Chicken Playpen

So I went out to change the chicks' water this morning and, well, let me tell you: the smell is getting to me. And everything in the garage is so dusty. And a couple of the chickens are getting restless and fighting with each other. They really need to be in a coop.

I've put in an email to a gentleman that makes chicken coops, but haven't heard back from him. I, myself, am getting antsy. The chicks are 6 and a half and three and a half weeks old. The littler ones could stand to be inside much longer, but the older ones, I think not. I can't separate them so they must all go outside.

So I go out this morning -- to the garage -- and the chicken box is just gross. And I just changed it a couple days ago. Sigh. Well, I asked for this.

And then I just decided I would do it. A couple of chicken owner friends said to me that they really needed to be outside right now during the day; I could put them in the garage at night. So I fish out some chicken wire and wrestle it into a corral of sorts. I duct tape the edges together (so classy) and prop up the sides with blocks of wood.





Voila.




Aubrey helps me bring the chicks outside. She's real good with the chickens -- any animal actually. Maybe it's the Libra in her. I've heard they are good with animals.




At first they just stood there frozen. "Where am I? This is an alien Mars world." In fact, they wouldn't even jump out of our hands when we lowered them into the pen, like they do when we put them into the box. They kinda clung on with their talons.




I posted Aubrey inside the pen after they started loosening up and pecking around. I want them to get used to human presence. She's just sitting there, reading, and minding her own business.

I hope the chicks find lots of juicy bugs and grubs to eat and enjoy the fresh air. I'll clean out their box and unfortunately, put them back in the safe house while me and the kids go to dodgeball after lunch. But they'll have a couple hours of outdoor time today. And maybe more tomorrow.

Radical Unschooling Be Damned

I'm having a Jonah Day.

Actually more like a Jonah Ten Minutes.

It kinda started on Thursday. Paul has Thursdays off and I try (at his request) to keep those days empty so that we can spontaneously do things together as a family. But what often happens (and did on this Thursday past) is: everybody but me wants to camp on the computer. Paul was actually on the computer for seven hours straight before my stomping around the house and sighing persuaded him to get off. But he was back on again a few hours later.

The kids see this and emulate it. Duh. It's a no-brainer. Easy. Brain-dead.

It affects everybody in the house. No one connects. Paul tunes out, Aubrey grunts (in her oh so lovely goatish cow rendition: "Mah!"), Robert has been asking for hugs every time he sees me, is weepy, and says he feels lonely. He's mad and has been throwing things and yelling. Today he even cried. But I'm getting ahead of myself perhaps.

So Thursday was a computer day (by default), though I did manage to drag them to the park for a couple of hours in the afternoon. And Friday was a product of my new Summer Schedule.

I have Fridays alloted for detailed house cleaning in the morning and free choice in the afternoon. Well, the detailed cleaning was a bust because the kids had dentist appointments in the morning and then when free choice came around -- you can guess what they chose to do. (For the record, I chose to work on cleaning my room and watching Anne of Green Gables, with Meagan Follows, while going through boxes of papers and such that have cluttered my room for almost a year.) So another day of computer games.

And then Saturday mornings are always cartoons for the kids and a soak in the tub with a book for mama. Then we clean or do SpiralScouts or go on a field trip somewhere. So this morning, Saturday, I do a few chores (vacuum my room, change the chicks bedding and feed the dog) and check Facebook and my email. I made coffee and got in the tub a little late (11 a.m.). I noticed on my way that Aubrey, who doesn't get into the cartoons as much anymore, was playing on the computer. Sigh.

I informed the kids that all screens would be turned off at noon and they could take baths and we'd go on a bike ride to the library to pick up a book we had on hold. They seemed fine with this, until it was actually noon and I asked them to get off.

Aubrey went to take a bath but Robert started in on his stomping, yelling and throwing. You see, it was time for him to take his laundry upstairs and put it away. (Sometimes I yell when I have to do that, too.) :)

Anyway, the morning just seemed to get away from me and I checked in on why that might be. And my answer seemed to be the computer gaming. Three days in a row of gaming has created mutiny.

It's time to take some control back. I try to allow my kids the autonomy to make their own decisions about certain things and I want to have the patience and also the trust to know that they will follow their curiosities and lead themselves into a world of learning that excites them. If computer games actually do that for them, then I'm willing to take a back seat and allow them to learn through their games. But frankly, when their behavior changes and communication breaks down, I just can't take the back seat anymore. So much for radical unschooling. I guess I'm not the radical I thought I was.

