No Problem, Mon

Beach view, Negril, Jamaica

Just got back from a four-day Girls Vacation to Jamaica. No children, no men, no cooking, no cleaning, no laundry, no driving--for four whole days. Clear, jewel-colored water; fine, white sand; alcohol and food on-demand and nothing to do. Absolute bliss. I discovered a love of snorkeling and spent at least an hour watching the way sunlight ran across the rippled, sandy bottom of the ocean. Others in my party enjoyed the culture and nightlife of Negril, doing their best to learn a few Patois phrases and Jamaican hand gestures.

What struck me about Jamaica, aside from the breathtaking beauty of the countryside and ocean, was the authenticity of the Caribbean vibe. Stories of the laid back and chill nature of Caribbean cities, not to mention Reggae’s everything’s all right attitude, seemed exaggerated. No place could be so idyllic, so stress free.

Me, getting ready to snorkel

But visiting Negril and spending time with the locals, I discovered that “No problem, Mon” is more a way of life than a glib indigenous statement. It’s true that not much is a problem and no one is in a hurry. Even the nightlife is slow and easy--people smoking, standing around listening to music and leisurely drinking their Red Stripe. Places like Jamaica seem too good to be true, an impossible last place on earth where people aren’t rudely tromping on one another in order to arrive at their destination two minutes earlier. It was beautiful, serene and authentically easy.


And speaking of easy.... When a person is funny, Jamaicans say, “You are not easy, Mon.” An interesting turn of phrase: to roll along in an easy way, to go along with the conversation, is laid back. Humor puts a wrinkle in the fabric of our communication, one that makes us stop and laugh or stop and think. To the Jamaicans, this is “not easy” which makes a certain sort of sense.

Here comes the real conundrum, though. Why do people go to places like Jamaica, buy all the tourist swag and then wear it while they are still there? It’s not impressive that you have shorts on that say Jamaica when the rest of us are in Jamaica with you. We are all here and we are not impressed by your gift store goods. 

Take for example the gentleman who bought a Jamaican t-shirt, complete with large picture of a marijuana leaf on the front; shorts imprinted with “Jamaica” on the pocket; a Rasta hat in the colors of the Jamaican flag and matching bracelet and wore all this on a boat trip to a small, off-coast island: is he trying to impress someone? And who would that someone be? Is he trying to look like a local? That seems absurd: the locals don’t wear any of that stuff, nor could they afford it. Is it just consumer exuberance caused by being in such a dreamy place?

In addition, why would a person want to buy pants with “Jamaica” emblazoned across the butt? Those pants aren’t giving the country any respect and neither is the person wearing them. We’ve already covered the silliness of wearing such pants while still visiting the country, but then why wear them at home??? Here’s my thought: If you carry beautiful memories of the country in your heart, you don’t need to have the name screen-printed on your ass.

“Maybe they can’t remember,” Jim said when we were discussing this. “I can’t remember crap. And if I’d been to Jamaica, I sure as hell would want to remember that. So I’d buy something with the name on it. And the date, too, if I could find it. And if they could put MY name on it, too, that would be awesome because then I’d have everything I needed to remember in one place!”


Anyone care to explain tourist consumerism to me, especially the country-on-your-ass pants? I really want to understand.

Jamaica Lion of Judah Pants--even these are better than the ones I saw on the beach

Found Out

My husband found my blog.

I knew that day would come, but I had been hoping for a year at least before he discovered it...or even thought of looking. But as we all are when it comes to people talking about us, we MUST know what is being said. Even if it's bad. Especially if it's funny.

So he found my blog and here's what he said, "You have to put up pictures of the coop! It almost ended our marriage and you haven't even told people it's finished?"

He also demanded I take more and better pictures. Really I should but right now I don't have time. So you will have to be happy with these pictures of the finished coop that thankfully did NOT end our marriage:

From the front, with the door closed

From the front with the door open

Rear right-hand side with hanging feeder and egg boxes to the right

Chicken entrance to the coop

Side, with egg boxes. Sweet roof, eh? 

