her. I have no doubt that I saved her life and in ways that still remain too elusive to articulate, she has been saving mine in our nearly two years together, or perhaps trying to.

When a drunk stops drinking, that's not the end of it. To really step over that threshold to something sane and even sacred, you have to acknowledge you're not the end all, be all. As Tyler Durden said: You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else. So in that vein, I am Ester and Ester is me. There is no distinction. NO THING IS JUST ANYTHING. Ester is not just a chicken anymore than I'm just a human. This I have come to understand and since Ester is the messenger, I choose to regard her as a higher power to myself. Yes, I know she's a chicken. But she's not just a chicken. In seeing this and understanding this, I have for the first time experienced the sacred, the spiritual, the something outside of myself and out of all ourselves yet contained in every one of us. Ester is God.

Gone fishin' but now I'm back.

I apologize for my half-assed posting. I just haven't felt it lately. When my blog is boring me, I can only imagine the reaction of those few who read it (or probably don't anymore, since I've been away from the table for so long).

I've been sort of mulling over what exactly I want this effort to be about. And I think Saturday's events sort of pointed my pointy head in the right direction. All in all, it was a terrible weekend, all chicken-centric. Saturday, Ester, who has stopped laying and begun leaving poops around that looked like they had egg yolk in them, just sat around with her feathers fluffed, sleeping periodically. 'Full of sleep' is what another chicken friend calls it, when they are about to die. So, there was a lot of sobbing and almost a purchase of a bottle of wine in there. She didn't die and I didn't drink. By the beginning of the evening, she seemed her old self: then I realized all the time I'd spent agonizing over her, Beulah had her own potential life threatening situation going on. She spent most of the day Saturday and all day Sunday on the nest. She routinely has issues with her laying and I keep hoping she'll go through the chicken change or something, and just stop. But of course, the fear is them being egg-bound, whereby the egg can break inside them and the shell cut up their insides. Saturday, I'm online scrutinizing pictures of chicken shit (for the record, this egg-in-crap seems to be an anomaly) and Sunday, I'm looking for things to do if your chicken is egg bound. One, is to lube up a finger - sigh - and stick it up their vent and see if you can direct the egg to where it's supposed to be. So, I got out the Vaseline (I would've used Slippery Stuff, but didn't want her to get the wrong idea) and it took me a little while to figure out where was what and I was reminded of my early forays into girl sex (upshoot: not for me) where I didn't know where the hell anything was, it was just all a warm sea of mush. Well, pretty similiar with chickens. More than warm: hot. I couldn't feel any egg, Beulah sat curious and still for the whole procedure - occasionally making a soft bra-rooo? noise. Much hand washing later, I decided to put her in a warm bath, as that's another recommendation, as it's supposed to relax them. So, we did that, in the kitchen sink, for about 10 minutes and then Beulah started to get antsy to get out. Then I did some blow drying and towel drying and she was quite a good sport about it all and in the bathwater I found a rubbery egg shell. She'd passed one of these the week before. I've fed them oyster shells for calcium but everything seems a bit off. Even Butters, who used to be relied upon for one a day, is now laying 2-3 eggs a week. Aside from that weirdness, and Ester's sleepy Saturday, they seem fine.

During all this, I'm reading Mary Karr's memoior, Lit, about being a drunk. She ends up finding God, then becoming Catholic, no less, so we part there. But to not be a dry drunk, you do have to identify a higher power and then supplicate.

This is where Ester comes in.

More tomorrow.

One cat's craps is another chicken's crack.

Occasionally Dinsdale gets the squirts and as he's a long haired cat, it's a situation you want to stop, immediately. One thing that works is baby food: a day or so on that, and things solidify. Both cats find it delicious but the chickens just go insane. The stuff smells worse than regular cat food (I often wish I could convert the cats to vegan, but I can already see the movie: they would hound me relentlessly until I caved and flung a can of grisly substance at them), but the jars are great for mixing and storing paint.

The weather has been typically Spring in Seattle: bipolar. And it's effects are somewhat manic/depressive as well. Sunshine = the car practially starts itself and drives instinctively to the nearest nursery. Clouds and rain = hunker inside and paint. A day that combines all three makes me feel like Sybil. The green and the green and the green.......

