Watching chickens and feeling better

Not sure there's a connection between watching chickens and feeling better, but I have a great deal of fun watching the chickens outside my bathroom window. Once I found the pen empty, door open, and emailed the owner in alarm. Now, I’m more seasoned. I know they let the chickens free range in their back yard if someone is around to watch them. The other day I found a lone chicken in the pen and the other three out roaming. Had the penned one been bad, I wondered. Do you punish chickens? Surely not. Another day, I found the pen empty of chickens but the relatively new pup, who happily plays with the chickens, was trapped in the pen and obviously waiting for someone to come rescue him. It occurs two me that the two young boys, ages ten and twelve, growing up at that house are having a marvelous childhood, whether they realize it now or not.

Now it’s happy hour amusement at the cottage to encourage guests to look out the bathroom window at the chickens. And tonight, in their honor, I had scrambled eggs—from those chickens.

After self-diagnosing myself with everything from stomach cancer to the beginnings of Alzheimer’s, I feel better today and apologize for my whiny blog last night. Signs and symptoms, which I won’t detail here, lead me to believe I had some kind of stomach bug. I’m still being careful but feeling more cheerful—and a bit more interested in food. Now if I could stop blowing my nose….

In fact, I’m feeling much more optimistic about my writing and anxious to get on with my research. But I keep getting sidetracked by the Alice Roosevelt mystery I’m reading, The Body in the Ballroom. She certainly was an interesting young lady—and a fascinating character all her life.

It occurs to me that maybe life gives us these little setbacks as a way of energizing us to go forward. You know, one step back and two steps forward. That’s how I feel about the world tonight.

Our neighbor, Susan, and one of her New York sisters, came for happy hour tonight, and we had a great time, talking about their childhood home, which just sold, our church, where they grew up, restaurants in Fort Worth—Becky says the food is better than New York. And, yes, they looked at the chickens.