Generally, chicken ranching is going very well, and their society seems very stable at five. There is no sad pariah chicken and no real bully. The pecking order is settled and there is always a hen to keep another company, even if one or two go broody.
HOWEVER, there are apparently cracks in paradise. Someone called the city and reported me–I got a letter yesterday. It merely said, “Three is the limit” and dinged us for the dead Christmas tree in the driveway, which, NOT ours. The neighbors left the tree in the driveway for months last year as well. It is their way.
So now I am faced with which two chickens to give away, which sucks. And yes, I broke a rule and got called. That’s life. I am thinking the two silkies should go together, since they were raised together, and are homies. I would also let the giant blue cochin go with a silkie. The cochin is my youngest and she is laying very well now that it’s getting lighter–she’s just under a year old. All three birds are very non-aggressive.
Pass this on if you can think of someone who might want to take a couple for free. Otherwise I will put a call on Backyard Chickens in a few days.
So, whomever you are, anonymous reporter, vengeance is yours. Unless you are the new people in the apartment which overlooks my backyard who have commented on how noisy our chickens are, because you will soon discover that three chickens make as much noise as five.
“Quick, do a feminist deconstruction of this book cover,” P. said, waggling a trade paperback at me.
“Ummm…”
The title read The Pretender’s Crown. It looked like your typical fantasy cover for a novel set in some vaguely Medieval time and place–big tits in a velvet dress holding a crossbow thingie. Surely the story would concern a plucky heroine who would cutely meet some rogue, misunderstandings would occur, and she would off some bad guys with darts tipped with poison that she had been trained from childhood to ooze out of her vaginal walls. Lucky for her, the rake was IMMUNE. There will be a sequence on a ship, a crusty father figure who will declare the heroine’s spirit untameable, and she and Rake will knock boots in the sequel.
Wait, did I just write a book there?
“Eh, it’s not so bad, actually,” I admitted. “You can see HALF her head, even. The model does not look ridiculously emaciated. It’s ooookay.”
“Look,” P. said, and showed me the giant dent in the spine that appeared to be evidence that someone had twisted or bent the book at some point.
“Hmm, looks like it got jammed into a bag or something,” I remarked.
“I dunno,” P. said. “I bet someone did that on PURPOSE. I bet this book is really really really really terrible.”
“Oh just GET it already,” I said.
“Okay.”
We checked out and he walked me back to work in the mist.
“What if you picked this up and you got SUCKED IN and you COULD NOT PUT IT DOWN?” he said.
I scoffed. “I have already read that book,” I said.
“You DID? When? How is it?”
“Yes, it was a couple of years ago, and it was called The Princess Assassin then.”
“Oh, I see what you did there,” he said, and we had a laugh about it. Then he got quiet.
“Anyway,” he said. “It was called The DECOY Princess.”
I just got back from Canada again. I have seen 3 different provinces in the past 6 months, go me. I have mail and life here to catch up on now. How was your weekend?
My mother was the amateur kind of mother, whose mothering was so whimsical and sporadic it often took the intended target of the mothering by complete surprise. She continued to make rookie mistakes her whole career, which I noticed as a child, and deplored retrospectively once I spawned. I am no slouch, but I think I was certainly outfoxable as a child. I have always respected people who outfox me.
My mother preferred the direct, hamfisted approach to things, which was not at all foxy but at least allowed all the resentment to flop around out in the open. I think with children you can take a few tacks. Give them choices, or the appearance of choices to meet your ends. Hardline them if you have to, but as a last-resort and as a one-off, if possible.
What I mean is this: my mother yearned for me to troop off to summer camp every summer, so I would be out of her hair and she could carry out the diabolical adult plots that made up her tawdry semi-rural Midwestern existence.
“She just WON’T go to camp,” my mother would sigh into the phone to one of her friends.
My picture of camp was shaped by Judy Blume and her ilk. I was convinced it was a place for awkward social situations and guaranteed rites of passage. Would I be the girl who made out with some cute boy I never saw again? Would I start my period? Be the outcast girl? Would there be East Coast JEWS there?? These are lessons I decided I could pass on having among sadistic strangers. I think if my mother would have taken five minutes to do some research so she could give me a choice or describe the camps I might have reconsidered.