Happy Birthday, sort of, to me

In a dream last night, someone asked me how long it had been since I stopped drinking and I really couldn't tell them. In the morning, I realized that I really had no count of days, which has been pretty standard in Sobriety Attempts 1,2 and 3. So I checked, and it was 6 months on Monday. In so many ways, this trip has been far different from the others. For one, for the first couple-three months, it was really Mrs.-Crazy-Toad's-Wild-Ride-Which-You-Will-Immediately-Be-On-As-Well-As-Soon-As-You-Make-Contact-With-Her. No fun for anybody. In the half year of ruminating on this and many other things, it occurs to me that the hungry, hungry drunky hippo inside sort of lurched out as soon as the drink stopped and flailed around in a bad temper and then finally stomped off. Then things got a little more managable, but I was still Old Faithful, a fountain of rage, seemingly bottomless, until suddenly I was not. And there have been times in the last several weeks that I have experienced moments of profound happiness. This is a boat I'm not going to rock.

On Saturday, a friend from out of town - also an alcoholic, but still practicing because you know, he's in control - ahem - called and was so drunk I couldn't wait to put the phone down. I feel no proclivity to prescribe or even counsel: when someone is in their 60s, they and they alone are in charge of the rest of their lives. Which doesn't mean it doesn't sadden me terribly - it does, because he's such a marvelous creature and a joy to be around: sober. Which hasn't been for a while now.

Anyway, this morning, listening to NPR and now the sabre-rattling (more like rattle rattling) of the Repubicunts, I've decided I'm going to get ready to music from now on. I just don't like where it takes me - hissssssssssss: anger - and I'm happy Barry pulled it through, but the subsequent douchbaggery I can miss. So - that's my reward for 6 months of being on this fragile wagon.

That Infernal Vernal Equinox

The first day of Spring was spectacular. In the mid-sixties, with a little haze over an otherwise completely blue sky, lots and lots of chicken time (Ester and Butters will now come onto my lap with encouragement - Beulah is having NONE of it, no-thank-you-very-much,-but-I'd-still-very much-like-some-cheese). Of course, with nice days out come the power tools and the mowers and weed whackers, but that didn't even bother me. A friend came over and we just sat and jawed. I was telling him what a pain in the ass my little black cat Sammy was (make no mistake, I love him dearly, but he can be one of the most annoying creatures I've ever been around). Sammy is all about the butt-hole and the mouth - his, rather. He spends long, luxurious spells alternately licking and flehming. Which makes his oral tendencies - he has to mouth everything, all the time and his standard greeting (if you let him get close enough) is to shove his mouth in yours - all the more unpalatable. As I was telling my friend this, as if to demonstrate, Sammy got up on the coffee table and mouthed the lip of my near-beer bottle - See!? I tell my friend: Just like That! - and I go to remove him and he did this sort of paralytic spazz-out and ended up knocking over my very hard to find Red Wing chartreuse bowl and I watched in slow-mo as it fell to the carpet and broke into 3 big pieces and a bunch of shards, which Sammy immediately made a move to start mouthing. Ouch. I'm not that wedded to my things, but this one hurt a bit. Still, a wonderful day.

Daylight Savings You Kill Me

I have an overly keen sense of time. For example, if I have a function and everyone is supposed to come at seven, I will generally be a dervish for the day coming right up to the 7:00 hour, and then I am ready, and waiting. I don't consider this an asset - more like a hindrance, because rarely is anyone else on my clock. That's one of the reason daylight savings time throws me so off kilter. I think we should always have the Monday's after DST off, so Monday I stayed at home and readjusted my internal directives.

The girls are happy with their extra time out. The cats are getting itchy and now Dinsdale is poised like a ninja every time I open the door. Fortunately, he's such a lard ass, he's relatively easy to catch when he does manage to Papillion his way out. I discovered that CBS's web site has most of Star Trek online. This has made me very happy. I would have bought the series long ago but it's so inexplicably expensive. These shows ran non-stop on tv for so long, I think they're in my DNA. Ridiculously comforting, they're mostly just wonderfully comedic. The episode above, where Spock woos the Romulan leader so they can abscond with the Cloaking Device: she gets up to change into something 'more womanly', and leaves the room in her tunic that hits her ass and that's pretty much all she's wearing, and comes back in a full length gown. Above is a little Vulcan foreplay.
It's the little things, people.

