The parrots who are the cause of all the trouble.  If in doubt, blame the parrots.

The lucky blueberry surprise–I could’ve sworn this pot was taken over by weeds!

The Australian crash potatoes that saved the day.

And the paint silkie chick who told the parrots off and restored our home to order!

Or, anyway, the controlled chaos we choose to call order.

Well, you might want to hold on to your tail!  I think we’re officialy flown past spring and are hurtling toward summer at about, oh, 90 miles an hour!  And that seems the general pace of life, around here.  I’m working on scrubbing up an old manuscript.  It’s a ein]rux suspense novel*.  Since this is always a tryng process, I appreciate Laura’s timely post on the cabinet, and I’m working to strike the right balance between cutting and keeping!

What happened to The Mysterious Chicken Novel, you ask?  Well, it’s still in the works.  I got stuck on chapter five because the plot as I’ve outlined it felt off, and I’m taking my time working out the kinks.  However, I’m pretty good at juggling projects and know I can’t push 3×5 plot cards around forever, so I’m sure you’ll see an update to the word count sometime this year.

In other news, our silkie chicks have survived their first big scare.  They contracted a nasty disease call coccidiosis, and gave us concern for a day or two.  Thankfully they’ve all fully recovered, and have inspired us to rearrange how we run the outside brooders.  Now all the chicks will be up on wire and away from any possible contact with the adults until they’re ‘of age’ and have a little more fiesty immune systems.  We’re grateful that these were super healthy chicks and we didn’t lose any!

Lastly, our younger splash silkies are growing in nicely.  They’re getting so big, I can just barely tell them apart from their older sister.  Here’s Tempest, strutting her stuff and striking a pose.

She gorgeous, but she does live up to her name!  In fact, if you have any freak weather or severe storms–as we are–you might want to offer her some treats because you’ve clearly offended her.

I guess that’s what this chick was thinking when he stuffed himself in the feed bottle.

Don’t worry, I got him out with nothing hurt beyond his pride.  His feet feathers were showing around the bottom, so the other chicks would get curious about these fluffy black bits in their food and give them a tug, making the chick startle and cheep.  Not a dignified position for a chick to find himself in.  On the upside, that’s how we found him!

The truth is I’ve had a pretty good week.  Worked out the design knots for a new coop system we’ve been needing to finish, made our first ever very-own spicey curry chicken–

and hatched an adorable bunch of silkie chicks and guinea keets–

who have sat down to successful peace talks and agreed to stop eating each other’s toes!  Yep, a pretty good week…if you’re not looking at word count:

Which really hasn’t budged.  On the upside, I figured out a few chicken-worthy weapons, such as their super versatile egg grenades!  And, who know?  Maybe I’ll have a hyper-awesome writing-on-Friday-the-thirteenth day, to make up for it?

How was your week?  Got anything worthy of Friday the thirteenth in the works?

I’m sure it looks gorgeous to you, but it makes me want to gag.  Literally.

There’s no getting away from peanuts, no matter how hard I try.  That was the point of an article I wrote and published in Living Without Magazine‘s 2006 winter issue.  It was called Fighting Back, and was more about fighting back my fears than fighting the omni-prevalence of peanuts.  It was my first glossy sale, and I sent my Grandpa a contributer’s copy of the magazine–only to spend the next several years wishing I had a copy for myself.  It sold out early, and was impossible to find.  I finally had to have the editors xerox a copy of the pages so at least I had something to use as credits.

That all changed today.  Yippee!

In honor of cleaning out my basement and finding a long-lost copy of the magazine that I didn’t know I had, I’m putting together a top five list of things you should know about someone with a peanut allergy:

1. No, I’m not making this up.  You’d be surprised how often this comes up–and it makes me laugh every time.  If I was going to pretend a food allergy, you can bet I’d choose brussel sprouts or cabbage, not peanuts!
2. Yes, I carry an epipen.  Yes, I’m still going to ask you to put your peanuts away. In all fairness, this one probably only comes up cause people don’t understand what an epipen does–and doesn’t do.  They think that if I have my epipen, I can still be around peanuts and I’m fine.  And that’s true.  I’m fine so long as I quickly stab myself with a elephant-sized needle and call 911, then spend the rest the day twiddling my thumbs while they pump benadryl into me through an iv.  So…yeah.  You still might want to hold off on the peanuts til I’m gone.
3. Sure, eat peanuty treats on the plane.  But don’t blame me if we have to make an unscheduled landing. This is the one that bites the most, and I apologize to anyone and everyone who packed their kids a peanut butter sandwich and then got on a plane with me.  But, the truth is, if you eat peanuts or peanut butter on a plane you are raising the risk that your plane will have to make an emergency landing if there is someone on board with a peanut allergy.  Sorry about that–I don’t like my flying either.
4. Isn’t a peanut allergy kind of a kid thing?  What’s with you? Wellll…haven’t you noticed yet that I’m not exactly grown up? lol  Seriously, not everyone outgrows their peanut allergy.  Mine has gotten worse the older I get.  Go figure.
5. Don’t you realize how annoying you are? Umm, yeah.  I kinda picked up on that the first sixteen dozen times I had to push myself into other people’s lives and ask them to put away their child’s snack or clear the class/plane/conference of peanut foods.  I get it, I really do.  But, I’ve also made up my mind that I have a right to live and move safely in public and you can choose a different snack.  So, I’m not going away, but I will smile and I will apologize and when possible, I’ll offer a snack of my own as an alternative.  Preferably clean dark chocolate!

