Blinky: The Love-Rat Rooster

We have two groups of chooks at our house.

There’s Blinky and his Missus, and their two teenagers…(one of them isn’t his, but he never noticed)

  They are a family of bantam Buff Pekins…oh and the black one is Blinky’s old…ahem…girlfriend…she’s just visiting.

And the other bunch of chooks are Amazonian, full size, brown egg laying girls….or should I say Grrrls.  Cos they don’t need a man, Man!

 See?  They live in the BIG run.  While Blinky and his Missus live in the Family run.

Blinky is a devoted and ferocious family man who cuddles up his woman, is protective of his teens to a distance of 10 metres, and sneaks up to attack my ankles if I’m hanging washing on the line and his offspring wander too close to me, which I’m sure they do just for laughs (Oooh!  Stop!  Gerroff!!)…

BUT the little blighter very recently did a runner on the Missus and the Teens.  You see, this Summer it has been incredibly hot here in Murrumbateman and I’d gotten into the habit of letting all the chooks free-range around the place so they could forage in the shady parts, and dustbathe to their hearts content, before being locked up at dusk.  Believe me, that sounds much more attractive if you are a chicken.  Anyhoo…one night recently after trying to rape and pillage the BIG Grrls, with little or no success other than an odd look…he decided he would woo them further by going home with them THAT NIGHT!

I didn’t notice that he’d snuck into their shed when I went to lock them up at 8.30pm, but when I went to let them out at 7 the next morning, THERE he was trying to tell the BIG Grrls to come and share some breakfast and pillaging with him.  They were just stepping over him with irritated looks on their faces, but he was not to be deterred!

I could not figure out why he’d done such a thing, and have been scratching my head about it three days later, until I just went to feed and console his little Missus, and found her sitting plumply, and scoldingly on a little, wee, chick.  I’ve told him he has a new baby and responsibility and he must give up on the hope of love with the BIG Grrls and go back to the family home with the Missus and the teenagers and I’ve locked him out of the BIG Grrls bedroom.  So far I’ve counted Blinky running 57 laps of the BIG Grrls run to see if there is a doorway he has missed.  And I’m pretty sure the BIG Grrls are smiling and sighing with relief.

There’s still another egg to be hatched and whether Blinky’s Missus takes him back or not remains to be seen.  Stay tuned.

Blinky, you Love-Rat Rooster you.  You’ve just committed the ultimate Love-Rat sin.  And you’re gonna pay.

 Boy, you’re gonna pay.

Dear Diary

When I was awake at 4am this morning, pondering on the Universe, my parenting skills and my horse’s hoof, I decided as you do, that this year I would have a diary.  I have had diaries on and off throughout my life, but certainly not in the last decade or so…who has time when they have nappies to change and wash, and food to cook and clean off the floor…don’t answer that….I certainly had no time to write in a diary then.  But now…instead of imperfectly blogging about what’s on my mind, when naturally it becomes an exercise in writing readable, and hopefully amusing discourse, I decided I shall augment things by writing a diary. 

This pleases me because not only will I have a personal record of the weather at any given time which is far too boring to write in a blog, but also of what I plant where so I don’t forget (do you know  on New Year’s Day I discovered a bed of asparagus I planted 4 years ago and had entirely forgotten about?  Asparagus!  Imagine! Who forgets asparagus?), what I made when and how I got the inspiration (probably from Ginger, because she just has that effect on me) and also what was going on in the Hill household from month to month - always a giggle when rediscovered ten years after various child/parent stalemates I’m assured.  I had the opportunity to read the diary of a neighbour’s mother-in-law, written before her marriage, back in the 1920’s and I was captured.  In her sparse words, I was whisked back to a life which was so acutely angled from the one we live, and yet aspects of her felt so familiar.  I wonder if old blog posts will have that far-reaching effect in 80 years – somehow I can’t imagine it at all.  The good news is, as my friend Nik pointed out, if nothing else it will certainly give me fodder for blog posts; a good thing because my memory is still unfortuantely like that of a goldfish, wherein I think “Writing about the effect of crazy PMS on my abilities at the sewing machine, otherwise known as ‘why my family hides once a month’” is a good idea, but I can’t remember it at all 5 minutes later, when I’ve finally sat down at the computer, because I’m trying to remember where I hid the chocolates someone gave us for Christmas”.  You know…can’t force the brain to hold two new things at the same time, right?  Right?