And, like children who are more thrilled with the huge box the toy came in than the toy itself, the chickens love being out of the coop perhaps more than they do being in it. Here's a picture of them dust bathing under the bushes:

I have the chicken coop of my dreams! That is something I never thought I'd say.... 

Now to get some eggs from these hens, which will happen sometime in...November. 

*sigh*

Imperfections

I make things.

Often my handmade objects don't come out perfect. By often, I mean almost always. It is a miracle if something comes out perfect. A seam will be crooked or a dropped stitch picked up the wrong way or a smudge in the middle of an otherwise brilliantly executed sketch. (I only sell the perfect things.)

There are many people who think part of the beauty of a handmade thing is those small imperfections, especially if it’s made by someone you know and love. It has been hard for me to learn to embrace the inevitable mistakes of my own handmades...but I am learning.

My Grandmother is one of the most creative people I’ve ever met. As I child I was in awe of her house, filled with all her creations, most of them made out of “found” items like metal shavings, driftwood, dried weeds, old beads, pieces of discarded plastic, empty jars, uneven tapestries.... 


Her imagination remains limitless. On a recent visit, I saw mobiles she had made of neon plastic beads--you know the ones at the craft store, those ugly ones that seem to have no purpose?--and wire. These mobiles were at least two feet in length, maybe more, hanging from her living room ceiling. They moved so delicately, beautifully. It was a strange kind of irony: those cheap neon beads and the graceful lines she had molded them into that moved with natural fluidity. I was fascinated. 

This same grandmother showed up at my lonely apartment years ago--long before I was married and had kids--proudly carrying a bag full of leaves and sticks which she promptly transformed into a gorgeous mobile. She hung the mobile from my living room ceiling and it made me think of her every day after she left. A few years later my boyfriend thought I was crazy when I told him to be careful as he moved it. 

“What? You’re taking this? This is a piece of garbage! It will never survive the move!”
He obviously doesn’t have a grandmother who makes custom installation art.

Ever since I was tiny Grandma has been giving me amazing, one of a kind birthday gifts fashioned out of whatever material currently held her fascination. One year I got a huge, square wreath made out of straw and plastic cranberries. Another year I received the most darling little hand-painted boxes with handmade purple polymer clay roses on the top. Still another year my present was a box of woven and knitted handmade Christmas ornaments (I still put them up on the tree every year). In recent years I’ve gotten calendars and photo books and cards featuring her photography and handmade paper. (She now sells her photography at Fiddleheads.)

It never occurred to me that Grandma may have given handmade gifts because she had to, because they were cheaper and easier than store bought gifts. I always thought she gave those gifts because she loved me and she loved making things. Then one year she and Grandpa came into a little money. My gift that year was a perfect, snowy, miniature ceramic lighted house: a lovely, store-bought and probably expensive tchotchke that broke my heart.

I remember opening the package with enormous excitement and anticipation...and then dissolving into inconsolable tears. I cried for three days. And I am not a crier.
My husband, upon seeing my tears, was at first concerned and then very confused: “Why are you crying? Look, she sent you a very nice gift!” 

It looked something like this. [Attribution]

To this day I get teary when I think about it--earth shattering disappointment mixed with the terrifying thought that my beloved, creative, amazing Grandmother no longer loved or cared for me enough to send me something handmade! It was terrible...so bad that my husband called my Grandmother (after three days) and told her about my despair--a thing I couldn’t do and had told him not to do. I didn’t want to make Grandma feel bad or--God forbid!--guilt her into making me something. 

Not long after he called, another package arrived in the mail, this one containing completely homemade and outlandish gifts that absolutely soothed my soul. All was right with the world again.
I try to remember this when I am making things--imperfect things, things I begin to hate because they aren’t living up to the vision I have in my mind. 


The handmade thing has a life of its own after it is created. I often make things and wonder what the heck I will do with them. Some are bizarre, like the five pointed orange felted monstrosity of a “purse” I once knitted. Some are mundane, like the washcloths I can’t keep myself from making. But they all, eventually, find their purpose.

