Just Another Crazy Normal Day (photographically speaking)

Once upon a time, there was a girl who grew into a lady's body but maintained the earnestness of a little girl.

After childhood came teenhood.  After teenhood came college.  After college came marriage.  After marriage came children.  After children came a dog.  After the dog came chickens.  After one of the chickens mysteriously died, her sad buddy paced back and forth with such sadness that she knew it was best to kill the chicken and eat it.  (Or at least watch friends do the deed and pluck a few feathers for good measure.)  After witnessing her first slaughter came kittens (which felt so right at the time).  After kittens came the worst stubbed toe of her life while trying to keep the aforementioned dog from devouring these kittens.  After the kittens found a home (thank heavens) came the bruise that has yet to heal on her big fat swollen toe.

And here we are.

Today was a good day, a day like any other.  Not very busy.  Not very exciting.  Just normal.  Even the dull ache of my left foot is starting to feel like the norm.  However, it's only lately that I've noticed how many unacceptable doings occur in our "normal" day.  Come to find out, our norm is not all that normal after all.

The dog.  Ugh, the dog.  I love him 90% of the time.  But that other 10%?  That's when he's opening our refrigerator with his teeth, or burying unwrapped (seriously) roast beef sandwiches in our backyard given to him by some employee (we think?) at Arby's, or squeezing his beefy midsection under our fence so as to retrieve the roast beef sandwiches from that person at Arby's, or pulling me so hard and so fast in the direction of those kittens (the ones I mentioned earlier) that I stubb my toe and curse so colorfully that my kids cover their own ears.

The chickens.  Blasted chickens.  I have a beautiful coop that my dad and Terry made, but I want them to free range for part of the day, so I do.  Inevitably after free ranging in our more-than-adequate-space backyard, they fly over the fence into our front yard where people drive by and do double-takes.  I swear these chickens are going to cause a car accident one day.  (Also, between specialty chicken books, farmer's almanacs, and Google, I've yet to find a method for clipping wings that work.)

And then there's the kids.  They are everything.  The kids are why I don't get rid of the dog and chickens after they've tried "flying the coop" again and again.  So to speak.  They require the greatest amount of my energy- and rightfully so.  I love doing all the stuff that comes with motherhood!

. . .


So this morning Fiona goes to school.  Neve and I take the dog on a short walk.  Then we start playing.

I played this one game where I blindfold her and make her smell different things (banana, cinnamon, olive oil, garlic, almonds, crayons, soap, and a shirt straight out of the dryer), guess what they are, and then draw them in her sketchbook.  She LOVED this game.


Then she played in her dollhouse while I made lunch.

I did some other important things (like color coordinate the colored pencils) before going to a friend's house for a playdate.

After I picked Fiona up from school, we came home and played a little more.

And when Lincoln Logs got old, we drew faces on our chins and laid upside down on their beds and had a few laughs.  Or at least Fiona and I laughed, while Neve complained that it was "too creepy."  She actually HATED this game.

So, we cleaned up the Lincoln Logs, did not wash our necks and chins, and headed outside to feed the chickens.  We fed the chickens in our bare feet, specifically.

~Camilla goes to town on that cracked corn~

~yup, that's a plastic owl lying on it's side~

~notice the lovely taped toes?~

That's when I noticed how awful our backyard looks.

~the back of our barn~

~lights that dangle so low that Terry gets caught like a fly in a web whenever he passes~

~a basin of water with toys and buckets floating inside from who-knows-when~

Who lives like this!?  Why am I just now noticing how depressing it looks back here!?  Quick, girls, grab a rake!  But wait.  Where's the dog?  Banjo wiggled his way under the fence when we weren't looking, and he's probably on his way to Arby's.  

The girls and myself go running down our street, limping barefoot, with marker-drawn inverted faces on our necks, chasing a dog who has no incentive to turn away from the direction of Arby's.  As if it couldn't get any uglier, 2 of our 6 chickens fly over the fence into the front yard, running after us.  It's a veritable parade of crazy running down our avenue, flight attendants and pilots watching from their driveways as they're unloading their baggage from their rental cars.  

I wave and mutter something like, "Wow.  Chasing a dog barefoot is just how I wanted to spend my afternoon...", har, har.  But that wanna-be explanation doesn't account for the marker eyes I have staring at them from my neck, or my kids' necks, or the chickens in tow.

Once he's caught (with the help of one of those chilly humorless attendants), I have to carry his 40 lb sack of skin back again.  Barefoot.  Limping.  Kids and chickens following.  I'm-looking-at-you-with-my-neck neck.

. . .

And I'd be lying if I said that this was the first time this has happened.  (Minus the neck eyes.  That was a a first.)