Foolery

Paging Dr. Lipschitz . . .

Got this message yesterday:

"I have a Chicken Poop delivery for you.
Don’t argue. Just give me
your chicken coop shipping address
and no one gets hurt."

How could I argue with that? Of course, by the time I checked my messages I was already late for the Chicken Poop Assasin's delivery schedule, so I got this second message:

"What?!?
The cat’s got your tongue you say?
Cough it up Sister."

I obeyed. You don't mess with someone who claims to have chicken poop and knows how to use it.

When I got home from Yet Another Longest Work Week Of My Life my children were excitedly directing me to the mysterious box on the counter.



Which, of course, they had already opened.

Inside was a note, addressed ATTN: CHIEF HENHOUSEKEEPER & HER FLOCK:

"Sage advice:
Grandpa says,
'If ya got dry lips,
put chicken poop on 'em
so you won't lick 'em!"

And the there was this:



The note continued,

"That's why those displays
are called IMPULSE DISPLAYS.
I know it. You know it.
Everybody knows it -- IT WORKS.
And I love it."

The culprit was, of course, Chicken Fran, one of the funniest, most creative people I know. Here she is at Prom:



A huge thank you to Franny Lipschitz for the big laugh and the chapped lip medicine. You may expect a delivery from the Cow Pie Bakery soon.

Don't Give Her Too Much Credit

Chas told me what had happened with wide eyes. "She got onto the internet, found the site, and made the purchase in no time at all, with my credit card."

"Oh no."

Oh yes. Smedley bought movie tickets for the group on-line because the available adults could not have gotten it done.



Life as we know it is OVER.

Grocery Shopping in Fooleryland

Do you know how embarrassing it is to buy three quarts of Miller High Life? I made sure to buy $56 of other groceries, including fruit, vegetables, two boxes of lasagna noodles, three cartons of sugar cubes, and ice cream. Oh, and a bottle of Malbec and two bottles of tonic. I swear it's the first time a store employee in the produce aisle has ever walked up to my cart, looked into it, and then looked at me. True story. I should have told him, "Weirdest party EVER," but I didn't think of it until just now.



As for the Miller High Life? It IS the Champagne of Beers, you know. Believe it or not, I need it for a project I'm doing, and I can't say more in case someone I know is reading this. Oh wait, that won't happen -- okay, I'm making party invitations for an organization I belong to, and I need three flattened beer cans, the taller the better. I had forgotten they even made quart-sized cans (we're a bottled beer household) so imagine my glee at discovering these! Then I remembered the lyrics of every rap song I've ever sat through, and my heart sank as I realized I was buying big-ass beers -- AND STILL HAD TO TAKE THEM THROUGH THE CHECK STAND. In my local grocery store. On a Sunday. On which I did not attend church. Sigh.

As for the Red Herring Groceries, if you've ever been the parent of a 4th grader, and you live in California, you know why I needed three cartons of sugar cubes and a metric ton of lasagna noodles: it's time for Sparky to make  a huge mess in the kitchen  her mother cry  her model of the San Rafael Mission out of glue, sugar cube bricks and tears  as much floral greenery as we can get away with. Oh, crap, I forgot the glue.

Should have rounded out the weirdness and bought two jars of black shoe polish and a hair net, just to confuse nosy clerks.

All the Snooze That's Fit to Print

La Grenouille est Morte

Look what I found on the living room floor Sunday.



An interrogation ensued.



Silence. Wally wasn't copping to it.



Shifty eyes from Rilo. They may be in on it together. Maybe even the cats had a part in it, but they've made themselves scarce.

Meanwhile, the frog isn't getting any fresher.



We have a mystery here in Fooleryland. And a frog funeral to plan.

The Descent of Wally

Wally sleeps deeply.


Ever more deeply.



Pound for pound, Wally outsleeps anybody. Even grizzly bears. And they hibernate.

Chas Weighs In

CHAS: "I gained TWO POUNDS from all that junk I ate Saturday."

ME: "Do we have any cookies?"

CHAS: "I've been so good this week: other than that piece of birthday cake I've had no sweets . . . no ice cream or cookies . . . I didn't eat Smedley's birthday cupcake . . . no bread, no leftover pizza . . . scrambled eggs for breakfast and tuna in a cup for lunch . . ."

ME: "Oh, I know, we have ice cream, don't we?"