In the midst of some of my more difficult and imperfect projects I find myself wishing I were more anal, that the stuff I make could be closer to the ideal than an ordeal. But I have learned an important lesson from my Grandmother and my children: it is the imperfections, the mistakes, the rejects, that are sometimes the most lovable. 


When I visit my mother, I go first to her reject pile of handmade jewelry--what I find there is always my favorite stuff. And my children, of all the handmade things they own, the most flawed are their favorite. The pieces of my Grandmother’s art that I have loved the most have also been the ones that others thought were “ugly” or weird or “useless,” like the mobile made of twigs and leaves. 

A few years ago I began knitting a very soft baby blanket out of two yarns that I loved. Despite adding on ball after ball of yarn, I ran out less than half way through the blanket. To make matters worse, every place I added a ball of yarn there were several of funny pieces of yarn sticking out because they refused to stay in place.  Finally, admitting defeat, I cast off. The blanket was more the size of a small hand towel when I’d finished and I threw the disappointing thing in my reject pile, hating it more every day. What a waste! I thought.

Then my daughter was born. A little over a year old, she found the reject blanket while crawling around in my craft room and adopted it as her very special blankee. The little ends that stick out have become her favorite parts of it: she weaves them through her fingers as she sucks her thumb and soothes herself to sleep. My mistakes have become her comfort. And every time I see her move those fibers softly through her fingers I am reminded that mistakes can be more more beautiful, more loved than perfection.

Estella with her much-loved blankee

Second Hand Clothes: The Beast of Burden

A friend of mine is having a baby. This little baby boy is a much-anticipated baby: he has been five years in the making. All of her friends, family and closest acquaintances are thrilled, as evinced by her baby shower of epic proportions. The food could have fed three or four times the guest list. The gifts had to be transported home in not one, but two trucks. The candy coated almonds, which matched the invitations in both color and theme, featured tiny hand-painted owl faces. The cookie table, a Pittsburgh tradition, would have shamed some weddings. It was astounding.

As I sat in my friend’s living room the other night, staring at baby paraphernalia peaking out from behind her living room furniture and spilling quietly into the dining room, she told me about another gift she received. A surprise gift, after the shower: four large garbage bags of baby clothes, sizes 0-24 months, from her cousin whose boy had long outgrown the clothes. My friend sighed as she told me about this “gift” and threw her eyes around the room, looking at all the baby stuff she already didn’t have room for. We looked at each other. I had the good sense to remain silent. For the moment.

“It’s not that I’m not grateful. I mean, I’ll have clothes for this child for a long time. But then my sister and my mother had to come over to help me sort through it all, pull out the ones that were too stained and put away the ones that were too big....”

My heart went out to her. One of the greatest gifts I received when I had my first baby was six boxes of hand-me-downs ranging in size from newborn to 7T. It was also one of the biggest burdens. I remember another friend gleefully handing me a huge, black garbage bag full of baby clothes a couple of months after my son’s birth. At my squeal of excitement and attempt to thank her, she replied, “Are you kidding me? I’m so happy to get rid of those you can’t even imagine! You’re the sucker!” I had no idea what she was talking about.

Now that I have three kids, I know exactly what she was talking about.

Don’t get me wrong--hand-me-downs are great and I have always been thankful to get them. On the flip side, though, they are a curse. And here’s why:

1.) That adorable pink outfit that a friend loved and can’t bear to give to anyone else’s child but mine is now so worn out that it looks atrocious. No mother would want her kid in it. This cannot tactfully be said to a friend. So I am forced to take the worn out pink thing (sometimes boxes of them), expressing my gratitude and remarking on how lovely the outfit must have been.


Then I do the work of giving the outfit(s) to charity. I see myself as the arbiter of loved items to Goodwill. An Ambassador of the Unwanted, taking loved things and doing what the giver cannot do: getting rid of them. 

That princess sleeper that your princess slept in until it is pilled and discolored and reeks of urine no matter how many times it has been washed? I have no use for that, nor does my child. I certainly will not treasure it like you or your child did. Either keep it forever or throw it out! But so many parents are unable to do this. They cannot take that final step of admitting that a beloved item of clothing has reached its limit of usefulness and throw it out or give it to charity. So I do it for them. As do countless other mothers/parents who take hand-me-downs.