But I still unschool. ;)

It's time for lunch to be made, and a little boy to fish out of the bathtub, and then we are going on our bike ride. Then, I promised my housemate I'd help him in the garden this afternoon. I'm going to plant my apple tree finally and we have pumpkin plants and other starts to get in the ground. I also want to plant some flower seeds and get some color in the garden! (Oh yeah, I should probably weed, too.)

Just so you know, I failed to take a picture of yesterday's harvest. I had it all laid out on the kitchen counter super pretty, and then promptly forgot to find the camera and we ate it. The harvest, not the camera.

There was a head of lettuce, some chard, a bunch of sugar snap peas (slurp!) and a big bowl full of strawberries. Sorry you missed it!

Conundrum

I've loved this word ever since I watched Natalie Portman and Zach Braff in "Garden State."

My conundrum is this:

I love taking classes. Strange, that. That an unschooling mama that wants her kids home and wants to have her kids learn within the bounds of their own curiosity (which is boundless!) and yet loves the going to school. Except that college isn't really school. (hee hee) I mean, it is ... but not like grammar or high school. There is so much more room for personalities to shine and courage to develop. You can question without looking like a dope, or the rest of the adults in the class glaring at you for ... well, whatever teenagers glared at me for.

Of course, this is only true of certain college classes. And I think that is determined by what kind of learner you are and where your interests lie. If you are in college for a degree program in writing, the algebra classes suck. But if you are just taking adult continuing ed classes because you want to practice your pottery skills or have your writing sharpened by a short story class, what joy!

So back to the conundrum. I was looking through a community college catalog this morning and discovered a summer class that looks right up my alley. Intro to Permaculture. Covers all the basics I want to learn about in nine weeks for only $83! (I've seen more intensive courses that I've been interested in for three or four hundred dollars.) I'd really like to go to this class, but it is on Monday nights -- right during my writer's critique group.

It is true that one of our members switched our Tuesday night group to the current Monday night group because of a class he wanted to take, and so I might get away with switching it again (at least for the nine weeks that the class lasts), but since then we've added a wonderful member that drives in from out of town and wouldn't be able to meet if we switched it to Tuesday again.

So.

I could just go to the class and ditch the group for nine weeks. I do have another theater group that I could write for on Thursday nights (but ... it's not the same).

I'd feel like I'd be, well ... ditching my comrades if I went to the class.

I thought about still writing and emailing or sending along my essays in other ways to the critique group so they'd have something to critique, but it is better for me to hear what they are saying about a piece, rather than just reading notes in the margins.

Bummer. I'll probably just stick with the critique group, but what an opportunity. An urban homesteading mentor! For $83! Just when I'm starting my own. I've got the garden and the chickens, just barely. It sure would be nice to have a hand to hold while starting out.

( ... and for $83 ... )

Laundry Zen

(I didn't have a picture of laundry, so here's one of my newly cleaned office.)

I want to be a nurturing mother that builds security and safety and comfort into our home. A wall of stability that nevertheless helps others see the excitement and passion and interest and poetry in the everyday lives we lead.

I want to facilitate, for my children, a curiosity about life, an excitement to wake up and see what the day holds and to move from task to task and find the joy in doing them.


I hate folding and putting away laundry. The washing and drying isn't hard, but moving beyond that seems too arduous to contemplate. and so I accumulate mountains of clean clothes on the couch and love seat and in baskets at the foot of my bed, creating a tower of disappointment so high I can't see the alarm clock when I'm under the covers.

But, when I hang the laundry outside on the line, the act of doing this slow -- some would say primitive -- action fills me with a sense of slowed-down peace. I'm in the sunshine and delicious breezes float my clothes to a different place, one they were meant to experience -- like chickens that roam free, as opposed to being stuffed in teeny battery cages.

And the strangest thing happens. When I take them off the line, I fold them and put them away without thinking. And I enjoy it all -- even with a task I usually abhore.


This is what I want to bring to the world -- to my children (who are my whole world right now.) That we can find joy and even magic in the ordinary and mundane. That we are responsible for the quality of our own lives and we can decide to enjoy doing the dishes and picking up dog poop from the backyard. And if we succeed -- well. That is the coolest thing in the world.

Sweet Creek Falls Hike

(My little man having fun.)



(scouts, working on hiking badge.)







(My girl, posing.)




It was a nice hike, but the whole thing: driving an hour and a half there, the hiking and standing around while the other leader taught directional finder stuff, and the hour and a half drive home - wiped my ass out.

See Magenta-Flecked Puce for details.

