Molting backyard chicken

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So, according to my dashboard, most of the people who check out my blog through a search do so because I have written about raising chickens.  I thought I would share this new chicken event through my blog in case you are raising chickens too and this has not happened to you yet.

About a month ago [?], not really sure since time sort of jams in and collapses in on itself lately, I noticed that there were no eggs in the laying box.  I thought this was because my hens had begun to roost in the Rose of Sharon tree [that is a whole other story related to a rogue, tree roosting rooster who no longer resides here], but I was not sure.  We set about looking for the eggs in case she was laying someplace else.  Right now I have two hens.  The Rhode Island Red the kids called Chipmunk is less than 6 months and has not begun to lay and my first-born Ameraucana, Uno, who is a beautiful gray who lays blue-green eggs is a year and a half.  I did have another RIR named Moe, who before she was attacked and had to be put down, laid brown eggs or brown speckled eggs.  So, there I was hunting for eggs in October like it was Easter.  I offered to pay my children if they could find where the eggs were being laid.  I was more than a little irritated not to have my daily egg from Miss Uno, but I was really too busy to put a lot of energy into solving the mystery.

Cut to this week, a cold snap following a very balmy spell, and I come home to find the porch covered in fluffy light gray feathers. I take a look at my girl, and notice they are missing around the neck area and ask my teenaged son if he knows what is going on with Uno.  He says ‘I think something got a hold of her and snatched the feathers out of her neck; look at her.’  I go out to pick her up and have him look and he says ‘gross… it is just yellow prickly chicken skin with some feathers poking through.’  We don’t see an injury, so we conclude that Chipmunk is plucking them out or something and I isolate Uno in the closed pen.  Normally Uno will pace back and forth when placed into the pen and make lots of noise because she hates to be confined, but this time, she just heads upstairs and rests in the straw.  I am very worried.

I start googling and I am struck by a thought– molting!  I google chicken molt and get all kinds of pertinent hits.  My chicken is molting and I am quite relieved!  I seem to have solved both the feather mystery and the missing egg mystery.  Apparently, chickens will molt after about a year of heavy laying, which fits exactly because Uno laid her first egg for my birthday in October 2010.  They will stop laying during this time, because the nutritional requirements for laying are the same for molting, so the protein and energy is going into making a fabulous new set of feathers instead of eggs.  This could take a month or up to 6 months but averages about 3 months from start to finish.  The molt starts about the head and neck area and goes down and ends in the tail feather area, so by looking at the balding areas and new growth you should be able to tell about how far into the process you are.  During the molt, the chicken is feeling stressed, as we would if our skin just started falling off in big patches and we looked crazy and left skin everywhere.  Just picking her up, feathers fly.  She seems irritable, more tired, and just plain frustrated with the whole process.  The end result of this horrible process should be that she ends up with a whole new set of prettier, fluffier, and warmer feathers.  She will commence laying again, and these new eggs will be of higher quality than her first year of eggs, although the quantity may be very slightly reduced [she may lay 5-6 a week instead of 6 or 7].  I will try to take a picture of her and upload it, although I am sure she does not want you seeing her like this.  She is starting to look pretty shaggy.

I feel really sorry for her, so I am about to go out and give her some bacon pieces and some cut up apple as a treat.  Hopefully, Chipmunk will lay before Christmas and they will both return to the coop to do their laying.    Leave a comment if you have some extra info about molting or if your chickens have been through it.  I am not sure if it is different for roosters, since I don’t keep roosters.

Courageous

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Today I went to see the movie Courageous. Before you read another word of this blog, let me say upfront, that this was one of the most powerful movies I have ever seen [and I’ll come back to the high praise in a moment]. This movie is another movie from megachurch Sherwood Baptist in Albany, GA– not to be confused with the God Hates Fags imbeciles at Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas.  Sherwood Baptist’s best known production so far has been Fireproof, the movie that helps men be better husbands and all people build a better marriage by following some biblical principles and some therapeutic & relationship common sense.  I didn’t expect much when I first saw Fireproof, perennial skeptic that I am, I had some doubts about a movie with my little Growing Pains friend, Kirk Cameron, who seemed to have gone all Left Behind on me.  I also typically eschew Christian-themed or produced narratives because I prefer not to be told what to think or to be hit over the head with messages I would like to be able to ferret out for myself on my own walk with Christ.  But, I enjoyed Fireproof, and I thought, while it did have sort of a Lifetime movie feel to it, it also had a lot to contribute to marriage and relationships in general and it did so without making me gag or feel nauseous. 

