What I'm thinking about

     I don’t know how to feel sometimes. It’s one thing have a broken coffee pot and laugh at how much fuss I make over it, but there are other things. First world problems are everywhere. The end piece of bread never soaks up enough French Toast batter. It’s not cold enough for me to wear my awesome furry hat. There are too many songs on my iPod. Oh my, whatever will I do?

     Another bothersome problem for me is that I feel burned out of writing. I love it when I am writing. I have ideas, too many actually, (another problem). But a lot of the time I just sigh inwardly and think, what’s the use? I was considering taking the month of February off for my blog. I’m afraid however, that if I took the month off of all my writing I might have trouble starting up again. Writing is like exercise and it’s a bad idea to take too much of a break.

     So yes, I have ideas, but they’re for fiction. I don’t want to post incomplete story snippets here on my blog. I like each entry to have some kind of resolution. That means I need to write what I’m thinking about. So what am I thinking about? I’m thinking I’m tired of blogging lately, that’s what. I’ve felt presumptuous and self-absorbed blogging lately. I don’t want it to be about that.

     But if I think hard, what else am I thinking about? Well we lost two hens this week. They were two of my favorites. And like I said, I don’t know how to feel. Is this a first world problem too? With all the pain and suffering in the world, is it okay for me to grieve over a couple of chickens? The one we lost Friday was a Rhode Island Red, very friendly. She would let anyone pick her up. She was a good layer too. The other hen was a Plymouth Partridge Rock. She was part of the first flock we got. This one was blustery, louder than a rooster sometimes, squawking and scolding. She is featured in my blog a year back aboutbroody hens. That’s her being dunked in cold water.

     So they were two of my favorites. I feel terribly sad that they were killed. Is it okay for me to feel that way or should I just shrug it off and say that they were only a couple of birds with a limited lifespan. There’s too much real anguish in the world for me to justify feeling this way, right?

     When I told Sarah this, she reminded me that feeling sad for something, even something like this, is okay. It just proves that I’m a human being with feelings. She’s right. And I ought to know better than to deny pain. Sure maybe I shouldn’t be too broken up over something so trivial, but if it hurts, then it hurts. Pain is real and if I deny it, it won’t just go away.

     So I’m very sad for losing these hens. I will miss the one’s affection and the other’s attitude and noise. I’ll get over it soon, I’m sure. I know from experience that even the most devastating pain from crippling loss will ease over time.

     So I made it through the first blog in February. It took an unpleasant event to prompt me, but I got it out. I hope that this week I can work on Sidewinder at least a few mornings. I have put off my memoir a while longer. I liked my November novel so much that I wanted to re-write it and see how good it could actually get. And what’s good writing without pain and loss to fuel the writer? It takes more than coffee to give me ideas. And this time, it took more than just loss. It took a reminder from someone that feeling pain just means I’m human.       

unnamed loss

     I was already feeling rotten when I went out to put the chickens away. We don’t really put them away at night. They instinctively go into their coop, which is a metal storage shed. They hop up onto their roosts and turn in for the night all on their own. All day long they have free rein of the backyard and can go in and out of their coop. At night someone needs to close up the door to the coop to keep them safe. Yucaipa does have its share of critters and predators.

     I had finished an easy night at work but was feeling upset because I had lost one of my framer’s gloves. I use the gloves every day at work. When I vacuum they keep my hands from blistering and they are helpful to wear moving tables. I had worn my gloves sometime that evening, then later noticed one missing. They were pretty new gloves and now I was missing the right one. Just thinking about missing it makes me run my thumb over the inside of my palm as if feeling calluses.

     And if that wasn’t enough, I had lost a folding utility knife sometime too. I keep my knife and multi-tool in a pouch on my belt with Velcro closing it. Yesterday I noticed the knife had disappeared, fallen out of the pouch somewhere. I don’t know when or where and that got me down too. Prajna had given me the knife and multi-tool for Christmas a few years back. I tend to attach feelings to objects.

     I stepped into the chicken coop and counted. There were 14. There should be 15. A few weeks ago we had had 17 chickens. Two had died in two days. We weren’t sure how but suspected the heat. I counted the chickens again, this time looking at the different breeds until I realized which one was missing. I shone my light all over the corners of the coop and inside the nesting boxes. No, one of our Plymouth partridge rocks was not in the coop.

