...and has for years.
When my daughter was a baby, I could practically guarantee
that the minute I was elbows-deep in a poopy diaper, the phone would
ring and it would be mom. My husband and I got to the point where we'd
joke about it--until it really, truly started happening all the time. I
even told mom about it and asked her to just wait 5 minutes whenever
she wanted to call me.
Today was no exception. I'd spent the
morning cooking and baking, not doing a whole lot. Later on I went out,
intending to resume pickaxing the trench around the small run, and
instead discovered that Wiggles, one of our tiny Belgian d'Uccle hens,
was covered--and I mean covered-- in blood. Her head, neck,
breast, legs and feet. So much so that I couldn't tell where it was
coming from, her head or her foot. I did see that she kept scratching
her head, though. She'd been fighting with another hen, the little
snot.
A quick check revealed no other bloody combatants, so I
scooped up Wiggles and headed for the house to take care of her.
Meanwhile I'm getting a good coating of chicken blood, too.
As I near the house, I see my kid at the back door, and she cheerily sings out, 'Grandma's here!'
Oh, PERFECT. She has to show up now.
My mother already thinks I'm crazy for keeping chickens, and this
little episode won't help. Oh, well, into the house I go, telling my
confused mother as I sail right by her that I've got a bleeding chicken
and will be with her in a minute. Myself, my husband and the kid go
into the bathroom to clean up Wiggles and try to play 'Where's All That
Damned Blood Coming From?', which takes us a few minutes. Poor mom
probably thinks I'm performing a ritual sacrifice in there or preparing
that chicken for dinner at this point.
Eventually we get Wiggles
fixed up and discover that she was missing her face muff feathers on her
left side, which while this gives her a rather lopsided look and she's
sporting a raw patch there, isn't serious. So we dry her off and set
her down to roam the living room and dry out for a few minutes before
she goes back out into the coop.
My mother, meanwhile, is
standing there trying to hold a conversation with me while Wiggles
twines around her feet asking to be picked up--obviously she felt that
mom needed to be wearing gore like everyone else--and my mother politely
ignores her and pointedly tries to not stare at my
chicken-blood-smeared shirt. All this while the kid is excitedly asking
grandma if she'd like to play with the older chicks, and is helpfully
on her way to let them out so they can run around the living room like
complete psychos. Thankfully I was able to head her off before my life
suddenly morphed into some kind of retarded version of 'The Egg And I'.
But lord, mom has impeccable timing.
From kidfreeliving on LJ:
ReplyDeleteI think all mom's have that superpower. EVERY TIME it is the worse time for the phone to call, I can just start counting down the seconds until my mother calls. Oh, and not once, twice. She always forgets something and immediately calls back a second time, just when you're getting back to what you had to do..