2.) The lie of “play clothes.”
How many times have you heard this line, Mothers Who Take Hand-Me-Downs:
“I know it’s stained, but [your child] can use it for play clothes!”

Here’s the thing, though: clothes children play in are also clothes children wear when they go on an impromptu shopping trip or clothes children end up in when their father dresses them and doesn’t know the difference between play clothes and regular clothes. 

Play happens.

Play clothes are bullshit. 
If kids aren't supposed to play in their clothes, what are they supposed to do in them? All clothes are play clothes if you are a kid and that's how it should be. I don't want my kids so worried about their clothes that they are afraid to try new things, run in the grass, make mud pies, have squirt gun wars....

My kids have nice clothes that get stained or ripped or both. If there are clothes I don’t want them to ruin, I save those clothes in a secret place and only bring them out for church on Sunday. 
Don’t give me stained or otherwise ruined clothes because those clothes are...well...ruined.

3.) Hand-me-downs are not clothes I picked out. 

As a mother of three, I don’t so much care anymore if someone hands me a box of perfectly good, stain-free clothes for my children and the clothes aren’t exactly my style. But my friend--this is her first child, perhaps her only child. Her cousin’s idea of what looked cute on her baby maybe 7 years ago is not my friend’s idea of what is going to look cute on her baby in 2012.

4.) You only get to dress your child for 2, maybe 3 years.
If you are the kind of parent who enjoys conflict and is obsessed with how your child is dressed, you might be able to--with a great deal of anger, frustration and stress--manage it for 7 or 8 years. But there is going to come a time when your child refuses to wear the clothing of your choice. 

My daughter just turned three and if I put clothes on her that she doesn’t like, she takes them off and goes naked. I prefer her clothed. And I’d rather save my battles for the times I have to win, for the times that are really important, like dinner or not running the street.

When your baby is small, it is natural to want that baby to look adorable, to look the way your want him or her to look. Hand-me-downs stand in the way of this, unless someone with your exact taste and sensibilities bought the clothes and the clothes were hardly worn. This rarely happens.

The advice I gave my friend?

“Give away or throw out any clothes that are stained or otherwise ruined. Also give away all the clothes that you think are ugly or not your style or simply something you don’t want to see on your baby.
Because life is too short. If you wake up one morning, reach into the drawer and pull out an outfit for your baby that you don’t like, it’s going to be a bad day. And you don’t need another bad day with a baby.
You should dress your baby how you want. You should put only the clothes you think are cute on your baby. And never feel guilty about it. This is your baby.”

What I've Learned About Coops

It has been four weeks now and our chicken coop is not finished.

Chicken coop frame

The old adage that everything takes twice as long as you think it will is wrong. In our case, everything takes five times as long as we think it will. 

Despite good directions, adequate materials and basic skills, we have run into constant problems. Digging out for the concrete piers we ran into large roots and at least one electrical wire. We also discovered how difficult it is to get a nine foot by six foot coop frame onto seven sunken concrete blocks so that the frame rests perfectly square on the blocks. Difficult? Try impossible. Then we discovered that poultry staples are bastards. They seem more perfectly designed to ensure smashed fingers than securing wire placement. I learned that when Jim says his saw is dull at the beginning of the project, he will forget that by the middle of the project and will be cursing and swearing and wondering why the #$%@^ he can't make a straight cut. A new $5 blade could have saved us hours of heartache. 


I also learned that I need a great deal more patience than I have: more knitting is in order. 

And now that I think of it, I probably could have knitted this coop a lot easier and faster. Something to remember for next time.

Here are a few other things I have learned:

When Jim says, "Wash that linoleum glue off your hands right now while it will still come off," he is only being hopeful. The linoleum glue will never come off. Or at least not until I get in the shower: then it will come off in my hair.