Finally, at the end of sixth grade, her chance came at last. The sixth graders were allowed to go off to the camp in the forest preserve that bordered our property. When the announcement was made, I was pretty let down. I had spent a large portion of my young life there as it was, hiking around alone in the woods, visiting the blind owl, or sitting by the river. I didn’t think I would learn anything new there with a bunch of the goofy, guitar-playing counselors Judy Blume had primed me to expect. Still, a week off school was a week off school, so for once I dutifully brought home the mimeograph.
My mother threatened me. “Don’t you DARE walk home if you get bored,” she said. Why on earth would I do that? I reasoned I’d rather spend a week with assholes my own age.
The first couple days were uneventful, and entertaining enough. We were taught dopey songs as my careful textual study of teenagers in their natural habitat had promised, but the food was not as awful as I expected, and there was no beverage mysteriously named “bug juice.” There were also no Jews, just my cracker-ass classmates. What were Jews, anyway? What did they look like? Did they just inhabit books from the 1970s?
On the third night I sacked out on my lower bunk after a little talking and giggling. One of my oldest friends was above me. I was surrounded by girls who, for the most part, I had known for years. There was some talk about putting someone’s hand in a bucket of warm water, much like you might at a slumber party, but we knew the teachers would pull us up short.
I awakened the next morning to the sounds of my name. It was worse than being awakened by being talked to; I was being discussed.
“Yes, I saw her do it, too,” said Keri Mitchell emphatically.
Poor Keri had the stigma of being not only one of the prettiest girls in class, but was also saddled with monstrous, cartoonishly-large breasts from third grade on. According to our version of justice in the universe, cartoonishly-large breasts were awarded to ugly girls, so that they could at least have boobs to make up for their dog faces. How, why did we all know this was true and that this was a tragic flaw? Poor Keri.
One of the girls having a huddle about me noticed my eyes were open where I lay and turned on me.
“What was your problem last night?” she demanded.
“What?” I said, completely confused.
“You woke us up. You were such an IDIOT,” Keri said.
The girls recounted how I got up in the middle of the night, apparently headed for the bathroom, and on my way back I began skipping up and down the aisle between the bunks and SINGING THE THEME SONG TO THE SMURFS FOR GOD’S SAKE. Why did my subconscious hate me as a child? The one time I go to camp I perform somnolently for half of my class? Of course by breakfast all the boys knew, too, and the story had grown somehow.
“And then she did a cartwheel,” one girl told Jason Petersen, whom I did patrol with and had a crush on. I liked him so much that one day I paddled him with my hand-held stop sign, causing me to get yanked inside by my evil nemesis fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Dixon, where I was made to do lines for a week instead of shepherding little children across the street. She looked at me and saw a child who was not fit to lead children into oncoming traffic, and she was right.
I decided to take advantage of my temporary notoriety by adding fuel to the fire.
“Yes, one time I was sleepwalking and I went to the corner store and STOLE a Jolly Rancher,” I claimed. Out of necessity I was an unapologetic and inveterate liar, and I craved the attention that came from telling wild stories. The other children, having seen me put on a middle of the night show complete with music and choreography, were ready to believe I was capable of anything while sleeping.
“Mom, why do you tell me to ‘lie down’ and you say that you ‘lay stuff down’?” Strudel asked, while she was putting her boots on. I launched into a brief explanation of lie and lay as I was putting my laptop into my bag.
“Strudel, you mean you DON’T know the difference between the transitive and the intransitive? What ARE they teaching you at that school?” She shook her head slowly.
Suddenly, P. shouted from another part of the house: “GIVE HER A BREAK, SHE USES THE SUBJUNCTIVE CORRECTLY!”
First things first: thanks for all the comments on my last post. I enjoy dodgy science SOOOO much, don’t you?
Second thing: with regard to my search for a calf’s head for an upcoming recipe, I must say: DUH. Of course no one wants to sell me one. Mad cow disease and all that. I am not interested in using the brains, however. AHEM. So I say to you, if you happen to have a calf’s head laying around that you are not using, I would be appreciative of receiving it for this other thing I’m doing.
Thing number three is Franny. Franny has been off-kilter and insecure for some time now…really since her father moved away a year and a half ago. Makes sense, right? When she opens up about it, she says things like, “I don’t think he really loves me.” I know this age can be very insecure, and she certainly has her moments where she cries that she has no friends or she has the WORST LIFE EVER, but the thing with her father is troubling because it’s a recurring theme.