CHAS: "Because my pants were riding up and I thought, "NO MORE of this.'"

ME, MOUTH FULL OF ICE CREAM: "Yep, you saved all those carb calories for a beer sandwich, didn't you?"

CHAS: "One beer surrounded by two other beers."

ME: "Are you sure there are no cookies?"

I Went to the Red Bluff Bull & Gelding Sale and All I Brought You Was This

Who says we don't have traffic issues in the rural West? Daryl, how do you folks solve this problem in Manhattan?

Number 6 on the List of Things I'd Rather Not See

Singing appears mandatory.

500 Channels and Nothing to Watch

The winter television mid-season is here, and already the replacement shows are being canceled. This spin-off was canned before it even started, although the pilot was awesome -- little Mahmoud is the victim of bullying at his school imprisons everyone in his treehouse in revenge.


Back to reruns, *sigh*.

Too Late, Teddy Learns the Meaning of "Wanna Go For a Ride, Kitty?"

PHOTO: SPARKY

It's Friday and I Got Nuthin'

This is what happens when you type in "sledge hammer" at Wikimedia Commons. I swear this sculpture is called "Hammerschwinger," which is my new favorite name for a child. Hello, Gwynneth Paltrow? Yeah, I have a great name for your next son. Or daughter.

I love Wikimedia Commons. 

A No Punctuation Wednesday on Election Tuesday

well hi again
foolery here
making friends
and very likely enemies
but all in the name of Capital P Patriotism
right
am I right

I must be right because you look wrong and I am not wrong
GAHHHHH knows I am not wrong
and I have voted
crow crow crow
and you look as if you maybe did not vote
because I dont see you broadcasting your choice on Facebook or Twitter which is where one does that
apparently
damn all those wrong people to Hell
as long as all of you know that I am right and now
wait a minute
what do you mean its over this early
holy cow the polls just closed on the west coast
WOO HOO
or
BOO HOO
according to which side you are on
which maybe is the problem
because I dont know which side Im on
I thought it was the side that favored civility and courtesy
circumspectitudinousness
the ability to be wrong without making everyone else pay and the ability to be right without being boorish
thats the side I thought I was on
thats the side I want to be on
because I know I basically flipped a coin to be part of the In Crowd

and it seems to me that we start the same way every four years
several good men and yes sometimes women who employ hundreds of people to scour lots of closets looking for skeletons and when they find some theyre all
Oh my heavens well we cant have that now can we who would have guessed
and if they find none they declare the candidate a robot or worse

and then its time for
THE ISSUES
and we all read up on
THE ISSUES
and we talk about
THE ISSUES
and we complain about how no one is talking about
THE ISSUES
and then when someone finally gets down to business talking about
THE ISSUES
on Meet the Press or The News Hour or Thom Hartmann or similar
we are all watching So You Think You Can Dance Like a Fifth Grade Pawn Star
and talking about Fantasy Football

and we devote so much time to deriding the candidates oh how bitterly we excoriate the two left standing
for their religion
for their wealth
for their wives
for too much business experience
for not enough business experience
for what their fathers did or didnt do
for their pronunciations their laughs their jeans their genes their alma maters their turnons and turnoffs their

well you get the picture

and meanwhile what are we doing where are we going who are we talking to and about what
Snooki and Paris Hilton ceded ground to Honey Boo Boo and some weird guy from Korea and most of you know exactly who I mean but we
collectively
have the gall to sneer at the intellects of the candidates
REALLY

I voted
I really did
although it was halfassed and soulless and I had to try to remember which one I picked because really
neither one has much of a chance at much progress when we are all so invested in proving them wrong
so it doesn't matter that I voted for Mitt Romney even though I voted for Obama last time and wasnt surprised or upset that he won tonight
nor was I surprised that all of you were at each others throats acting like asshats on the internet
preening and strutting
shaking fists and moving to Canada
why the hell Canada would want any of us obnoxious entitled selfimportant babies is beyond me
all that matters is that my TV consumption gets back to normal

Dinnertime in Fooleryland

(Photo stolen from these guys) 

Last night we were eating pasta, and SOMEONE was eating a bit noisily.

"Try eating as if The Queen were watching you," I said. "Or your grandmother."

"Can I suck the noodles up like spaghetti?" Sparky asked.