It is not easier to shovel wet dirt. Our dirt turns into clay when it gets wet. Evil, sticky, world-domination type clay that sticks to everything: rakes, shovels, hoes, picks, shoes, crocs, socks, tools, cords, netting, fencing, pencils, grass, fingernails.... This clay takes days to remove. Best not to bother the soil. Ever. Again.

Tool belts are handy things.

The directions are always wrong. At least once. Maybe more.

Lumber is not cheap.

The people at Home Depot and Lowes will laugh at you when you tell them you need linoleum for a chicken coop. Then they will regale you with urban farming stories of their own. Good times!

It might not seem like there's a deadline, but when the chickens are flying and the bathroom stinks like chicken poo, the deadline is real and it has already passed.

Here's the #1 Lesson I learned from building this coop--and the one I most want to pass on to those of you thinking of starting your own backyard flock:

Buy the pre-fab coop online! Pay the $500 (or more). It will be cheaper in the long run. And it will probably save your marriage.

RIP Newtie

Newt picture from Chipping Sparrows and a Newt website

Our newt has died. 

Or so we assume.

Jim came home from a conference last weekend and noticed that Newtie was not in his little habitat. Jim couldn’t get Newtie to surface even for a fresh worm. Then he noticed that there were a lot of fresh worms in Newtie’s habitat, all of them untouched, roaming free and unafraid. Jim was disturbed and saddened. Newtie was dead.

But after the sadness--or perhaps in tandem with it--came the obsession. Jim was obsessed with finding Newtie’s body. He had to see the remains, to understand why Newtie had died. Hadn’t he carefully cultivated fruit flies for him when Newtie was young? Hadn’t he fed Newtie enough worms? Hadn’t he carefully monitored Newtie’s habitat to make sure it was wet enough, mossy enough, shady enough, sunny enough? Hadn't he loved Newtie enough? 

I can say that Jim definitely did all of those things—much to my chagrin at times. Do you have any idea how unpleasant it is to smell rotting fruit as fruit flies are cultivated in a newt cage only 3 feet from the dinner table? Or how lovely it is to watch your husband and children feed the newt a nice little worm several times a week? Or dig up the lawn to find said nice little worm? Ugh.

To really understand this story, though, you have to know Newtie’s history.

Jim caught Newtie while out on a hike with the boys in Vermont. All three of them were thrilled with their discovery and determined to take the adorable baby newt home.

A hardened Northerner, I’d caught many newts in my youth and learned how difficult it was to keep a newt in captivity. Newts are master escape artists. They can get out of almost any contraption designed to keep them in. My optimism that we could keep this newt in captivity for more than a few hours was not high.

My grandfather, also a hardened Northerner, had the same perspective. “Better find yourselves a good cage if you think you’re taking him home,” was all Grandpa Harland would say when Emerson excitedly showed off his little red newt.

“I’m going to call him Newtie!” was Emerson’s enthusiastic reply.

Grandpa Harland and I exchanged a dark look. Never good to name something that can so easily be lost…or worse.

Despite our advice, the boys built Newtie a home out of an old pot, some moss, water, leaves, and bark. Over the top they laid a mosquito net.

“He’s going to get out,” I told them. “He’ll climb up the side of the pot, down the netting and escape.”

They all laughed at me—who did I think this newt was, Houdini? Har, har, har, Emily! You’re hilarious!

The next morning, Newtie was gone. Emerson was distraught. Jim was dumbfounded: how could the newt have escaped? How could he, a philosophy professor with a PhD, have been outsmarted by a creature with such a tiny brain?

They searched the entire cabin, which isn’t hard because the whole place is smaller than our bedroom at home. After ten minutes Newtie was discovered stuck to a sticky board under the heater (which was off, thankfully).

Jim and Emerson huddled over poor Newtie, assessing the situation. In hushed whispers they discussed the likelihood that Newtie would survive his predicament and hatched a plan for removing him from the sticky board.

“He’s not going to survive,” I told them, matter-of-factly.

“Maybe not, but we have to try!” Jim said reprovingly. Clearly I was a heartless, heartless being.