So, I had heard some buzz about Courageous, not at my church– I’m Episcopalian and we typically don’t receive encouragement toward mainstream Christian media, but in my community and among friends. I watched the preview and thought it looked like it could be powerful.  And, powerful it was– powerful, engaging, humbling, gut-wrenching, and entertaining.  It got 4 stars on what I call my smart phone rating.  That is, whether or not I am tempted to look at my phone during a movie.  Here is the scale:

  • **** never glanced at my phone
  • *** glanced a couple of times to check for calls or texts
  • ** answered a text or two
  • *  passed time in the movie by checking my facebook, listening to voicemail, and texting

The movie begins with an action scene that pulls you right in and satisfies the adrenaline junkie’s needs; it does not let up by alternating drama, shameless tear-jerking scenes, and more action.  Yes, sometimes, it felt a little Lifetime, movie-ish, and yes, sometimes it got a bit preachy, but the parts that enacted the message were emotive and well done enough to make up for the preachy parts.  Yes, it presented some very traditional gender roles, but that did not interfere with the message or impact of Courageous.  Every father should see this movie.  Every parent should see this movie.  I was sobbing audibly during a number of scenes.  Anyone who has experienced loss of any kind, but especially loss through the abandonment of a parent, poor parenting, or the death of a loved one, will be moved to tears- male or female, no question.  The movie exposes many contemporary issues, including the link between fatherless children and gangs and crime. 

They work very diligently to present a cultural rainbow of characters and I think they tried not to typecast any race, gender, or ethnicity, but inevitably we do see some sadly predictable roles– the black criminals [although they do arrest some white boys one time], the poor, heavily accented hispanic man who needs work and must be helped along by a white police officer, and the all black gang members.  However, the spirit of this film and alternately positive scripting and casting, kept this from interfering with my ability to enjoy the film or be moved it.  The underlying message is of grave importance.  Fathers are missing from the American family, some physically and some emotionally, some are present and abusive or neglectful, many, many are absent.  The impact of this void is far-reaching has a tragic trickle-down effect.  It is time for Fathers to step up.

If you know me well, you know my parents divorced when I was in high school.  You would have to know me quite intimately however, to know that my father prior to that, though physically present, was emotionally absent and sometimes abusive.  To say that I have “Daddy issues” would be a gross understatement.  I have been working on them all of my adult life.  I know the importance of a good Dad, I know the void, I know the impact.  I know what it is like to fantasize about having the perfect Dad.  The father I was born with and the attentive, loving, protective father I wished for live on different planets.  I am still grieving for the fantasy one I never had. 

Many men who feel they are good fathers may be moved to be better fathers after watching Courageous.  I felt moved to be a better parent.  I wish I had seen this movie about 25 years ago.  I wish my Dad had seen this movie about 47 or 48 years ago.  Kids are our most important resource and our greatest legacy; and contributing to their future productivity, happiness, and spirituality is our most crucial responsibility. 

I went a lot of places during this movie.  I thought of how I need to forgive my father and really let it go.  I thought of Maya Angelou’s quote:  “Do the best you can until you know better; and when you know better, do better.”  People literally do what they know how to do, and people change and grow, and then they do better.  This movie can identify the mark for how to be a present, engaged Dad who is also a teacher and a leader or for how to be a present, engaged parent no matter what kind of parent you had or what kind of loss you have experienced.  See it.  Let me know what you think.

 

Thank you, Jimmy Fallon

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I was watching Jimmy Fallon on a talk show this morning and he was talking about a new book called Thank You Notes where he basically writes satirical thank you notes to people for random things that have caught his attention or caused him some sort of discomfort.  My interest was immediately piqued because I am all about gratitude.  I think that a positive attitude is life changing.  However, just like the next gal, I do get irritated about stuff.  And, I often find myself marveling over the mundane and wanting to share my wonder. Here is a method for either sharing your wonder or your irritation using sarcasm [one of my favor forms of humor] and a way to do it in positive, gratitude-based form.  How cool is that?