I stepped outside and shone my flashlight around the yard. I looked around behind the shed where the girls hang out a lot, in the kid’s old playhouse, and under the trees. Then from a distance I saw it over by the side fence. As soon as I saw it I knew, but my mind just kept saying, no. But there she was, dead on the ground. Feathers were around her like there had been a struggle. This hadn’t been the heat. She had been killed. If could have been a predator. Or worse, it could have been one of our dogs. We had been letting them outside unsupervised and never had trouble with them and the chickens. The puppy sometimes chased them but they were too fast.

I came inside and told Prajna. I got a plastic garbage bag, scoped up the dead chicken and put it in the dumpster. I don’t know how hardly dignified and perhaps hardly legal.

I felt more miserable than ever. It was hot outside still. I didn’t want to go to bed but didn’t know what I wanted to do. I took the stuff off my belt to get ready for bed and felt around where my knife could have fallen out. I have a cluttered area on top of a bookshelf where I keep all my gear. My fingers touched something and I pulled it up. It was a key holder that I had lost about a week back and thought was gone forever. I have two of them that I keep on my belt to hang my keys on. I had forgotten this one was missing. Now it was found. In my deep sadness, I felt just a little rise in my hopes. Just a little. But it wasn’t really enough.

I tried to use the tools I have to get in touch with my feelings. Was I frustrated, angry, what? It was my fault for losing the glove and maybe the knife too. Was it my fault if one of our dogs, the puppy perhaps, had killed the hen? All I knew is that I felt sad. Sad was the only word. Maybe I was ashamed at myself for grieving over a dead bird. Sarah had named it. The hen had been shy and gentle. There is so much loss and grief in the world, who am I to feel bad for losing a pet chicken?

I tried not to deny the sadness while still having a sense of perspective. I could get a new glove; I could get two in fact. I had other knives. And we have 7 new baby chicks.

I hung the found key holder on the hook where I keep my personal keys. Right now my personal keys there are only my house key and the key to the family van. My truck key is at the mechanic along with the truck that probably will never be fixed.

13 Words or Play Chicken

     When I started blogging I wasn’t sure what I was doing. I’m convinced that the more I write the better I can be at it. Looking at my first few months of blogging is proof. It took over a year to really find my voice in what I was doing. And it isn’t just the form and sentences, which are what needs the most practice. Over a year ago Prajna suggested that I change the content of my blog and begin to tell what God is doing in my life. Make the blog more topical. Up until then I could pull any story out of my past and just write it out, give it a clever title and there was that week’s blog. When I started trying to write more of what was going on in my life a couple things happened. The overall quality of Roadwalker improved and it got a lot more difficult to think of a good topic.

     Over the past months I took a vacation and also gave my testimony. I had plenty to write about. When another hen went broody I asked Nathaniel to take a few pictures of me treating her so I could blog about that. Then things stopped happening, or at least I stopped observing things happening. I talked to Prajna about how I actually was feeling dismay about my upcoming blog. It began with me telling her that I was talking to my favorite hen, Suzie about how I get anxious about blogging lately. Suzie will sit in my arms and softly question me as I tell her that maybe I’ll never write anything good again. I confessed how I sometimes get. I just want to give up writing and blogging completely. Prajna however stepped up and diagnosed me. She told me how hard I’ve been working without much of a break. I argued that I’ve had a pretty easy week at work, and a vacation a month ago. Prajna she reminded me that the events at work and a lot of minor commitments added up to a lot. She knows that I refuel best when I can get away for a while by myself. And whenever someone doesn’t enjoy something that they normally look forward to, she said, that can be burnout.

     I didn’t think it was burnout. I thought I just would never think of anything to write about anymore. But I went online and looked at Mojave Desert Preserve and Death Valley and made up my mind to go out to Death Valley sometime in October. It’s still almost two months away, but I can look forward to it and that will help. As for my writing, I had written down a little phrase while vacuuming the other day and thought that maybe I could make something of it. Maybe it would be mediocre, but at least I would be writing and could go out and tell Suzy the hen that I pulled it off one more time. For at least one more week I wouldn’t give up.

