Which Came First?

There is a lot of information that I don't know about chickens. I never knew that I didn't know this until tonight. Don't judge me. I'm not a farmer.

"So does Twist really have chickens in her house?" Heather asks.
"She sure does. Right in her kitchen. They're big too. Like emus or ostriches or pterodactyls." I answer.
"What are they for? Why do they have them? Are they going to eat them?" she asked.
"Not unless she wants her kids to need a whole lot of therapy." I say. "I don't know what they're for. I think they're going to lay eggs. No wait, they can't, there is no rooster."
"They can still lay eggs," Heather says.
"How? They're all girls." I ask.
"They only need the rooster to fertilize it. I think." Heather replies.
"Huh? I don't get that. What's in the eggs then?" I'm being honest here. I have no idea how this works. When I think about it it does seem to make sense because chickens lay a lot of eggs, that rooster would be really busy. I just never thought about this before.
"There's still an egg. It just can't become a chick." Heather answers.
"What? What's in it then? Is there still yolk?" this seems insane to me.
"Yes, it just can't ever be a chicken."
"Do people eat roosters or just chickens?" I do ask this. I'm slightly embarrassed to admit it.
"I think so, you know how there are Tom turkeys and... what's the female one?" Heather says.
"I don't even know what you're talking about. Tom who? I asked you if people ate roosters or do they only eat chickens?" I say stupidly cause don't get me wrong, i know this whole conversation is asinine and I'm not even telling the worst of it.
"I think roosters and hens all fall under the umbrella of the chicken family."she says.
"Huh, good point. I forgot all about the whole hen thing."
Then it's Heather's turn. "Why don't chicken's give milk?" she says.
"What?"
"What do they eat? Do you think they nurse?"
"I don't think so, I've never seen chickens with teets and I think they eat they stuff the farmer sprinkles on the floor."
"Good point."

So I just google this. Apparently, the hen doesn't need a rooster to lay eggs. When a hen is about 6 weeks old she will just start laying them. Like very smart Heather said, a rooster will just fertilize them. So it will never be a chick if the rooster wasn't there. So here is another question. Does a vegetarian who doesn't eat eggs believe in stem cell research? Just like, which came first, the chicken or the egg? Which did come first? I flip flop on this. I say egg, no chicken, no it's the egg, no no, definitely the chicken. Egg. Chicken. Egg.

Other interesting chicken facts:
Chickens can have sex changes. So can ducks and peacocks.
It takes an egg 21 days to hatch.
The baby chick eats the yolk before it cracks out of the shell.

I'm like Sue with all my smarty knowledge. You can thank me later.

Rainy Daze

It is so green out there. I think the trees behind my house are about to eat my fence. The lawn looks like a big green flokati rug and the weeds in the flower beds could possibly lead to a land of magic beans.

Sports are canceled. Dogs stay inside. It's harder to get things done. Normal things. It's just so rainy.

I tend to get obsessively involved with projects during long periods of rain like this. You really don't want to go outside so what else do you do? Turn on the music, light some candles and think of rainy activities.

Saige changed her whole room around yesterday. Chase talked Marc into buying him some sort of air pellet gun. Like most things they do together, I'd rather just not know. I'll go with decorating and working on my computer and sifting through collections of things.

Today I went through a lot of books. Kids books and adult books. I love looking at things I haven't seen in a while. I like looking at book collections almost as much as music collections. I think it gives the biggest hint of who someone is by seeing what books they read. I am (at least) a second generation book collector. My Mom always had tons of books. She was always reading. In fact I remember I spent a better part of my childhood saying, "Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom." I sounded like that teacher in Ferris Buellers Day Off. It was hard to get her attention when she was reading. Now that I have children I understand. Completely.

Besides the NYT bestsellers and the Jane Green/Jennifer Weiner genre chick lit my books are mostly on Art and doing Art and Yoga and doing Yoga, there are a bunch of quotation books thrown in there and quite a few decorating books and some on running and a handful on Buddhism and some Art therapy and Psychology left over from my short stint in grad school. That's pretty much who I am, right there. Oh and all my childhood Roald Dahl books. And Narnia and Harry Potter...

This was the first thing I read when I opened the first Art Journaling book. However Walt meant it I thought it was a little sign that was a reminder that the rain will stop. Like everything, it is only temporary. And then we will have pretty flowers and the bright yellow shiny sun.

“Wash the gum from our eyes and dress ourselves for the dazzle of the light.”
- Walt Whitman



Or maybe the light is right there in front of you all the time. All you have to do is recognize it.

Abra-Abra-Cadraba

The word Abracadabra comes from an ancient Aramaic expression, "I speak as I create."

How's that for magical?
I like magic. I like spiritual stuff. I like past lives, angels, clairvoyants, reiki masters and long walks on the beach.

I don't like...when dogs get sick, the smell of wet dogs or muddy footprints.

I think I am going to start using the term abracadabra a lot more in my everyday conversation. I am going to say it as I am whipping up a breakfast feast for my children. I am going to say it as I write this blog, I am going to say it before I decide the flow of my next yoga class and I am even going to say it as I write notes to the school explaining why my kids are late today. I will be honest but creative because the reason they are going to be late is it is raining and I am letting them sleep in. Is that a valid reason for lateness? A rainy Monday morning. I'm not sure. I think it is. I can't be sure though, I threw away that school handbook years ago. It was very bulky.

My Mom used to give us "Personal Days," when we were kids. Days where we just stayed home from school and watched Gilligans Island and played tag around her room. We weren't sick. She just thought we needed a little personal time. I love that. I am more about a little sleeping in because it seems the schools give a lot of days off just because.

So, Abracadabra have a great day. Abracadabra stop the rain. Abracadabra do my laundry.