"No," I said. "That's what I'm trying to get you NOT to do. Imagine there's a man outside with a gun, and if he hears you eating, he'll come in and get you." A bit crude on my part, but they saw the opportunity for imaginative play. Or so I thought.

"What if he hears me clank the fork against the dish?" asked Smedley.

"No," I said triumphantly. "He can hear only slurps and smacks and food sounds."

"That's gotta suck," said Sparky.

The Queen fainted.

Two of Us Riding Nowhere, Spending Someone's Hard-Earned Pay

I Googled "October 1972 calendar" and this is what I found. If you only knew how much this will make my friend Cheryl laugh. (Stolen from these guys: page 25 october 1972 protesters)

Today, if I have my days right, is the 40th anniversary of my most enduring friendship. 40 years ago, October 23rd was a Monday, and a new girl came to our little country school. She was rather shy then, but that didn't last. In fact, thinking of Cheryl as shy is almost impossible.

Happy anniversary to my best friend of 40 years, Cheryl!

Picnic Day in Fooleryland

Three of my many blogging friends who feature photography on their sites are Chesapeake Bay Woman (CBW for short), Daryl, and Country Girl Kate. They regularly capture such beautiful images of their corners of the world that yesterday I was inspired to pull my camera out of my purse and shoot. Humble Black Butte Lake can't top the beauty of CBW's Mathews, Virginia, or the tiny things that live in Kate's Maryland back yard, or the cultural richness of Daryl's Manhattan, but it will have to do. It's my favorite part of Fooleryland.


                                                                                                                          
My mom proposed in impromptu picnic at the lake yesterday, and we were all in favor, so the girls and I went with her for the short drive into the western foothills for a quiet picnic in perfect weather.   
                                                                                                                                                                       


Drought has left the lake very low this fall.
   


Summer is over and the water skiers and campers are gone.


 
You can't believe how quiet it was.



They've erected a cool new play structure since we were last here, so the girls had to check it out. Sparky announced that it didn't match anything at the lake; I had to agree. Maybe we have a future designer or architect?


 
We drove to the top of the dam where there is a lookout point. I could live up there.



The late afternoon October sun is unforgiving.


 


Once upon a time on such a picnic my friend Shirley and I swam across that far bay, holding our fishing poles aloft and out of the water. The sucking mud was so thick around the edge of the lake, and the cockle burrs so numerous and sharp, that swimming across seemed like the better option. That was 35 years ago at least. Facing the same choices now I would just buy fish at the store.







Glad I wasn't around when this baby came hurtling out of whatever volcano used to be here.

Part of Black Butte dam, with Farm Sanctuary West in the background. They do good work rescuing neglected farm animals.



The last time I water skied I got hit on the head by my ski right in this bay. Explains a lot, right?



The water skiers may be done for the season, but the fishermen don't give up as quickly.



Looking homeward, out across the valley. And now you've seen so much that you can cross Fooleryland off your bucket list.

Please visit CBW's "Life in Mathews," Daryl's other blog "Out & About in New York City," and Country Girl Kate's "Chronicles of a Country Girl," to name but a few wonderful bloggers who take stunning photographs.

Tractors: Not Just for the Back Forty Anymore

This is a tractor.



Pretty much what my dad's tractor looks like, minus the poop de pigeon and cow.

This is my dad, also sans pigeon and cow poop, maybe.

(Photo by Steve Davis)

But that's not what I came here to tell you about. I told you that so I can tell you this:

Dad has a new TV.

I KNOW, RIGHT? It's all making sense to you now.

Tuesday night I came home from work to this news: "Mom, Grandma and Grandpa -- well, Grandpa -- got a new giant flat screen TV!"

Whoa, Sailor, calm down.

"And he's giving his old one to US!"

Really. "Oh-h-h-h-h no," I said. "I don't want it."

"But MO-O-O-OMMMM!" they whined, "Dad wants it!"

Really.

It isn't possible to take a single photo of this TV. It must be scanned by satellite from space and the resulting several photos stitched together into a collage. Lucky for you, I have the technology:



And, for scale, here's musician and raconteur John Roderick, who is almost 8 feet tall, pretty sure:



So we've established that this is a large piece of furniture.

"Can we put it into the play room, Mom?"

"Oh-h-h-h-h no," I said. "It's a projection screen and could be broken by flying Barbies. Plus, I don't want you two holed up in there watching MORE TV, completely unsupervised. Also, we don't have a satellite hookup in the play room and I don't think we can get that thing through the narrow play room doorway." That covers it.