Jimmy Fallon reads these on his show.  Here are some of my personal favorites: 

Thank you, guy standing in front of me in the elevator at work this morning who I basically spooned with standing up. If only the elevator was playing some Ke$ha instead that music, I would have been all up in that piece.

Thank you, 2:30 in the morning, for always being the first sign that tomorrow’s gonna suck.

Thank you, beach season, for helping us identify the people completely incapable of shame.

Thank you, marshmallow Peeps, for being somehow much easier to snack on than real baby chickens.

Thank you, me from 3 months ago, for promising that I’ll get in shape during the winter. You lying sack of shit. It’s 4:00, put down the Cinnabon.

So, after hearing/reading some of these I decided to write a few of my own based on a recent trip to NYC.

Thank you, Delta airlines attendants for blithely telling us that bar code on the phone would work when you probably knew it never works.  We got to wait in line for the TSA encounter twice!

Thank you, interesting cab driver who couldn’t pronounce Europe, for dropping us off at the entry point that turned out to be the absolute farthest from the gate we needed.

Thank you, Delta staff, for not telling us there was a shuttle that could have prevented us from dragging our stuff on a mile long trek across terrible carpeting and down halls where the people movers were not moving any people.

Thank you, smelly woman on the plane, for not standing up more than two times and allowing the cloud of funk around you to waft backward toward our seat.

Thank you, subway announcer speaking unintelligible ghetto speak, figuring out which stop we were at and how many more we had to go was like a brain stimulating puzzle and that, along with trying to figure out what the hell you were saying, gave us something to do on the long train ride to Coney Island.

Thank you, crazy rude cab driver #1, for not knowing how to program your little box and using such an unfriendly tone that we decided to find another cab.  The seat belts were buried in the seat and had we stayed in your cab we might have been flung through the windows in an expressway collision on the way to JFK.

Thank you, 80’s boom box toting hoodlum at Nathan’s, we love sitting in broiling hot sun and being deafened by really annoying rap music while we eat our messy hot dogs.

Thank you, Monkey Room, for only putting four shrimp in my shrimp cocktail, at $4.50 per shrimp, I couldn’t have afforded more.

I could go on but I have to go to sleep because my trip wore me out.  Bean, if you can think of any just comment them on here or email me and I will include them.

Oh, and thank you, Jimmy Fallon, for giving me a new and funny way to complain 🙂

Yummy Broccoli & Cheese Soup

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Trying to find ways to use my Vitamix and incorporate fresh vegetables into my daily diet.  Here is the recipe that I found on AllRecipes.com and then altered a bit to fit my needs today.  Feel free to play with it if you like.

Cream of Broccoli Soup with Cheese

  • 4 cups fresh broccoli
  • 3 or 4 cups water
  • 2-4 tbsp. finely chopped leeks or onion
  • 2 tbsp. butter
  • chicken bouillon and water or 1 c. chicken broth
  • 1/3 c. flour
  • 2- 2 1/2 c. whole milk or half and half
  • salt to taste
  • pepper to taste
  • 1/4 tsp. nutmeg
  • 1/2-1 cup shredded cheese [I used Cheddar and Monterey jack]

Cook the broccoli in the water for just 5 to 10 minutes on med high.  Save water to the side.  Take 3/4 of the broccoli and process it until smooth.  Chop the rest into smaller pieces.  Melt the butter in the bottom of a sturdy dutch oven or sauce pot and saute the leeks for 5-10 minutes until golden brown.  Add the flour and stir to make a brown rue.  Slowly stir back in the water from the broccoli and the broth or an extra cup of water and bouillon.  Bring to a rapid boil and cook until the mixture begins to thicken nicely.  Add all the broccoli back in, season, and stir in milk or half and half and cheese and cook through. 

Delicious– with a really pretty fresh green color.

Having a child with Bipolar Disorder is like…

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One of my children has a mood disorder. I don’t want to violate his confidentiality, so I won’t tell you which one it is. In case you’ve ever wondered what it might be like to parent a child, teen, or young adult with a mood disorder, I will help you out.

It’s like riding a rollercoaster all day long while trying to do everything else you need to do. I get quite a bit done while we are clicking along on the upswing, but those plunges, well they can be downright challenging.