There you have it.  And just to show that the peanut eaters and the peanut allergic can live peaceably and coexist, I’m dedicating this post to the fabulous folks at my daughter’s school, who always make me feel welcome and watch my peanut-free back, and the good people of Guinea Fowl International, who recently showed grace and ingenuity under pressure when I sprang my peanut-allergy surprise on them the first day of our conference.  They and so many others have shown me sympathy, understanding, and an open mind, for which I am grateful.  Thank you so much–and enjoy!

Todays dragon picture is a reminder that facing the dragon can be a good thing.

Of course, I’ve paired it with a favorite anonymous quote, because I’m contrary and it’s funny–

Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup!

This guy is still deciding who he is.  What do you think?

These being penguin chicks would explain why the post office had such a hard time delivering them–and why the chicks were so exhausted from their journey!  But I don’t smell anything ‘fishy’, so I’m going to assume everything is aboveboard and I’ve just got the cutest little Marans chicks known to man!

In fact, I’m thinking I’ve got the lion’s share of fabulous fowl and sensational silkies, too.  I mean, really, what’s not to love in a face like this?

So, I’ve decided to give them their own page, or pages, on the blog.  Aside from how much easier this will make selling chicks and birds, chickens play a role in most my books.  In fact, they’re the stars of the show in my latest as-yet-to-be-revealed middle grade.  It’s time to give them their own page!  That way those of you who come here for all things chickens and guineas will have info and pics collected in one place.  And the rest of you won’t have to be quite so patient with my endless supply of chick pics.

Look for updates to the blog soon, and in the meantime, cross your fingers that our ‘penguin chicks’ put a stop to any talk in this family about getting a zoo license!

In celebration of this the year of the dragon and of dragons in general, I’m going to post the long-promised pics of my dragon collection, along with a favorite quote.  I’ll try to post them on the 23rd of each month (Jan 23rd was the Chinese New Year) but I may be off a bit.  It’s a dragons perogative to be fashionably late.

This month’s offering is a pair of dangly dragon earrings that have heretofore had the good manners not to singe my ears.  I’m thinking I got them at a fantasy convention, but since I can’t remember which one, that might be totally wrong.  Maybe the dragons crawled into my suitcase while it skittered through baggage in some forgotten airport, and blurred my memory so I believed I’d bought them.  Who knows?  With dragons you can never be sure.

I’m pairing them with a quote from The Hobbit, because I’m farily certain Tolkien and Smaug were my first introduction to dragons.

“Bilbo was now beginning to feel really uncomfortable. Whenever Smaug’s roving eye, seeking for him in the shadows, flashed across him, he trembled, and an accountable desire seized hold of him to rush out and reveal himself and tell all the truth to Smaug. In fact he was in grievous danger of coming under the dragon-spell.”

If you’re a dog, you tear into a giant snow ball.

If you’re a guinea, you fly into the highest tree and stay there.

If you’re a girl, you make a snowman with super-sonic spikey eyes.

And if you’re me?  You make hot chocolate!

Happy Last Day of Winter!

(never mind what that silly old groundhog has to say!)

Nope.

Our first home-grown silkie chick pipped (broke the shell) yesterday morning around 6:00am, but then proceeded to do absolutely nothing.  After many long hours of nothing–she rocked her egg a bit.  Then she started peeping distressingly, like she stuck and wouldn’t we please come help her out?  Here she is, peeping (you’ll have to imagine the sound) and doing nothing.

In true baby style, she chose the middle of the night to finally get to work.  I got up at 4:00am to check on her and found her mostly out but having trouble cause she’d spent so much time doing nothing that the membranes had dried to her feathers.  I squeezed a bit of warm water from a sponge over her back, and withing minutes she’d kicked her way free.  Graceful as any toddler ballerina, she flopped around the incubator and yelled at everyone else to get out of her way.

As she gained a little coordination, she discovered a new game–bowling her unhatched siblings around the bator.  Two points if they bonked each other, three if they hit one of the mugs.  By the time she was fluffed enough to move from the bator to the brooder, every egg in the bator was wide awake and most were peeping.  In fact, no less than six additional eggs have pipped–thanks to a little sibling encouragement!

Here she is giving the the camera a cranky look.  So rude!  She clearly hasn’t finished fluffing her down!

And here she is checking out the thermometer.  Someone promised her an ipad if she hatched first, and this isn’t it!

We’ve named her Prima, but I’m wondering if we might have to add ‘dona’ to her name!

Sorry.  I’ll give you a minute.

But I’m actually discovering a few morning joys…and it’s nice!  First, there’s the sunrise thing–did you guys know the sun comes up all big and pretty in the morning?  That it does the whole pink and gold gig TWICE a day?  I mean, look at that–it’s gorgeous!

Who knew?

But in addition to the sunrise, there’s also quiet times in the morning.  For example, there are long walks around the pond with Zeke, our dog.  Best of all, when I get home and collapse from the dog-induced speed walk, I’ve already done my exercise for the day.  And it’s not even 8:30am!

I have to tell you, this morning thing is really wooing me.  Life has a nice sense of rhythm to it when the day begins while it’s still clearly morning and there’s no brunch in sight.  It sets me up for a day of productivity, peace–and that great joy in life called an afternoon nap.

You should give it a try!