Anyway.  This also takes some of the pressure I’m renowned for putting on myself to write every day.  I can try to write every day, but it may just be: It rained this morning and looks like it will this arvo (not insignificant in our neck of the drought!) This takes an enormous amount of pressure off myself, from err….myself.  And to that end, I had to get a day-to-a-page diary, which is apparently impossible on the 5th of January.  Can you believe it?  I thought not only would I find one, but it would be 75% off!  Not a chance.  There were a billionty eleven diaries of a week to a page, and there were eleventy ten blank journals, but I didn’t want them.  I HAVE 13 blank journals for writing in – they’re for creative writing time and that’s why they look like a mad woman’s breakfast…what I wanted was a DIARY.  With printed dates on each page so I wouldn’t cheat.  Because, you know I would if I let myself get away with it.  This way I can say to myself “Oooh you slack tart, you’ve skipped a whole week and a half!” and then I can retort back to myself “Yes, but sometimes not saying anything is saying something, so shut up!” and then I can say back “….

You know what?  You don’t need to know what I’d say then….it’s the PMT ok?

Anyhoo, all you need to know is I wanted a day-to-a-page-diary that didn’t need a wheelbarrow to carry.

And I got one.  At full price, cos that’s the kind of luck I roll with.  But it has little boxes to tick with weather symbols and smiley faces, or not, as well.  And I’m gonna write in it. 

I am. 

 Am so. 

You just wait and see.

Christmas Cheers

It’s eerie.

I have all the presents.  The wrapped ones are wrapped, the sent ones are sent, the handmade ones are handmade, wrapped and sent.

Christmas Lunch is at my place this year, my father keeps inviting extras and changing the schedule to suit himself.  I haven’t cooked a single pre-prepare thing yet; and the weather forecast keeps changing.  As a result I have changed my mind several times: deciding to cook the ham and turkey buffes the night before and preparing a cold meat buffet with some appropriately celebratory colored and crisp salads in order to prevent heating our house up with the oven on from daybreak and overcooking our guests with our lack of A/C (when nobody’s here I lie on the cool tiles under the ceiling fan, until the sun has left the verandah side, and then I waft out there with a glass of something cold and dewy and gin-like). 

Now, however, I’m thinking it will be bacon wrapped waterchestnuts for horses doovers, plum glazed ham on the barbecue, slow cooker mashed potato, turkey buffes (light and dark meats) in the oven, Nigella’s mini-marshmallow topped sweet potatoes, Gravy, Moulded cranberry salad (from the old Potluck Cookery Book circa 1950), crisp green salads with moonblush tomatoes (also Nigella) and goats cheese,  followed by Raspberry Ice cream Cake from the free Coles magazine.  You see, the weather forecast is for rain…. a double, no triple blessing.  We need it already, our guests will be cool and comfortable and our place is shown in it’s best light with rain falling outside: the plants quivering up instead of drooping down, the horse looking romantically black and windswept instead of dusty as he leans in the kitchen door, the clouds low and broody on the hills.  How lovely.

The eery thing is it is only three days away and except for writing the above paragraph, I have not made a single move to put this plan in place…nevermind that I still have to make the traditional family Brudher that we eat for breakfast on Christmas Day, RSVP and wrap gifts for friends who have invited us for drinks, and yell at the kids to tidy their rooms and keep them that way or Santa may make a detour…as will the guests if they get a whiff on their way to the bathroom. 

 Yes, I am positively calm and unbutterflied…and I haven’t been drinking despite what you may think…it is only 10 in the morning after all.  Instead I’m lying around, reading bits and pieces from the piles of books next to my bed (instead of putting them away), planting and babying trees in terrific heat that would have died had I left them on the $2 table (so where’s the risk?) and trying to figure out how to make a Maxi-dress from my fabric stash that I can louch around in so the neighbours don’t bust me in my nighty.  Again.

I think I’m dreaming of a Zen Christmas, so if it stays this calm, I’ll be thrilled.  But if it turns into a calamitous explosion of activity and chaos like it normally is and I have a glass of champagne in my hand, that’ll be OK too.

Merry Christmas to all!  And to all, a Good Wife!