That's me trying to make a business call. Well, not really, but you get the point.

I’ve taken to keeping lids on my drinks.

Don’t get me wrong.. he is a fun and funny kid. It’s just that trying to do the rollercoaster thing every day, well, it sometimes wears you out.

To be fair, I’m sure he gets weary too.

Until we meet again, Oprah

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Today Oprah aired her very last show after 25 seasons.  You know I was watching.  She didn’t give away any cars or houses or trips.  Instead, in a pretty classy move, she just said goodbye and thank you to all her viewers over the space of an hour in an understated but still powerful way.  She ended by saying that she didn’t want to say goodbye, but instead would say ‘until we meet again.’  Funny, I have never met Oprah, but after all these years, I do feel like I know her, and boy, have we both come a long way in 25 years.

Twenty-five years ago today, I was 22 years old.  I was living in the little paradise of Clarkton, NC- insulated from the rest of the world- caring for my little cherub, Jason.  I was newly married and basking in the light of this beautiful baby and the slow delicious tempo of that very first year of his life.  I never imagined what I had ahead of me.  I am glad I didn’t know, either.  I would not trade many of my experiences, however, because they all conspired to make me the person that I am today.  I remember that girl from 25 years ago, but I am not her.  I am a wiser, more self-actualized version of her.  I know this might sound silly, but I can honestly say that Oprah did contribute along the way.

Oprah recalled a guest today who had suffered a stroke in her thirties.  This woman was a doctor.  She was highly educated and respected in her profession, but after her stroke many people discounted her and talked about her like she wasn’t in the room or did not even take the time to look into her eyes when they provided direct care.  Her brain injury was to the left side of her brain which affected her speech, so she could not talk and found other things very difficult, but her compensating right brain allowed her some new perception.  She could perceive people’s energies immediately, powerfully, and could know instantly if they brought negative or positive energy to her.  She is fully recovered and wrote a memoir, which I still want to read, but the power of sensing energy has stayed with her and left its mark.  Oprah shared that she keeps a pretty version of a quote from this woman in her office; it reads “Take responsibility for the energy you bring into this space.”  That is powerful and it sums up a lot of what Oprah has shared over the years and what I have internalized.  That we are responsible for ourselves and what we bring to the table each day and what we put out to others… that the energy we put out is the energy we get back.

She had her 4th grade teacher on as a guest, again.  This woman must be 90.  She is lovely and you can see the goodness in her eyes and the softness of her face.  She made a difference in Oprah’s life because she acknowledged her.  She ‘saw’ Oprah, she treated her with kindness, she let her pass out the graham crackers in her classroom, and in so many little ways, she validated Oprah.  Oprah believes that this is what each of us desires– to be seen, to be recognized, appreciated, validated.  Oprah, I agree.

Oprah uncovered the dysfunction in the world and said “you are not alone.”  She was trusted and loved because she didn’t just try to extract everyone else’s secrets; she shared her own and became one of us.  She is one of many strong women I have admired.

I’ll miss you, Oprah.

Zen again..

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Tranquil.  Still.  Peace filled.  Unflappable.  Relaxed.  Composed.  Placid.  Calm.

Last time I went off sugar and white flour, I experienced zen on day 9.  This time it has taken until day 15, maybe because I was PMS’ing for the first week or so of this adventure.  I am writing, after a nearly 3 month dry spell, so that I can document this state of being.

How can I describe this feeling I call zen?  I am really misusing the word since zen actually refers to a state of meditation and what I am feeling is more like a sense of peace and serenity.  Today, it hit me again, this feeling that I have not felt since the last couple days of my last food challenge, thus confirming the connection to the absence of sugar, white flour, or artificial sweeteners in my diet.  This calm and composure is all the more surprising given that I am in the midst of preparing for a state audit, it is IEP season, and I haven’t even begun my taxes.  But it is welcome, and it will serve to motivate me through the next 25 days.

I gave up white sugar and flour in September for a 10 day Real Food Challenge; this time I hope to live without them for the entire 40 days of Lent.  The experiences have been different in some ways.  In September, 10 days seemed like an eternity to eat only “real food.”  That experience laid the groundwork for this endeavor, since I got used to reading labels and realized that not only could I go 10 days, I could also feel better in the process and lose a little weight.  Last time, I spent the first few days feeling crappy and thirsty.  This time, I have not felt the thirst, although I did have headaches in the first week and did not feel my best.