     Last night Prajna and I were talking about Celebrate Recovery and all the potential it has. We were talking about what a mistake giving up can be. She said: “You don’t see the miracle if you decide to throw in the towel.”

     I looked at her like she had just pulled a fresh, buttery soft pretzel from the oven. I asked her to repeat it which she did and she admitted that yes, she had thought of that herself, but I could use it. I wrote it next to my computer.

     You don’t see the miracle if you decide to throw in the towel. There have been plenty of times when I didn’t give up when I should, but that was out of nothing but pride. I could write a whole entry on that. But I was reminded by Prajna’s words that if I did just choose to sleep in on a Monday morning, ask someone else to make breakfast and feed the chickens and do my laundry on another day and just sleep ‘till noon and write nothing, then what? Then I've done nothing. 

     The truth is that God works in my life every day and maybe it’s not something fascinating enough to share, but there always has to be something that I can pass on. This blog is a writing exercise and that means that even if I have a dull point I can present it well.

     So was all of today's musing of writer’s angst leading up to the conclusion that something will always step in and save me? No. What happened this week was that I wanted to give up. Then I didn’t because I was inspired to write about inspiration. And the anxiety may still be there if next week I don’t have something to share. I might be right back where I was, wanting to sit in the backyard with a hen on my lap asking what to do. But Prajna spoke 13 words that I can try to stand on and press forward with. And if they work in a little hobby like writing, I should imagine their potential in the real world.

     By the way, I don’t own those 13 words even though Prajna gave them to me. (I keep telling her that her blog could be outstanding with her wisdom.) If anyone needs to write them on a notecard and use them, feel free. If, in fact someone would rather sit and hold a friendly hen and whimper they can do that too. This week I pressed ahead. I hope if someone else needs to, they can use the words and not play chicken.

      

     

One last note. This is Roadwalker post #200. Thanks for sticking with me-

David

           

All we,like hens have gone broody?

     If you’ve ever heard the expression “broody” you might picture someone worrisome or troubled. It can even mean contemplative or moody. At least that’s what I thought it meant until we got backyard chickens.

     A broody hen will undergo a hormonal change. Her internal temperature rises and she has the compulsion to sit on eggs. She stops laying and sits in the nesting box on whoever’s eggs happen to be there. If disturbed, she will utter a noise like no other, a cross between a long squawk and a mountain lion’s soft growl.

     The broody hen is only comfortable when she’s sitting on eggs. The cure we’ve learned of is efficient. I don’t know if the hot weather this week brought on the condition in Tater Tot (Benjamin named her). She may just be inclined to this. It’s the second time she’s gone broody and another Plymouth Partridge Rock like her also succumbed several months ago.

     Monday morning it was obvious Tot was broody. She had spent the night in the nesting box and ruffled her neck feathers when we peeked in at her. It was time for treatment.

     I love my rubber boots. I can stomp around in anything and keep my feet clean. The hens nearly always hurry over whenever I come outside to see if I have something for them. They have remarkable faith in me.

Nathaniel took these pictures for me. This is me fetching the hose.

And filling the 5 gallon bucket.

I’m getting Tater Tot out of the nesting box here. The other girls are hanging out. Most of them are very friendly. You might notice the nesting boxes are from Costco and once contained frozen chicken parts. Most of the time the boxes have napkins covering the openings to give the girls a little privacy.

Usually Tater Tot is a little shy, but she was so fixed on staying in the nest that she let me get her out. Once we are holding a hen they stay pretty docile. 

This is how you lower the internal temperature of a hen. Here she is about to be dunked into a bucket of water. Lincoln Rooster watches, bemused.

She will stay in the water for five minutes.

She was mostly calm. When I took her out you can see I have her wings and feet restrained. 

And into the wire cage. Into the cooler.

The cage goes up on buckets.

And I give her some water.

And here she is in the cage in the shade. Even in the heat of the day, air will pass around and under her keeping her considerably cooler than in the nesting box. 