Update on the Homestead

Here is my first REAL knitting project. I had started a scarf but it "grew" into something ... weird, so I cast off and left it in the office to inspire me to do something else. In this case, something smaller. A dishcloth.

The chicks are all growing bunches. I think this one is Hazel. Emma and Hazel are almost identical. Hazel's bigger though.



They are getting flighty and scared of us. Mostly because they are in the garage and we aren't. And I don't have to pick them nearly as often as when I was cleaning chicken butts and cleaning out the tote every three days. Now with their refrigerator box, I'm not having to touch them, so when I do they run and flap.

We need to hold them more.

Sometimes I feel like that, too.

Magenta-Flecked Puce

When I'm depressed, I usually want to sleep. In fact, that's generally what gives me the heads up that I've entered the blue phase. though why it should be called blue -- which evokes healing and calmness and serenity -- baffles me. It should be called the puces.

Puce is that sickly mustard blah color that better depicts the flaccid jelly I become when in the doldrums. Magenta, also, seems an appropriate color to augment the puceness of my state when depressed. Magenta-flecked puce.

Magenta, because it is a color that screams. A color that overwhelms the senses and deviates from any normal protocol. And that, too, is what I feel when depressed. I'm overwhelmed.

And that is why sleep seems so blissful in my magenta times. My magenta puce times. I just want to sleep.

So yesterday I had driven a long way to a hiking trail near waterfalls with my kids and met up with my daughter's scouting group to work on our hiking badge and direction finder award. It was raining and though it was a nice hike and I loved watching the children interact, as well as connecting to some adults I admire, the trip was way beyond my exhaustion level.

I humped back home, stopping for cocoa with whipped-creamed straws and decaf coffee; dealt with parental disciplinary actions at home and then went to a friend's house for dinner. By bedtime I was magenta. After connecting with my husband and exchanging stories of our days, I rolled over in my bed, completely puce.

It got me thinking: what does one do to climb out of the slippery sludge that lines all sinkholes? How do you surpass the panic and terror? How do you make it back home to YOU? How do you make it back HOME at all?

Often I write. Sometimes I journal or write an essay -- but other times I make a list. Today's list (written in my head) was to purposely ignore the kitchen and the eighteen-inch grass in the backyard and instead focus on my children's bedrooms.

I have to say it. They were vile. I cringed every time I tucked my sweeties into bed and I feared lasting damage to their psyches from living and sleeping in such stagnancy.

So we cleaned.
For hours.

And now both their bedrooms are beautiful, there is a sense of accomplishment in the air and we've come to Chuck E. Cheese's to celebrate. Two and a half hours later I'm looking at the clock, but my luvs don't want to leave. Sigh.

Another list (a mega one this time) plagues me until I write it down.

1. my bedroom
2. my bathroom
3. kitchen
4. garage
5. laundry room and 1/2 bath (also hanging and putting away clothes)
6. phone nook and bar
7. dining room
8. living room
9. back patio
10. back yard
11. gardens
12. office
13. entry
14. staircase and landing
15. learning closet
16. upstairs bathroom
17. front patio

If I dedicate one day to each off these tasks (and some will be hard-pressed to fit into one day -- like the yard or gardens), and exclude the days we have out-of-town guests, or plans that take more than half the day (and maybe a day off once in awhile for good behavior), I could be done with a major house cleaning by July 7th. Wow.

I don't know if I should be excited that I might be on top of things finally, or depressed further that ONE: it could actually take seventeen plus days to clean my house, and TWO: that at the end of said seventeen days I would have to start all over again! Ug.

Thinking now about the state of, say, the dishes if I waited seventeen (or even THREE) days without addressing them; I wonder about extending the July 7th date out even further. If I did that (crazy and unforgivable thing), I could add in one day a week (gasp! should it be two?) for maintenance purposes. That would take me to July 14th -- the day before the kids fly home with Fernanda. Three weeks in Massachusetts with Vavo, their Portuguese grandmother.

Now wait a minute. The puce starts rolling in again. I am not going to spend my entire stay-cation sans kids on cleaning the house! (Slave that I am.) Ha!

I WILL read a whole shelf of my glorious books. (snort) Maybe THREE. Realistically, reading twenty books in three weeks won't do, if I want to retain anything.

I WILL write everyday! Even on heavy cleaning days. I promise.

So with a couple of game plans and a list, plus a successful day of cleaning behind me, I see the magenta-flecked puce fading and while it is time to get the kids home and to bed, I'm not crabby and ready to hibernate for twenty-one days like yesterday.

Unless, of course, I spy the kitchen on the way to my bed.