In early December, I was gearing up to leave my husband, a plan which had been percolating in my festery, depressed little brain since late last summer. I was a cuckoo basket case all fall quarter.

I lost my marbles and drank a glass of champagne with my friend Supa on December 10. I think I was celebrating getting passed by human subjects to do research. I was supposed to spend the night, and my little girl with me, and we were all going to have breakfast and fun the next morning. Well, my girlie freaked out and shrieked that she wasn’t going to sleep there, not even in the guest bed with me. She got so upset that her nose started bleeding, which upset me, of course. So I had to call my husband to pick me up.

I had done hardly any drinking at all up to this point after I had my first epiphany about my situation late last summer because I was totally on edge and worried about my planning. I didn’t want to tell him too soon, because then things would be really awful at home. I didn’t want to tell him too close, because I thought that would be unfair. On the way home that night I made a super bad drunken call and told him I was leaving him.

In the midst of all this explosiveness, like at the beginning of December, a raccoon got after my chickens. They got spooked and refused to go to their house for lockdown at night, and started roosting in the trees. I made arrangements for them to go off to Supa’s daughter’s preschool, but the remaining four got picked off one by one. I was too caught up in my own mess to have much of a reaction when I would find a new batch of exploded feathers on the patio each morning.

So that’s what happened to the chickens. I’m sorry this is less like a well-written novel and more like a teen drama on the WB. The budget and motivation for continuity around here is almost nil.