image too graphic to be displayed

Sometime last night one of the hens wedged herself head first into an iron decorative posts of the chicken coop and died there between chicken wire meant to keep her safe on the ground and the canopy supports meant to keep her safe from the sky.  I could try to understand why or how or what reason she might have had to go in head first or fail to simply back out but she is chicken, reason has nothing to do with it. She had so many other choices, other ways out other than death.  Panic makes animals do strange & stupid things.  Her friends ignored her cries for help.  Her higher beings deaf to her struggle.

As it turns out I am somewhat of a chicken too.  Knowing what her body would feel like snapping in my hand if I tried to free her lifeless carcass, remembering the way flesh, hers hen pecked, would pretend to give under pressure. You can be offended I would even think to show this but one should know that farming isn't a game, that Real Life lives and dies in the pastures and the gardens. Where ever it is, life is a war, battles are won and lost with causalities and consequences. I know this first hand.
BC would never want me to have to do this chore of death but he isn't here to protect me.  To swagger into the kitchen for coffee and tell me the story of the silly dead hen.  My morbid sense of humor is in tact but my nerves are questionable, my soul still bleeding  I  have touched and been touched by too many dead bodies to want to linger with them anymore.
I am afraid she is going to have to stay there until rigger releases her by then the Donners surely will have had their fill.
But I'm more afraid I can't leave her there like even against what I know it will do to me.  I suppose gloves might offer me some protection....

Now rest in peace little chicken.

not always

 The other day while we were out hiking I saw this beaver pond 

so I headed us straight for it.

 Through a field of burs around a moose and over a river, that kind of straight.

Now for some reason Beach thought climbing the dam was a bad idea, might have something to do with the angry beavers we encountered when we were in Jackson but I talked her into it.  I said, "Beach, it is no big deal it is deadfall  just like in Pet Cemetery." 

"Wait! Mom, what did you just say about Pet Cemetery?!?!"

I just don't know

Officially the garden is now the chickens' domain though few have dared to wander in after the long summer of the Farmer Chicken Wars.   

 This little one is perplexing.  BC was in a bad mood last night.  Not only had he shot a nail into his thumb he'd been wrestling with the new joys of having a teenager.  "Hello new full time father meet Mr & Mrs. Parent Teacher Conferences."  I'm sure I didn't help...earlier in the week "Have you seen your kids grades?!" Conner's Mom asked Fisher's Dad choking back copious amounts of laughter.  He took it well considering he was owed about 7 years of "Not quite so simple in real life is it buddy?!" What does any of this have to do with Beach- absolutely nothing but she's the one who went to bed without comment after being chewed to pieces by her grumpy, well meaning, dad. 

And this morning she slept in.  

Stayed in her PJ's well past noon...

 After not dropping dead hiking yesterday I got the nerve up to go for a run.  All week its been killing me I think about it all the time: 

I want to go for a run, I 'd love to go for a run, I need to go for a run...  

Feeling well enough having less to do with it then the need to clear my head   If I had thought I could have made it farther than the mailbox I would have tried it days ago!!!!   As it was I made 4.5 miles with nothing to report but a beautiful blue October.

...yeah, I just don't know.

touch the sky

 "Close my eyes 

Feel you sigh 

A desperate aching wonder 

Will you ever, ever let me off my knees?"

~Bleed Out, Blue October

 “You went- how was it?”

“It was amazing. I couldn’t breathe- it sucked." big happy sigh  "It was so awesome!” 

stirred

When I was a little kid I was sick a lot.  I spent a few too many nights in the old Primary Children’s Hospital and good deal of time in bed beneath a plastic tent stripped of stuffed animals and familiar blankets. I had asthma, bad asthma the kind that could drive a family out of hotel room in the middle of the night to flee a trigger.  But as I grew up, played soccer, and started running the symptoms all but vanished only to reappear in my first 2 children.  

Oddly enough I don’t always mind being sick (which I am a lot!) it slows down my body long enough to trap my mind.  But today under dark skies I can’t help but to relate to child me sneaking out of bed and pressing my face against a frozen window wishing to be out. 

I’ve only been sick 7 days hardly alarming but while I was ’away’ I missed class, miss a day of work, missed being a mom, and it snowed.  I feel like the only kid missing recess.

Sure the snow is keeping up high, one would have to climb a mountain to get to it and I can’t even carry in groceries without falling into a coughing fit.  But I dream of running downing narrow mountain shoots, flying calf deep through snow like a train wreck waiting to happen. I want to fall without consequence, jump without having to think about where I'm going to land, I want to stomp like a rabid giant, and when it is all done I want to throw myself down sweaty and wet into the open back of little red peeling off layers with one hand the other searching for a thermos of steaming hot coffee.  Then sleep the sleep of tired sore bliss.  Dream of icy mountains, of the sound the wind makes breaking through the trees, dream of falling. 

First snow dust of 2013 Wednesday night outside GTC

I really, really just want to go out and play.      

hey you, down in front, quiet!

The last words I was able to speak were "Beach, save Jack!" How awesomely dramatic, no, just a cat fight and Jack as usual getting her ass handed to her by good Old Lady Bug, don't mess with Smalls!

So unfortunately super sick has progressed into this: silence >                       < 

And you know what? It feels fantastic.... well after I got over that whole scary moment when I honestly thought I might be choking to death.  And passed the confusion of waking up looking for the body of the black dog I thought I had been carrying with the intent to set him down and let him run one last time....

Yep that kind of sick that line between real and not real is hazy at best

Ironic too, the kid I am in charge of teaching to read and write is my only link/messenger and if I really needed something I would have to write her a note.  Talk about a heavy job performance assessment! 

Further down the line the October Pro Shop schedule is out and when you add one night of school and the one night Boo has gym I don't work we have one day a week OFF from busy.  Heap on a tenth birthday, a week long trip to LV form the ladies, good camping weather, a story for the paper coming due, and hunting season for the men, that would BOLD Capital B BUSY!  But that is the good busy, I think.  Not the busy that helped get me sick.

Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to crawl back into silence and hot cup of tea.    

in a nerd family

Alex, the nearly-grown calls, "Mom, I need to borrow baking soda, vinegar, and cinnamon. Can I stop by and get them on my way to work?"


"Sure, but what's the cinnamon for?"

"To make it smell like a fall volcano!"

*She's making apple volcanoes for her students to blow up today :) She's a good teacher.