Chick Therapy

I have a confession.

After I wrote about how relaxed and chill our morning was on Wednesday, our day unraveled. It started slowly, like a loose thread on a sweater. By late afternoon, I had a pile of tangled yarn in my hands.

It wasn’t a large event that tipped us over. It rarely is.

I pulled the tape off our freshly-painted kitchen and realized we might as well not have bothered with tape. The edges look terrible and will have to be retouched. Not that I don’t have time, but I was looking forward to putting my kitchen back together. (My eldest bumped into the stove Tuesday and, as she rubbed her funny bone, asked, “Can we put the stove back yet?!”)

I need to build a new chicken run to contain both our existing chickens and the chicks I’ve ordered. I know it’s wimpy of me, but I don’t like to build when the weather is…doing whatever it’s been doing. (This week’s forecast: The weather will remain manic depressive, with possibility of a schizophrenic break on Friday. Stay tuned for more news on the pandemic.)

My bees need a follow-up mite treatment, but it’s not a good idea to open a hive during a hailstorm.

You get it, right? Not one huge thing, but the sum of many small things, amplified by the fact that I am an introvert stuck at home with two extroverted (read “talk nonstop”) children.

Fresh blueberry bread.

Wednesday night, something was in the air. Three out of five of us slept badly and woke up completely not ready for the day. I tried to ease into things, snuggling with my two oldest while we listened to a chapter in an audiobook. I got up and made blueberry bread, using a tried and true muffin recipe with some alterations to help use up my overwhelming amount of sourdough starter. The smell of fresh coffee and blueberry bread, combined with—not jazz, but the sound of my son pounding on his sisters’ bedroom door. Then I had to tell my son, “Don’t touch (the dog’s) brain.”

This bread doesn't really need butter, but isn't everything better with butter?

Despite all that, we had a decent morning. Maybe, because I knew it would be challenging, I rose to the challenge. Maybe it was the fact that the solid blanket of clouds had broken and the sun was streaming between big, puffy clouds that looked like cotton candy.

My youngest: “Mommy, do clouds taste like cotton candy?”

Me: “No. You know what fog is like? Clouds are fog, only up in the sky.”

Her: “If clouds are fog, why do we call them clouds?”

We also had a pleasant break in the flow of sameness when I received a message that the ayam cemani chicks I’d ordered were ready. Quarantine or not, I decided a drive to the chicken breeder to pick them up would be a good outing for all of us, so after schoolwork I loaded up the kids and took off.

Three of our four ayam cemani chicks. The fourth was being cradled in a child's hand.

I know it’s an insult to every other place on earth to call one spot “God’s country,” but that’s how I felt as we drove along the highway. The land was rich with deep tones of green and gold. The horizon was open from the Blue Mountains to the Columbia River, and the sun set to glistening the sheets of distant rain from those gorgeous cumulus clouds.

There were also some interesting conversations during the ride.

“Mommy, when babies are born, how do mommies and daddies know if they’re boys or girls?”

“Weeellll…they have different parts.”

“They have…? OOOOHHHHH….”

There’s biology for the day.

We came home with four of those fluffy black chicks. (My husband: “I thought you ordered two?” Me: “I changed my mind.”) I know they won’t stay this cute forever, but for now they’re cottony, chirping balls that nestle in the palm of even my seven-year-old’s small hand. We brought them home and got them under a heat lamp with some food and water, and I just looked at them. Baby animals make everything all right.

I love the ayam cemani eyes.

New Abeka grammar books arrived in the evening. My day was complete. I’m so excited to introduce my eldest to her new workbook so we can dive into it Monday.

She may not be as excited as I am.