After running the sticky board under the hottest water Newtie could handle, they finally managed to get him free. This time Jim made him a home in a mason jar with a screw top lid that had tiny air holes poked in it. Newt proof! And he warned Emerson to leave Newtie alone, not to move the jar for a little while as Newtie was likely very traumatized and might not pull through.

But pull through he did. Newtie even made the 16 hour drive home to Pittsburgh where we went out and bought him a nice little plastic habitat with a very secure lid.

That was four years ago. Five years of watching the Newt while we ate breakfast, lunch and dinner. Witnessing his change from land dweller to aquatic creature. Lovingly showing him off to the neighbor kids and feeding him hand-picked worms….

Newts don’t live long. I was amazed we were able to keep him alive for a week, much less years. Every day he lived was a gift, in my opinion. So when Jim discovered that Newtie was gone, I wasn’t surprised. Emerson was sad, of course, and we talked about it, about Newtie’s probable death. Jim’s obsession with finding Newtie’s body yielded nothing: even taking everything out of the cage, piece by piece, and sifting through the dirt and mud like a prospector, he found no remains.

“I want to find his little skeleton! I want to know what happened to him!” Jim said in distraught tones. (Side note: do newts even have skeletons?)

Out of Jim’s hearing I told Emerson the greatest gift Newtie gave us, other than five happy years of his presence, was his second escape, his escape to the Great Newt Beyond. That we will never see Newtie’s decomposed body means we can conjecture for the rest of our lives about what happened to him: did he escape and somehow find his way into the crawlspace under the house and then on to freedom? Did he rot in the basement? Did one of the overlarge worms in his cage eat him? (That was Harland’s suggestion.) We will never know! He is now part of the Carmine Family History, a mysterious part of it, too. How exciting! What a gift!

Jim isn’t too fond of this view. He is still gripped with the relentless desire to SEE Newtie’s dead body. To know what he, as caretaker, did wrong. Perhaps he has forgotten that things die when it is time, despite our best efforts to keep them alive. This is the way of Nature and it's natural.

Rest In Peace, Newtie. Thanks for the great, quiet years. And thanks for that one last great escape. 

Chickens

Stripe, the Easter Egger, and an Australorp

We were driving home from Vermont last summer when Jim said, "We should get some chickens."
My response? "ARE YOU CRAZY? As if I don't have enough to do cleaning up after you and the children and shopping and working and planning our lives, you want to add CHICKENS to my long list of things to take care of? No way! Or...wait...I have a better answer: We can get chickens AFTER you build a coop. How's that for a compromise?"

I knew he would never build a coop. Jim just isn't into getting out of the chair in front of the computer for anything other than 1.) emergencies and 2.) picking berries in the backyard.

Here's the problem, though: the chicken idea took root in my brain. The tiniest kernel of chicken thoughts burrowed into my brain and, very quietly, unbeknownst to me, began to grow. About five months ago, I started to think, "Maybe we should get chickens." And then, a month later, I started researching chickens in a haphazard, I-have-nothing-to-do-at-work way. Then, a month after that, I was OBSESSED with chickens. I could not stop thinking about getting chickens, what kind of chickens to get, how to raise them, where to put them, what kind of coop to buy or build, where to put the coop, how to protect the chickens from predators....

At first I tried to hide my chicken thoughts from Jim because I was sure he would say, "AHA! I knew you would come around to the chicken idea!" Eventually, though, I couldn't help myself: I was bringing home coop designs and buying chicken care books. He was bound to find out.

So I told him. His response surprised me: "You really want to get chickens? I thought we decided we weren't doing that." And, not understanding the depth of my obsession, he assumed the chickens were a distant possibility maybe 6 months to a year from now.

Four weeks ago our chicks came in the mail.

A person can buy day-old chicks on the internet and have them shipped to herself--did you know this? Neither did I, but when I discovered it, I was thrilled! I set up my brooding pens, got all the necessary baby chick supplies and waited for the post office to call me up to say the peeping package had arrived. 