She was snatched out of her comfort zone and plunged into a shocking cold, where without good restraint, she could have quickly drowned. Then she was set up in a less comfortable place for all her friends to gawk at while her instinctive desire was only to go back to her warm, dark and safe place and sit on what she wanted to take ownership of that actually was the property of her keeper.

I think that my blog uses analogy quite often and it would be too easy now to point out what can happen in people’s lives sometimes. I certainly tend to get very comfortable in possessions (I love those boots. Some possessions or undeserved blessings are gifts from God and I sit on them like they're mine to keep and no-one else's. But I don’t know how much further the similarity goes with God removing us from our comfort zones and curing us of being broody.

I don’t know, but I think that if we become possessive and unproductive we might not be automatically rescued from it. We don’t have bird brains. We have free will. If our chicken sits on unfertilized eggs or a golf ball put into the nesting box to clue her in that little round things are okay to go there, she is eventually in for disappointment. If I become fixated on what I think are my remarkable accomplishments and want to sit on them in comfort, I will eventually be sitting on something worthless.

Eggs. Talents. Blessings and the broody urge to sit on them. With chickens, it’s nature’s way. With us, it’s human nature and we need to recognize it in ourselves or in each other. However the treatment comes about it may not be comfortable. It took Tater Tot two and a half days to cool off and be back to normal. But I think she feels much better now. The uncomfortable treatment seems to have been worth it for her. Does anyone not think it’s worth it for us?

           

Here we go 'round the plumeria tree

The first I heard of homeschooling was a friend of mine whose parents were in YWAM. He was I think 1 year younger than I so maybe 10 or 11. YWAM is a mission organization that sometimes whole families would be in and spend 6 months on the field. So this homeschooling was out of necessity.

I really wanted to homeschool when I heard it extolled on a Christian radio station. So the first reason I had may have been concern for the secular humanism in government schools that I don’t care for. Once we decided to homeschool and grew as parents doing it we learned more good reasons. But I’ve never considered my school years as a reason to homeschool our children until yesterday evening. That’s when I remembered something.

I was an ethnic minority in school. I was awkward and unathletic and usually alone. I was bullied, yes but not to the point where someone should have demanded legislation and curriculum to combat it. I lived through it. But I had very little reason to like school.

Yesterday afternoon I was lying on the grass in my backyard. Jamie and Nathaniel right away made up a game of running and jumping over me and the chickens were out in the yard grazing. After a while Nathaniel tried to catch one. Nowadays you can pick up the layers if you’re quick. Nathaniel wasn’t. And I remembered something in 5th grade.

It was a school day. Whatever the subject was that morning kids were working on it and I noticed movement out the window. There was a chicken outside running around. The school’s vice principal and two students were trying to catch it. For the next several minutes this very tall man and two kids ran circles around a small plumeria tree in a wonderful show of catch the chicken. When my teacher discovered the distraction she became indignant and sent me back to my desk. She assigned me the exercise of writing down what I saw. And because I was in school of course she told me it must conclude with what I learned from it.
I scrawled in dreadful cursive writing year about Mister Williams and two older kids chasing a chicken and not catching it. As for what I learned. I said the lesson was never chase a chicken. What I also may have learned if I didn’t already know it was this. If you’re in school, regardless of what you’re doing you must appear to be learning something.

And last night as I looked at the sky and listened to Nathaniel play I thought of something else, if not a reason to homeschool, at least a mark against government schools. My memories of 5th grade include being pushed around by another kid. I remember a student storming out of the classroom swearing at the teacher. I remember struggling with math but I don’t remember if it was fractions or three digit multiplication. I don’t remember any science or art or English. My best memory of the 5th grade was watching a chicken chase out the classroom window. The writing assignment I got after was supposed to be disciplinary, not teaching. But I did learn from the assignment.

I did learn something even if it took over 30 years to realize. I think the teacher was fearful of any learning that didn’t take place in the agenda of the Department of Education. You will learn just what we tell you to learn. Maybe not all government schools are like that. But if my children are learning at home then I have the option to say the same thing. But that is right because they are my children and will not be taught or raised by the state. I cannot guarantee that they will be any better or smarter at the end of the year than kids who were. But there will be good memories to look back at. That I am sure of.