And when she says it I feel this twinge, not just for her, but also because it echoes how I felt when her father and I were married. I really felt like he was phoning it in most of the time. It also makes me think of being her age and really wanting a father myself, instead of some psycho that my mother married.
What to do with this? I feel cheated. If anyone is going to mess them up, it should be me. There goes my ten year plan to give one of them an eating disorder and make the other one completely mental if she gets anything less than an a-minus on anything. Where’s my justice, universe? Probably behind the entertainment center again.
I thought about what I knew about people who were now adults who’d had surrogate parents in their lives–those people who actually gave a shit. I thought about those moments when adults stepped into my life and did not see me as some kind of alien, but as a kid who needed some care and attention. Someone to worry about them and to say, “I care what happens to you,” with the unspoken “even if it seems like no one else does.”
Then I thought seriously of her sister’s father. P. met Franny when she was two years old, when she used to follow me around at school when I was running errands or picking things up on non-class days. When P. and I got involved, he became a strong presence in her life–another adult who was looking out for her well-being and had a good relationship with her. Then Strudel came and he became her sister’s father, so was significant in another way. Pragmatically and coldly speaking, he is my babydaddy and he is not going anywhere. He is not someone who is going to skate on Franny. This is important. I am not ready for her to learn that even really cool people can skate yet.
The thing about P. is that he has always been super respectful of the fact that Franny has a father already. He and I spent a lot of time figuring out how to negotiate our new family–how would we fit, what were the boundaries? He bosses her sometimes, like any adult might, and teaches her things and they have conversations and he genuinely LIKES children, which is something I found appealing about him. I have always felt that he was a worthy and strong man to be in her life.
“So,” I said on the bus to P. the other morning. “It seems like Franny is kind of losing her father to his other family.”
“Yeah.”
How do you say this to someone?
“Would you…could you be more of a father to her?”
“Yeah, I can,” he said.
I rattled on about how great I thought their relationship was, and how I felt he had never overstepped. I said how I see Franny watching him really care for Strudel, really fathering her, and I could see the longing. A witness to what having a father is like at both houses, and not really feeling it for yourself.
“I don’t know what you can change. Maybe hug her more and tell her you are proud of her and stuff,” I said. I know he is proud of her and he does tell her. “Does this all sound horribly fake?”
“Well,” he said. “You fake it until it becomes real.”
This sounded harsh to me for a second, until I thought about when I met Franny. Jesus Christ, I thought, what was I supposed to do with this baby I had pooped out? I don’t even KNOW you, I wanted to say. Who are you? I kissed her head and hugged her and joggled her and talked to her so she wouldn’t grow up to become Charles Manson, and one day, I won’t say how long it took, it became real. I really did feel like I knew and loved her. P. loves Franny, I know he does. I am hoping that taking it up to the next level is easy, or at least doable.
Well, my constituency has spoken: a majority of you in the past few days voted for me to try out My New Pink Button ($29.95, free shipping), the temporary genital dye as reported about on Jezebel and elsewhere. Well, guess what? Just in time for a wild and crazy Friday night, it is delivered discreetly to my house.
For those of you not yet familiar with the product, My New Pink Button is there for us ladies who feel that their junk needs some pinkening up due to age, hormones, or ethnicity. I have not really thought about the color of my ladyparts, well, ever, and I have probably not done the Our Bodies, Ourselves hand mirror thing since before I had children. I feel that anyone who has an opinion about the color of my junkdrawer can take their disco sticks elsewhere, but I was curious about this product for the sake of SCIENCE.
The kit contains 20 of the cheapest eye shadow applicators you will ever see, the kind where the foam is kind of wonkily glued on to the plastic stem. Also included is a small vial of pink powder, helpfully labeled “Marilyn.” I chose this shade because I felt like my vagina could most identify with her: pill-popping, confused, and crammed into small garments. Someone else would have to be a Bettie or an “Audry” (sic?). My favorite part of the kit was the weeniest, most adorbs shot glass I have ever seen. Perhaps this was a hint that I should drink to steel myself for what was to come.
Next up: the instructions.
“Occasionally a woman is self-conscious of her Labia since childhood.”