So much for Spring

It's rainy and windy and cold and while I have to shift gears from la-la-la-it's Spwingtibe! I'm also a little relieved, as I produce very little - last year, nuttin' - painting when the weather is nice. I'll be happy if it's crappy all March and April - well, maybe a few weekend respites in there for chicken-hanging-outing. Right now I'm working on a piece of Ester. It's an image I'm determined to get right, so I've decided to paint 3 more when this one is done (chances are, when this one is done, I'll go: oh, hell, that's good enough). But the current one is called Ester Spring and I want to do the rest of the seasons. We'll see.
Listening to NPR this morning, the lead in was something to do with a discovery about chickens in Scotland. I'm always of two minds when I hear anything about chickens: one the one hand, it can be some lovely benign story, or it can be some kind of horror. This one wasn't. They found that chickens in Edinburgh were exibiting male and female characteristics, right down the middle. These abberations, which appear in nature, are called gynandromorphs (not hermaphrodites, as I'd thought). First, I thought of this:

Then this:

But he/she looks like this. Wattle long on one side, hen-sized on the other. The story is here: it also includes a slide show of gynandromorphs.

Dusk with chickens

It's now light enough that I can let the girls out for a half hour or so when I come home, to stretch their legs and eat any bugs which may have escaped their notice in their morning time. Last night I went outside to put them back in for the night, and it was still very light outside and Ester and Butters were still putzing around. I sat in one of the adirondak chairs and hung with them until Butters, last girl out, finally made her way back to her house. A lovely evening.

Near death-by-chicken

I used to watch The Simpsons with something approaching religulousness. But when I moved in to this house 4 years ago, my reception of Fox was like watching tv in a snow globe and eventually I just weaned myself off the station entirely. But last night I fired up the computer, which has only had an internet connection for a little over a month now (I'm gradually sort of bringing myself online, it would seem) and watched the latest episode, and to those who say that the Simpsons has outrun it usefulness and isn't funny anymore, I say Oh fuck off. The sense of the humor is consistent, the figures almost archetypal in their familiarity and the five or six good laughs I get are worth investing 30 minutes. Last night Lisa was tasked to explore her family tree and she tries desperately to find someone in her lineage who isn't a complete loser and ends up finding out she's part Black. The title of the episode is The Color Yellow. Just the opening credits were enough to make it worthwhile. My Sunday nights are complete, once more. Thank you, Jebus.

Although it is 20 days before it's official, Spring continues all around. The plum trees are beginning to show some foliage, which means when they flesh out, I will no longer be visible to the guy in the house next door, who I've caught staring in at me several times. Ew.

It was a low key weekend. On Saturday, I decided to make a homemade chocolate cake, from Bittman's How to Cook Everything book and I was unimpressed with the results, especially since I accidentally omitted the baking power, so they were little flat, baby shit brown Frisbees that I couldn't even feed to the chickens (apparently, they're not supposed to have chocolate, much like dogs).

And on Sunday something happened which I've seen previews again and again in my mind: as I was coming down the steps with some leftovers for the girls, Butters made a dart right under my foot and I did a weird mid-air maneuver and missed her, but lost my footing in the process and fell down the remaining steps, landing with a combination thud and smack on the flagstones. My first thought was to make sure I hadn't landed on one of them. I hadn't, thank God, and my next thought was, okay, what did I break. Turns out nothing, but today I'm hobbling around like an old woman who lures children into her candy house and eats them. So, look out, kiddies.

Still more Spring in Winter

And it's really throwing me off my game. I'm not exactly complaining - I had four days off in a row and all were sunny and dry, the highs near 60. I HAD slated the time to hole up in my studio and get some serious chicken painting done. I did hole up for one day, ignoring the brighty bright bright outside, but I made pillows, struck by a sudden need to replace squished, soggy or dog hair infested pillows. And for the remainder of my time off I dinked around outside. Yesterday I'm sure I provided fodder for ridicule from neighbors as I dragged out my adirondak chairs and big red umbrella. I even went to the nursery and was put out by their diminutive selection until remembering: oh, it's fucking February. All in all, I had a lot of chicken time, which is very therapeutic. And during the nights I worked on songs for upcoming shows. They are beginning to fall in something of a pattern: 3's, to be exact. I love it when you get out of your own way and let the Creative just do it's thang.

Saint Peter don't you call me, cuz I can't go...

..I sold my soul to the company store. And so have you. And you. And yes, you. Actually, I'm less in a 'Oh, God, I'm a wage slave*' mode, than I am casting around looking for good songs to sing. And 16 Tons seems as current as ever, perhaps less the schlepping of coal and more just to our consumerist society.

