Ever have one of those days where you spend a good portion of the day screaming "Oh S&*^!" and then going into action? Yep yesterday was one of those. About 10:00 AM, I put Elphie in isolation and locked her up tight. Then I put David Hewlett in with the reds. I sat on the lawn chair with my coffee watching for a little while just to make sure all was going well while talking to Feral Jane on the phone about the coming Yod in 2013, the truly horrid nature of American healthcare and I admit openly..... gossiping about the neighbors. All in all a truly nice morning. How could it not be..... entertaining chickens , old friend and fair trade coffee. Eventually I felt guilty for not doing anything so ,continuing my conversation with Feral Jane, I wandered indoors to do some housework. I threw in some laundry and checked on the chickens. Loaded the dishwasher and....... checked on the chickens. Separated the bills from the junk mail piled on the table and ........checked on the chickens. Gathered all the books scattered around the house and put them in the bookshelf and .......checked on the chickens. Still yammering to Feral Jane, we both logged onto Redfin so we could look at photos of obviously haunted houses for sale, all the while watching the chickens out the window. Then , more guilt and more housework.. I unloaded the dishwasher and found everything was covered with dishwasher smutze (Ya know it....you've seen it). I had pulled it apart yesterday and cleaned out the trap so I pulled it apart again and yes..... when I put it back together yesterday, I did not lock the sprayer thingy in place (my bad). I put it back together again and this time locked it in place. Then I went to the bedroom and stripped the bed and changed the sheets (still chattering with Feral Jane). When the bedroom was done, I realized that I had not checked on the girls for some time. I looked out the window and some how Elphie had managed to escape the isolation pen (seriously! How DOES she do that? It was locked up tight. Do I have a teleporting hen?). Anyway I panicked, screamed "OH S*&^!" in Feral Janes ear and hung up and ran outside to rescue David Hewlett , only to discover he/she did not really need rescuing.. Elphie would chase her/him around a little bit if she got too close but wasn't too aggressive so I decided to watch for a while. I also decided that while I was watching, I would add some water to the pond (cuz we still haven't found the leak the heron left). All was serene for about 10 minutes then David Hewlett got brave and approached the others. Elphie wasn't going to have any part of it and took off after DH who took off running and screaming and ran straight into the chain link at the front of the pen, bounced off of it once and ran back again and.... much to everyones surprise dove right through the links. I picked DH up and put her/him back in the pen. But DH in that catalytic moment had learned. And right back out he/she came through the links. For another 10 minutes we played the game of chase the chicken around the yard. ...... Until I looked up and saw that I had forgotten about the pond and it was near disaster. The water was over the top of the fountain!
I turned off the water and Put DH in the brooder in the garage (cuz I was tired of the excitement and had a mess to clean up). I spent the next hour siphoning off the pond water one bucket at a time ( cuz its very nutrient heavy and why waste good fish poop water? ) and adding fertiliser to each bucket and dumping it in the garden. After two slow filling buckets, I decide to use the filling time to clean the chicken coop and pen. This takes about an hour cuz I have to keep stopping and dump the bucket. But finally the coop is clean, the pond is down to normal levels. Every thing in the garden that might need it has been fertilized. Serenity has been returned to my backyard paradise and the phone rings. Jimmy is getting off work an hour and half early. He's on his way home. Another... "OH S*&^!" moment. I'm standing in the yard soaking wet, covered in chicken manure and mud, the house isn't clean, ALL the dishes are dirty cuz to get dried dishwasher smutze off dishes you HAVE to hand wash them. And no prep at all was done for dinner. Now ...Jimmy is no Ralph Kramden, but I have MY standards. I had 20 minutes to get acceptable. I threw the dishes back in the dishwasher with a prayer, washed my face and hands and put on dry clothes, brushed the chicken bedding out of my hair, opened the fridge and pulled out all the vegetables I could find and two frozen chicken breasts. Popped the chicken into the microwave to thaw and vacuumed faster than the vacuum could pick up. 3 minutes after that, Jimmy walked into a tidied house with a wife that looked clean and put together (even if she wasn't) who was calmly chopping vegetables and slurping on a BIG glass of red wine. The first words he said when he walked through the door? "Hi Honey... How was YOUR day?" I poured myself another glass of wine and said "Just fine my love.... How was YOUR day?" (dinner was perfect BTW.... and ready 20 minutes later; grilled vegetables and chicken breasts and of course more red wine).
I turned off the water and Put DH in the brooder in the garage (cuz I was tired of the excitement and had a mess to clean up). I spent the next hour siphoning off the pond water one bucket at a time ( cuz its very nutrient heavy and why waste good fish poop water? ) and adding fertiliser to each bucket and dumping it in the garden. After two slow filling buckets, I decide to use the filling time to clean the chicken coop and pen. This takes about an hour cuz I have to keep stopping and dump the bucket. But finally the coop is clean, the pond is down to normal levels. Every thing in the garden that might need it has been fertilized. Serenity has been returned to my backyard paradise and the phone rings. Jimmy is getting off work an hour and half early. He's on his way home. Another... "OH S*&^!" moment. I'm standing in the yard soaking wet, covered in chicken manure and mud, the house isn't clean, ALL the dishes are dirty cuz to get dried dishwasher smutze off dishes you HAVE to hand wash them. And no prep at all was done for dinner. Now ...Jimmy is no Ralph Kramden, but I have MY standards. I had 20 minutes to get acceptable. I threw the dishes back in the dishwasher with a prayer, washed my face and hands and put on dry clothes, brushed the chicken bedding out of my hair, opened the fridge and pulled out all the vegetables I could find and two frozen chicken breasts. Popped the chicken into the microwave to thaw and vacuumed faster than the vacuum could pick up. 3 minutes after that, Jimmy walked into a tidied house with a wife that looked clean and put together (even if she wasn't) who was calmly chopping vegetables and slurping on a BIG glass of red wine. The first words he said when he walked through the door? "Hi Honey... How was YOUR day?" I poured myself another glass of wine and said "Just fine my love.... How was YOUR day?" (dinner was perfect BTW.... and ready 20 minutes later; grilled vegetables and chicken breasts and of course more red wine).
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