The instructions say to sprinkle a little of what looks like Barbie blow into the shot glass, wet the applicator, and pick the powder up with the wet applicator.
An overpowering sweet smell rose out of the vial as I sprinkled the powder. The ingredients say it is made from about every fruit that has been trendy for the past ten years, and includes cinnamon. There is also an ominous warning in the instructions that “for some, a slight ‘irritating’ feeling may occur upon application and last for about a minute.” An irritating feeling? Like the cosmetics industry telling me I should be self-conscious about yet another body part? Oh, wait, a different kind of irritating.
Myrrh is misspelled. Should I be concerned?? So is chamomile. Never mind, on with the rejuvenating of my drab baby cannon. I picked up some of the powder, which immediately bloomed with color. Oh dear. What was this, Lik-a-Vagina?
I put the product on and let it sit as the instructions advised. Things were okay for a few seconds, and then…THE BURNING! I have certainly felt worse, but it was very noticeable. The instructions assure me that this burning is “due to the ingredients reacting to your bodies own PH balance which is normal and will go away upon rinsing off the colorant.”
Rinse it off I did, and did I notice a difference? I did not. I will confess to you I took before and after pictures for my own scrutiny. Well hello there my vulva. Long time, no see. Sorry about the burning sensation.
Since I am Irish and turn pretty white in the winter, I decided to do a patch test on my arm, where it did not burn, and I could view it up close to see the staining effect.
During the staining:
After the rinsing:
See that barely-perceptible color change? Yeah. I had a hunch after the way it smelled and how it looked when wet, so I licked my arm before I rinsed it, and it tasted just like unsweetened Kool-Aid.
In summary, I would file this with magic creams that purport to take twenty years off: don’t bother. And don’t think so hard about your vulva, either. Just enjoy it, FFS.
ETA: Hello new visitors. I will be in and out throughout the day releasing new moderated comments. Once you comment once, you’re golden. Thanks for your patience and for the feedback already.
1/18: Helloooo Jezebelles! I am pleased to become part of my thrice daily reading. Someone mentioned “Betty Beauty,” the pubic hair dye in the comments there. I‘ve reviewed that as well.
Yesterday SeaFed’s third child was decanted at some sort of modern medical institution. For those playing along at home, only one of those children is mine. For reasons of her own, Franny is in a bit of a funk about gaining a new sibling, and I will confess to you that the gleeful ebullience in the voicemail he left me yesterday made me slightly nauseated. This was followed by a picture of the new baby in my email which has the same giant pumpkin head as the other child. Is it less a case of Tiny Vagina, and more a case of what the medical community refers to as “casaba cabeza.”
I am dying to know if they still have lice, but not enough to, like, ask. You know? I guess I will find out when Franny comes back on Monday.
So things were a little wacky over here last night, and both of my girls ended up falling asleep in my bed while I stayed up and watched new Big Love. My girls are still fairly small and Franny is about as thin as a sheet of paper right now, so I slid in beside them with Strudel in the middle.
Of course Strudel spent half the night kicking me and the other half crowding me, with a little intermittant blanket hogging thrown in for variety. Feet up in my ribcage reminded me of being pregnant with her, when her primary occupations were kicking, drinking her own pee, and killing off the competition.
Finally, around 4:30, Strudel crept over to Franny’s side of the bed, which was immediately deemed COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE. Sometimes Franny reminds me how much bullshit I put up with unquestioningly, and then I remember that Franny is a lot of the reason I learned how to put up with booshit. Twist.
“STRUDEL,” Franny stage-hissed. “MOVE OVER.” “STRU. DEL. MOOOOVE!”
Of course Strudel could sleep through a café full of Northface jacket-wearing Seattleites fighting over the last vegan, gluten-free, sustainably-sourced croissant in the pastry case.
“OW!” Strudel said finally, half-asleep.
“OUT FRANNY,” I said. Franny sniffled and stumped off to her own bed and Strudel oozed back over to my side of the bed, where she stayed until my alarm went off at six, leaving Nietzsche at least half of my queen-sized bed.
And no one learned ANYTHING.
In Other News
This fucking guy is cracking me up today. Do stick around for the comments section. I posted that I thought it was satire, and I want to believe, I do. Speaking of no one learned anything, all this young hombre is going to conclude from this little crusade is that The Internet is Mean. which, well, duh.