Yesterday I made my tri-yearly trip to the feed store for feed, scratch and straw. Lugging around 50 pound bags of the shit and trying to upend them into pails is always fun, as is the dragging of the heavy, unwieldy and spiky bales of straw, leaving a long trail behind like I murdered a scarecrow and drug his body to the compost bin. At the store, they were passing out fliers advertising that in March, for purchases of $35 or more, you get 5 free chicks. Now, here's where I'm weird: I want to buy my chicks, because it's a demonstration that I value their little lives**. But this, of course, spun out into, hmmmm-ville, where in my head, I add to the flock, which results in scenes of bucolic peace and harmony. Except not so much, when you're dealing with chickens. Right now with the three of them, the order is solid and un-tested and, as such, un-enforced with any brutality. Add just one chicken to that mix and it all goes to hell. But I'm sure my brain will launch a campaign (chicks! chicks!) and I will seriously consider throwing all that accumulative knowledge out the window and bringing home two or three peeping poopers home.

* It was long ago, riding on a bus at the crack of dawn on route to a shitty temp job that I first saw the term 'wage slave', sprayed onto a parking garage wall. A blisteringly depressing snapshot.

** And yes, I'm self aware enough to recognize that I've become overly righteous where chickens are concerned. Someone has to.

Contrasted weather drama

I'm getting a little uneasy with all the epically crappy weather the rest of the States seems to be having, while here in the NW our bulbs are coming up, the sun is shining (well, not today) and I have to throw off blankets in the night. It feels like payback is coming, although they did say we would have an El Nino year. However, if that translates to a summer as hot or hotter than what we had last year, first off, crap, and second off, I'm in the process of modifying the only factor I can think to make it easier: losing weight. Remembering how last summer wiped the floor with me and put me away wet is more compelling motivation than fitting into my summer outfits (like I have any).

Distribution of energies

So, hey, yeah, I know, to my legion (3) of loyal readers I apologize for my sucky work ethic or whatever it is (discipline: say it!) that keeps me from posting daily. Or it could be just as simple as I don't have anything that wouldn't make your eyes roll back in your head and possibly encourage drooling in your extreme indifference and boredom.

On Saturday, I beat the odds and had another birthday. I also held my first (in what I hope to be an ongoing series) musical salon. It was the first time in a while that I'd sung before an audience, albeit one of (mostly) supportive friends. I find being close to my audience extremely nerve wracking: I'm happy as a pig in shit on a big stage with blinding spotlights so essentially it's just me and a sea of faceless energy. But I did get my first spotlight in the mail yesterday - via eBay and a psychotic seller - so my next salon I will be happily blinded. I will also have a PA, a small little job that has an iPod dock that is working it's way to me via UPS Ground, because I've never been a fan (nor it of me) of singing into dead air.

All this has taken me from painting a bit - I'm able to juggle several disciplines (that word again), but one always takes the driver's seat, leaving the rest to flip for shotgun. I'm still figuring out what this new musical foray will entail. I'm not interested in doing anything I've done before, but if it ends up a mashup of everything I've done before, well, jolly good.

Head in sand, not feathers

Driving home last night I found myself yelling back at the radio. Typically, I reserve my in-car yelling for my fellow car-bound travellers (and the odd pedestrian), but I was so stunned by the level of stupidity and ignorance spewing forth that I found myself fumbling for a writing implement so I could note the name of the addlepate that was speaking. He turns out to be a Republican - please catch me as I swoon in shock. Portion of the transcript below.

All Things Considered, MELISSA BLOCK, host:

This week, we're going to hear a variety of perspectives on what to do with Don't Ask Don't Tell. Today we turn to California Congressman Duncan Hunter. He is a Republican and a former U.S. Marine who served both in Afghanistan and Iraq. ...You are not in favor of a repeal of DADT. Why not?

Rep. HUNTER: No, because I think that it's bad for the cohesiveness and the unity of the military units. especially those that are in close combat, that are in close quarters in country right now. It's not the time to do it. I think it's - the military is not civilian life. And I think the folk who have been in the military that have been in these very close situations with each other, there has to be a special bond there. And I think that bond is broken if you open up the military to transgenders, to hermaphrodites, to gays and lesbians.

BLOCK: Transgenders and hermaphrodites.