I ordered six chicks: two White Leghorns, two Austrolorps and two Easter Eggers. Only days old when they arrived, they were adorable! Three little yellow chicks (White Leghorn), one brown striped chick (Easter Egger) and two black/white/yellow chicks (Australorps). Ordering on the internet, I was assured the chicks were hens, but concerned that I seemed to have gotten three of one kind and only one of another kind. (More on that later...maybe)


The children, of course, adore the chicks. Sometimes I lie and say I got the chickens for the children. Don't believe it. Education smeducation: my kids do their learning at school. And chickens are chickens: they go from cute to ugly to lovely and then they lay eggs. There's really no good excuse for wanting them unless you are a farmer. 


But then, because I was obsessed with chickens and had done a ton of research, I discovered there is a Chicken Swap at the feed store near us every first Sunday of the month--and the first Sunday was coming right up! That very weekend, after church, I piled everyone in the car and drove on out to the feed store. Just to look. For the children. For education.

"You're going to buy more chickens, aren't you?" Jim asked in an accusatory tone.

"No, of course not! I just want to look!" I told him, indignant.

And I really wasn't going to buy anymore chickens. But then we found this lady selling Golden Buff Orpingtons, the kind of chicken Jim professed to want, so I felt we just had to buy two Golden Buff chicks. You know, for Jim. So he could feel like he had representation in the flock.
"What are you going to name your chicks?" I asked Jim as I handed him the box with the two Buffs peeping inside.
"Lunch and Dinner," he replied. I don't think Jim is totally sold on the chicken thing yet...

So we now have eight chicks in the bathtub at home. People ask me, "Where?" And I say, "In the bathtub." And then they ask, "Outside?" which I find a strange question. Sure, up in Vermont people have bathtubs in their backyards, but not in urban Pennsylvania--at least not that I've seen. Of course the chickens are in my house! But they don't just live in the bathtub--I set up their brooding pens inside the bathtub and Jim rigged up their brooder light so it hangs suspended overhead. When the chickens started flying last week, Jim brought in some chicken wire and rolled it over the top of their pens. Chickens in the bathtub is one thing. Chickens all through the house is another.

At four weeks, though, something strange starts to happen to these previously adorable little chicks that were no end of cute: they turn into pullets.

Pullets are not cute. Pullets are the adolescent phase of chickens and, much like the adolescent phase of humans, pullets are not pretty. They are awkward and flighty (literally) and messy and stinky. Their feathers are just coming in, so fluff is falling off and some places look bald while other places look full and lovely and still other places are covered with what look like feather-tipped plastic needles. No one tells you about pullets. People either talk in terms of chickens or chicks. No one mentions the ugly middle stage.

Pullets have not dampened my chicken love, however. In fact, last Sunday I dragged the entire family on Pittsburgh's 2nd Annual Chicks in the Hood Tour. If you have not done this--and have even the slightest interest in urban farming--I highly recommend it! We visited 4 coops on the East End of Pittsburgh and I found no limit to the number of things to oooooh and awwwww over. Lovely. Gorgeous coops, gorgeous chickens, friendly owners--what more could one ask for? (A Chicks in the Hood shirt in my size would have been nice, but I happily took one of the only XL's left....)

Do we have a coop? You may be wondering this.

The answer is no. I reneged on my own conditions. Mostly because, after so much research I realized that the chicks would be in their brooding pen(s) for 4-6 weeks before moving into a coop and I naively thought it would be possible to build a coop in 4-6 weeks.

I do have the plans for the coop and most of the raw materials. Last week Jim and I framed in the walls of the coop. But, just as with the chickens, I do not want any ordinary coop, especially not a coop a person can buy online or in a store. I want a specially designed coop, just for my chickens, one that is fully predator proof. Because I don't want to have pullets in my bathroom again any time soon.

The Park

Jim: Today we went to the park and ran through the grass and looked at all the beautiful flowers and walked the dog and had our snacks. Oh, and Estella had to pee while we were there and she saw Harland peeing standing up so she thought she would try it too. When she stood up things didn't work like she thought: the pee ran down her leg and soaked her shorts and went all over her shoes. She was very upset. She's not like boys who like to have pee on everything. No--there were tears all the way home. I will never understand girls.