"But MO-O-O-OMMMM!" they whined.

Wednesday night I came home from work to this news:

"Mom, Dad says he wants Grandpa's giant TV and he's gonna put it in the office. We get satellite TV in the office, and he's gonna make a Man Cave!"

Really.

"Well, that's okay," I said, "As long as he doesn't want it in the living room. I'll talk to Dad tonight." And I peeked into our unused office -- unused because the air conditioning and heat don't reach it and it's either Antarctica cold or Sahara hot. We shove crap into the office, mostly. Also, my brother Mantel Man is storing a bunch of his large neatly-packed tubs of lead in there. And those leaden tubs were all now moved to a completely different wall, the two-ton plaid monstrosity of a couch standing on one end, and a space cleared out against the far wall for Dad's behemoth charity TV.

Great, Chas is nesting.

Thursday night I came home from work but stopped by Mom and Dad's house to deliver something before heading home. "There's a TV at your house," Mom informed me.

"I figured there would be," I said, "But how did they get it over there?"

I tried to imagine the scene. My father at age 78 is basically indestructible, and his younger brother Ken was here and available to help, and of course there's Chas . . . but still, I couldn't picture two white-haired guys and my husband with a bad back loading the world's tallest television into the back of a pickup and unloading it without at least one death occurring.

"It was really something," said Mom. "They got it into the tractor scoop and drove it over to your house!"

Really. Now that's something I'd watch on TV.

"Tell me someone had the presence of mind to get video!" I gasped.

"Oh, we should have, darn it," said Mom.

"No pictures even? Really? And you have a blogger in the family?" HAVE I TAUGHT YOU NOTHING?! I wanted to scream.

Nada.

So you're left with this, amigos, plus your healthy imaginations. I'm sorry I didn't get video, but it would have been grainy and far away, anyway. The TV's too big for the lens.

Another Walk in the Moonlight With My Chicken, Part 3 of The Chicken Diaries

Due to internet troubles this epilogue has been delayed, so sorry. Parts 1 and 2 of The Chicken Diaries are at these links: Why the Chicken Crossed the Road, Part 1 and Chicken Herding, Part 2. You really should go read them as they are both masterpieces.


(Moon photo used with permission of Rhys Jones, Wikimedia Commons)

You may think it unfair that I would dump a chicken into my father's coop in the middle of the night without asking. You'd be right if my father weren't known around Fooleryland as The Chicken Fairy; he has dumped several chickens into my coop without asking. One of those dumped birds was Chicken Dinner, the rooster who terrorized the hens into a molt from which they haven't recovered. My lovely old Buff Orpington Caramel stayed in the stifling hen house most of the summer, and decided in September to live outside. Chicken Dinner had to go so I could bring Caramel back to her rightful home.

And I did, Thursday night after my Beta Sigma Phi meeting. You didn't know we have Beta Sigma Phi in Fooleryland, did you? Well we do. And I was still wearing a dress but I ditched my heels in favor of Crocs -- wearing heels to carry a chicken down a long gravel driveway in the dark, now that's just silly.

This time I involved my parents, who were expecting me. Dad held the flashlight while I . . . well, I chickened out. I couldn't tell him but I am far too arachnophobic to crouch down (in my dress) to stick my arm into a dark  spidery chicken coop to pull a sleepy chicken off her roost, flashlight be damned. "Never mind," I said and ducked out of the coop. "Caramel can stay another night. I don't think I can get her."

"Oh, it's easy," said Dad, who stomped past me into the coop, bent down, swept Caramel from her perch and handed her to me. "See?" The Chicken Fairy still has lessons to teach us.

I headed back down the driveway under the brilliant moon, Caramel pressed to my ribs, resting what should be her chin upon my arm. She was the picture of contentment and trust and I patted her silky feathers all the way home. And she was going home.

Chas came out to hold the flashlight for me while I put Caramel back into her old hen house.

I made him go first in case there were spiders.

Chicken Herding, Part 2 of The Chicken Diaries

I recommend you go read Part 1, "Why the Chicken Crossed the Road," so you're caught up with the rest of the class. Go on, read it, but hurry back. We'll wait.