HUNTER: Yeah, that's going to be part of this whole thing. It's not just gays and lesbians. It's a whole gay, lesbian, transgender, bisexual community. If you're going to let anybody in no matter what preference - what sexual preference they have that means the military is going to probably let everybody in. (emphasis mine...) It's going to be like civilian life and the I think that that would be detrimental for the military.

Oh sweet Baby Jebus, give me strength. I know these people think these things (although 'think' would seem to indicate some degree of contemplation went into the process, but methinks not so much...), but when you actually hear them, it still gives one considerable pause. My theory: this rampant ignorance, this insistence of labelling with words like 'choice' and 'preference', is their subterranean envy of what they envision as this big old melting pot of sticky fun that others are having that they would dearly love to participate in, if they weren't ruled by fear. Just a theory, mind you. But I think the Confederacy of Dunces has a new president.

Spring in January

Generally on weekends, my MO is to hole up. It's really the only time I have to paint: this really never works on weekdays and this point was illustrated with stunning savagery when I disregarded my own credo and decided to work on a painting of Ester. I'd been working on it for over a month and in less than a half hour, I had ruined it. I had a spectacular meltdown that had the dog and cats muttering amongst themselves for days. But Saturday was unseasonably nice and I found myself at the back garden with the girls, laying in the hammock and enjoying the restorative benefits. Which I was in particular need of, since earlier that day my toilet overflowed like a bit player in a horror movie and I was still skeeved out. Although, better to clean up my own than someone else's.

I also brought out my new camera, which has not been dazzling me much with interior shots, but I can see now the difference it makes outdoors, with a truly superior zoom. I look forward to this summer. Last summer I took over 10,000 pictures and I think I gave my little Canon Elf a cramp.

I watched Ladies and Gentlemen, Leonard Cohen, a 1965 documentary when he was still primarily a poet and writer (and almost a stand up comedian). He was a good looking guy, very similar to Dustin Hoffman, if you go for that dark/big nosed thing (which apparently I do) and his pronounced philtrum puts him firmly in My Type Ville. At 31, he was amazingly together, seemingly already having conquered things it's only just occurred to me to seek out. The movie inspired me to load up my cart in Amazon and order away. But I'll always remember when watching the British series, The Young Ones, which premiered when I was still living in London, Neal lamenting morosely that no one ever listened to him. "I might as well be a Leonard Cohen record."

Nothing says nothing like nothing from nothing.

Which is actually from National Lampoon's 1974 Dessert issue, which I recall as The Starvation Issue, and has to rank up there as the most egregiously offensive (and therefore, most memorable) of all their issues. As spoken by the Nilsbury Noboy. But it sort of sums up me of late: in terms of stuff to say, I got nuttin'. I suppose it's the usual after-holiday anti-climax, not that my holidays were a swirl of activity or anything, but still.

Practice, put to practice

Yesterday was weird. The CEO of the company I work for resigned, so that flavored the day with alternating tastes of trepidation and celebration, then when I went to get a portion of the ass load of prescriptions I get on a monthly basis, I was informed that I was no longer covered. Turns out our cracker-fucking-jack HR person who is supposed to keep one in the loop about these sort of matters dropped my particular ball. So, I started shorting out about that until I took a big breath, an even bigger toke and just reasoned that it was pointless to stress about it until the next day, when I could get to the bottom of it. And then, listening to the news on NRP, the emergency broadcast signal suddenly came on. Not the drill, but the actual signal. Just let it be quick and relatively painless was my one thought on the subject. I'm finding that I'm increasingly able to pause and assess and move on in things that tend to get this Excitable Girl excitable, and I have to tell you, this is a new and welcome turn of events.

The Morning Papers

Familiar to the legions of people who read or, like me, partially read, The Artist's Way. The concept of the morning papers is what finally got me journaling every day (it's been 15 years now) and when I began this blog, I started to slack a little on the morning part and with the New Year still being all fresh-baby-butt-new and all, I am getting back on that particular pony. For my own purposes, my morning writing is first and foremost to capture my dreams. I agree with conventional opinion that listening to someones dreams is about as welcome as the details of their sex life, so unless they're just spectacularly weird, I put them down on paper, go: hmm, and move on. On some mornings - like this morning, for instance - the Goat Rodeo that I wake up to will sometimes override that fragile dream program and when I am unable to get it on paper, it nibbles away at my under carriage all day. The critters were especially demanding and annoying this morning and this either added to or caused my sour mood that appears to be going nowhere anytime soon. Grumble, piss and moan.