This time, like last, I set a start date– of course, since I am doing this for Lent, the start date was Ash Wednesday.  I set out on faith since 40 days is a bit of a stretch, and, surprisingly, these two weeks have flown by and I have experienced very little suffering.  The 10 day challenge gave me some skills and let me taste the benefits of changing my eating habits for the better.  This 40 day challenge is doing something else entirely.  It is, perhaps, setting the stage for a real lifestyle change.

sad movie

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Dec 20

Today I watched the saddest movie I have seen in a long time.  I was literally nauseous after I watched it [but to be truthful I often get nauseous after watching poorly filmed home movies].

Yes, it was a home movie.  I got a glimpse of a Christmas morning past.  I have been sitting here trying to determine which year or how many years ago by studying the kids and the dog.  Jason appears to be about 14 or 15.  Alex’s age is always deceiving in videos..  He appears to be about 8, so that could be right.  It is the Christmas we got Holly as puppy and my memory of that Christmas has always been happy.  How strange that we can think we are happy when we are so clearly not or that we can take a sad memory and fold it and file it into a happy one.  Looking at myself on this home movie is like watching a stranger.  Who is this pale and pasty, subdued, dysphoric woman whose voice I don’t even recognize?

If it is 1999, the undertones of sadness make some sense.  That year, my favorite grandmother died in early November.  I was forging ahead in one of the most difficult tasks I have ever undertaken- quitting smoking– in October of that same year and did not want to dishonor her memory [she died of lung cancer] by caving in to cravings.  By the look of my double chin, I was apparently caving in to lots of other cravings instead.  I sit perched on the ottoman of the ‘coffee store’ chair wearing a purple gown and a white robe with my long hair twisted and clipped up on the back of my head.  I don’t seem excited by all this Christmas morning hoopla.  I am talking in monotone syllables with a perfunctory but syrupy tone– like I am on some sort of medication [but I wasn’t].  Jason is filming, making jokes and keeping things light and bubbling along.  Alex is trying to grab presents from under the tree and knocking about ornaments and once my tone gets sharper with him when I ask him to calm down and slow down and wait.  Kenney is calmly sitting in his throne the recliner chewing on a chocolate cigar from his stocking.  His voice is smooth, cool, and confident.  He makes some witty comments and baby talks to the puppy in his lap.  He is funny and he makes me laugh watching.  So, why was I so unhappy?

Well, I could tell you so many reasons, but I think I should save them for a therapist’s sofa so my children don’t have to stumble upon them and be tortured.  But, my children, that is what gives me the most pause and horror watching.  I believe that I approached being the model mother when they were very small.  My entire focus was them– I spent nearly every waking moment making our home like I remembered mine as a small child and planning our next enriching adventure… but here when they were beginning to pull away from me and live lives where peers become more important than parents my spirit appears to have fallen into some sort of wormhole and disappeared.  So, I wonder what kind of a mother I was then and what it was like to be mothered by this seemingly absent woman when you are a boy of 9 or 15?

I ask Alex later if he remembers me being depressed.  He says, “yes, I think you were depressed sometimes.  I can remember you being depressed.”  I tell him that I found a movie of a Christmas where I am almost unrecognizable to myself, where I seem so sad and strange, and he queries; “do you look big and pale and have your hair pulled up on your head” like he has been studying this movie and waiting for this question so that he can make this pronouncement. I know this is not possible because I found this movie in a box in the spare room today. I am stunned.  I sit sort of dumbfounded taking this all in, then probe further.  “When do you remember me being depressed,” I ask.  He answers that it was a lot of the time.  I ask him if he thinks I am depressed now.  “No, you’re lively now– not depressed at all.”  I ask “when do you think I stopped being depressed?”  He thinks about this for a moment, then answers, “when Dad died.”  Then he laughs, and says, “I don’t want to think about that too hard, or I might get mad at you” or something like that.  We continue talking and I apologize for the times I wasn’t such a great mother.  Alex says “I wouldn’t change a minute of my life as it has happened so far.”  Epiphanies wash over me like a warm summer wave.