 

Tuesday evening I walked into the house after work and Chas had dinner almost ready. I volunteered to go round up the kids, so, still wearing my dress and heels, I went outside. On the road halfway between my parents' house and ours I saw Sparky with her grandmother, patiently leading a chicken down the road. "What are you doing?" I asked as I approached.

Mom had a cup of chick scratch in her hand and was throwing handfuls of it onto the road's edge. "Oh, we're just chumming Caramel with this to get her home," Mom answered. And it was working. They had that crazy hen almost home, all the way from Mom's house. But all of a sudden Caramel realized what was going on and turned around. She dashed into the ditch to try to get around us and head for the open road, back to Grandma's house, or at least away from us. Into the ditch I went in my dress and heels, cutting off Caramel's escape. "HA!" I yelled, which works with cows and apparently not with chickens. For all of my experience herding cows in high heels I had no experience herding chickens down the road, in any attire. The bird and I dodged and parried and dodged again, and finally I had had enough.

"I'm done," I announced. "Sparky, it's dinner time. Caramel is on her own." We left that crazy hen beside the road, happily pecking the chick scratch from the dirt. She spent another night on my front porch and was gone before first light again, across the road to Grandma's house.

There are places in this world -- many of them in my own neighborhood -- where sneaking a chicken into a neighbor's hen house by the light of the moon would get a person shot full of buckshot, or worse. Fooleryland isn't one of those places. And so Wednesday night at around 10:15, on a sudden whim, I found myself cradling Caramel in my arms and walking her down the road under blazing moonlight to my parents' chicken compound. If that's where she wanted to be then I would move her there. She would have to sleep in the hen house with the other chickens, which would be a little bit traumatizing for her, but nothing as bad as being jumped by Chicken Dinner ever day or being stalked by a fox.

I approached my parents' house, unsure what do to. With arms full of bird and a cardboard box in one hand I couldn't open their door, and I was afraid I would wake one of them if I rang the bell. So I sneaked quietly past the house to the chicken compound, unlatched the gate, and deposited Caramel on the floor of the coop. She was sleepy from our walk and made no attempt to flee, so I clapped the 3-sided box down over her and she stayed put.

Thursday Chicken Dinner was stuffed into another box and taken to the feed store to be given to the first person who asked. I'm guessing he was swimming in gravy that night.

Check back tomorrow for the epilogue.

Why the Chicken Crossed the Road, Part 1 of The Chicken Diaries

(Original photo stolen from this site)

Caramel, the oldest of our hens at about five years, decided she had had enough of her hen house. Perhaps it was the frenzied attentions of the rooster, Chicken Dinner, who streaked across the yard at full speed to rape whichever hen was unlucky enough to catch his eye. (I never wanted a rooster, and you can read about how Chicken Dinner came to live with us here.) So about two weeks ago Caramel started hanging out under the bottle brush bushes outside my bedroom window. She could not be herded back, nor would she allow me to pick her up to move her. I worried that she would forget where food and water were (chickens have remarkably small brains) so the kids and Chas, with their somewhat larger brains, wisely set up special feeders for Caramel.

She then made camp on our front porch.

Every night for nearly two weeks she slept a few inches above the ground, on the step. I tried putting a 3-sided box over her for shelter from the morning dew, but she crawled out to sleep next to the box.

I worried about the fox.

While a fox would never come up onto our porch, even before dawn, I knew that Caramel would get an early start on the bugs and seeds in the yard and near the road, where the fox would dare to venture. One day Caramel would definitely wake up too early, shuffle out to the road, and meet the fox.

I thought that day had come Tuesday morning.

I looked out my window at first light to see if Caramel was on the lawn, and I saw feathers in the middle of the road. Fluffy downy feathers, the ones that are closest to the chicken's skin and keep her warm -- the ones you don't see unless a predator has yanked them from a hen and spilled them all over the road. I thought my hen was surely gone. But in the afternoon my mom called me at work to update me. "Caramel is at our house," said Mom. "She's been over here all day, and she's fine." Mom and Dad live across the road, about an eighth of a mile walk, hen house to hen house. That chicken had covered some ground.

"Oh, thank goodness," I said. "And she doesn't look beaten up -- like a fox took a chunk out of her?" I asked.

"No," said Mom, then added with a twinkle in her voice, "Your father said she showed up here with a dead fox in her mouth."

This is farm humor. I like it.

More tomorrow. You can't have too much chicken information in one day. You have to pace yourself.