Jim on Child Rearing

"I raised my first kid using Freud and it didn't work. I'm raising these kids using Game Theory."

Sage Advice

Jim, after feeding the kids rice crispy treats for dinner: "People who tell you sugar doesn't make kids crazy are full of crap."

"You should WISH I was dead!"

 Me, thinking of my grandmother with Alzheimers and how my grandfather is taking care of her: "Who's going to take care of me when I'm old?" 

Jim: "You know what your problem is? You haven't had enough husbands! I'm just a starter husband! Look at all my other wives! They obviously knew that! The problem with you is that you think I'm going to be your *only* husband."


Me, flabbergasted: "You *are* my only husband! You just need to live forever. You need to take better care of yourself so you live until at least 100."


Jim: "You should WISH that I was dead! I'm an asshole! Aren't I an asshole? You should be wishing I was dead so you didn't have to deal with me anymore! The sooner I die, the sooner your life gets easier!"

Smoke Signals

Me, following the smell of burning plastic to where Jim is hunched over the sewing machine, working feverishly: "Why does it smell like something is burning?"

Jim: "Because something is. See the smoke?" Then looking up from his work in an unconcerned way, he reaches over and removes a large piece of aluminum foil from the plastic lampshade to reveal what used to be the plastic of the lampshade now melted onto the bulb and going up in smoke. He sits back down in his seat and keeps working.

Me, turning the light off: "I guess putting the aluminum foil on there wasn't such a good idea."

Jim, without even stopping his work, "No, it was a great idea. It was a bad idea to buy such a cheap lamp. Now how am I supposed to see?"

100 Penises

"I wish I had 100 eyes and 100 penises." -Harland
"Um...don't tell your mom that. But that's interesting. Why?" -Jim
"Because then I could spin around in a circle, pee on everything and see what I'm peeing on." -Harland

Phone Call At Work

"______ Library Reference, How may I help you?" -Me
“Hi. Is Emily there?" [screaming and crying in the background] -Jim
“Yes. This is her.”
“Where’s the yeast?” -Jim
“What?”
“THE YEAST! WHERE IS THE YEAST?”
“Oh! It’s in the refridgerator, on the door, third shelf down.”
“Is it in the big mason jar or the little mason jar? Or is it in this tupperware thing? There’s two jars that look like they have yeast in them.”
“It’s in the big mason jar.”
“What’s in the little mason jar? What’s in this tupperware container?”
“I don’t know. I’m at work. I can’t see in the jar.”
“Are you sure this is yeast?”
“Smell it if you’re not sure. Does it smell like yeast?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you need yeast?”
“Because you put a note in Emerson’s lunch saying he’d have pizza for dinner. How much yeast do I put in?”
“A package or two and a half teaspoons.”
“Two teaspoons? That seems like a lot. I thought it was just one teaspoon. Okay. Now how much flour?”
“Wait a minute. Are you doing this right now?”
“Yes. How much flour? [screaming in background gets louder]”
“I don’t know know--why don’t you use a recipe?”
“A recipe? I’m not doing that! Just tell me! How much flour?”
“Okay...wait...1 cup of warm water, 2.5 teaspoons of yeast, one tablespoon of sugar, two tablespoons of oil,” I continue to give him the rest of the ingredients. After each ingredient he inserts an impatient yes.
“Fine, fine, fine. But how much flour?”
“Two cups, mix it up and then keep adding flour until it’s of a consistency that you can knead.”
“Great.” Hangs up phone. 

The Beginning

It is almost Walt Whitman's birthday (May 31, 1819).

"I sound my barbaric Yawp over the rooftops of the world," he penned in Leaves of Grass.

Growing up in the wilds of Vermont, this sentiment is not just beautiful to me but real.

Scaling a Vermont mountain is not the equivalent of conquering Everest, but it does lend itself to that innate human desire to make one's voice heard throughout the mountains and valleys in one's gorgeous line of sight. We have all done it: scaled the mountain, sounded our barbaric yawp.

This is my attempt to sound my barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the electronic universe.