Abby Has Left The Building

Well, guys.  That day has come.  Abby has up and left the nest.  She's started to grow her wings, and she needs room to half-fly. 

No, I'm not a nauseating parent or uber-rich celebrity that has begun to refer to myself in the third person.  The Abby I'm referring to is the chicken Abby.  The Abby of the poultry variety. 

As you know, my husband spent the early spring building a chicken coop.  The thing about baby chicks, though, is that they can't live in a chicken coop when they're first born.  It's kind of like a newborn baby -- you work hard at getting the nursery ready, only to have the little creature sleep in a miniaturized (and padded) bathtub next to your bed.  So when our six baby chicks (named after me, my sisters, and my sisters-in-law) arrived at Casa de Diaz a few days after my birthday, they were plunked in a cardboard box.  In our dining room.

Classy.

Over the month of May, they entered their tween phase of life.  They lost the baby-fat cuteness.  They became scrawny, sprouting feathers in weird places and generally looking awkward and uncomfortable in their own skin.  They developed serious attitudes, ganged up on one chicken, and stopped wanting to hang out with us.  I think one of them experimented with alcohol (she couldn't hold her head up and she kept hiccuping). 

Remarkably, they also began texting like maniacs and we had to take the computer out of their box.  You should have seen the stuff they put on Facebook.

Right around Memorial Day, we upgraded them to a large television box, which we put on our enclosed front porch.  It was nice not to have a fowl view (PULITZER PLEASE!) during dinner, but the porch positioning didn't solve all our problems.  A subtle eau de chicken permeated the house, there was a thin layer of chicken dust covering the porch floor, and the stairs up to the second floor bedrooms landed right at the entrance of the porch.  Which meant that we had a noise funnel for all the clucking and chirping and scratching those chickens liked to do. 

And let me tell you, those little buggers did not obey their curfew in any way, shape, or form.  There's nothing like successfully getting your actual, human children to bed, only to be accosted at 11PM by the late-night raucous of a gaggle of geese wannabes.  And when we caught one of the chickens skulking back into the house at 6AM after a particularly outrageous night on the front lawn with a wandering rooster, we knew it was time to lay down some new laws.  Foremost among them: you're chickens.  Start living like them.

So this morning, inspired perhaps by a slight let-up in the rain, my husband bounded down the stairs while I was making everyone's lunches for the day.  I didn't see or hear from him for about 20 minutes, and then he bounded in the side door of the house.  (My husband does a lot of bounding.)  He gleefully announced "THE CHICKENS ARE OUTTA THE HOUSE!  THEY ARE IN THEIR COOP!!"

At which point I did my first cartwheel in 13 years, became so deliriously happy I started speaking in tongues, and passed out cold on our kitchen floor.  I was awoken shortly thereafter by a long trickle of drool dangling from my son's mouth.  (I had fallen beside his high chair.)

You've been through this journey with me, so it's only fitting that I share it with you.  Here's the chicken coop my husband designed and built:

Note the thatched roof, built from sticks from our yard.  Take that, upcyclers of the world.  I also think the bird feeder and the flower box are nice touches.  As are the salvaged windows.

And here are the chickens enjoying their new digs:

I guess we caught them during a game of Follow the Leader.


So, we're empty nesters, people.  Or should I say we're empty roosters?  Maybe I should just say we're no longer in violation of numerous health codes and child safety regulations.

Better yet, I think this is the type of occasion befitting of a quote from the venerable Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr:

FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST.  THANK GOD ALMIGHTY, WE ARE FREE AT LAST!

Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls

If you're planning on visiting the state of Maine anytime soon, bring your foul weather gear, a rowboat, and some towels.  It has been raining here -- sometimes torrentially -- for more than 48 hours.  In fact, it's much like that scene in Forrest Gump where he's fighting in Vietnam and remarking on all the different types, strengths, and directions of rain he encounters during his combat tour.  Minus the rice paddies and the war paraphernalia. 

Yes, the hallmark of the past weekend was plain old wetness. I'm not even sure that "wetness" was a noun before this weekend, but it certainly is one now. The satellite imagery of our state just shows a large, unmoving green blob, with said blob representing gushing rain.  And according to the sadistic weatherman I listened to during my drive to work, the earliest we're going to see the sun in these here parts is Wednesday.  Reminder: today is Monday.

There's nothing better than having every outdoor activity condemned by Mother Nature when you have two young children and one antsy husband. 

Check that.  Everything is better than the above scenario.

Given my limited range of activity over the weekend, I took the time to jot down some of the conversations (both internal and external) we had during our forced quarantine.  Enjoy.

**********

ME:  Won't this be so nice?  We can spend some quality time indoors playing games, baking, being creative, and just getting back to family basics.  Plus, there are all those chores I've been trying to find time to get done, and this monsoon provides the perfect opportunity to focus on those.  This is just great.  Tupperware drawer?  Here.  I.  Come!

MYSELF: You are highly over-estimating your stamina, motivation, and imagination and dangerously under-estimating the needs of your offspring, the energy of your spouse, and the number of minutes you are about to spend inside your small house.  Good luck.  Idiot.

**********

ME: Who's up for chutes & ladders?!?

4-year-old daughter: I want a treat! 

ME:  It's 9 in the morning, you wouldn't eat breakfast, and we're concentrating on bonding right now.  Would you rather do a puzzle?

Daughter: I would rather eat a treat!  T-R-E-A-T!

ME: Here's a treat: your mother's undivided attention.  Now, shall we break out a new pack of finger paints?

Daughter: That's insulting.  I am not following you down that dead-end street.  My focus is undivided, my object is clear.  Give me a treat or I'll give you my fury.

ME: Hey, look!  Your princesses are talking!  They're telling me they want to play with us too!

Daughter: Not going to work, mother.  I will not be distrac -- hey!  There's the lollipop I didn't finish in February!  Right here where I left it in the dollhouse!

ME:  I said we're BONDING!  Now put down the frigging lollipop and be cute!

**********

ME: What would YOU like to do during your special mommy-and-me time?

8-month-old son: I would like you to watch me stick things in my mouth.  Like that knife.  Or that hammer.  Or the multiple plastic rings my sister has in her room.  Which would be more fun for you?

ME: How about we skip the choking hazards and concentrate on more wholesome diversions.  Wanna sit up and clap?

Son: I'm going to take that offer and add it to my diaper.  Try this on for size.  Put me on your bed.  You know, the elevated one with no prison bars.  Leave me there unattended.  Let's just see what happens.  I promise not to roll over....more than thrice.

ME: I'd prefer your first sky-diving expedition to include a parachute, professionals, and the urn containing my ashes.  Do you want to bang some plastic cups together?

Son:  What's....that....over...there?  Let....me.... creep....over....and....SUCCESS!  Papi's flip-flop!

ME:  Did you just....??  Was that just.....?  Did you just show the first signs of someone who is going to crawl sooner rather than later?  NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

**********

ME:  Time for grocery shopping!  We'll pretend we're Dora and explore for dry spots as we sprint from the car to the store.  Fun fun fun!!!

Daughter:  Can I bring my singing globe and my Barbie computer?

ME:  Sure!  Great car entertainment for the drive over!

Daughter: No.  I want to bring them in the store WITH me. 

ME:  Oh.  Okay....

Son:  And I'd prefer not to get soaked during this sure-fire disaster of an outing.  Could you rig some sort of contraption over my car seat using multiple blankets, an over-sized rain coat, and perhaps some plastic baggies?

ME:  That sounds cumbersome.  Couldn't you just --

Son:  I will not negotiate this point.  You're the one who could have sprung for an actual, waterproof cover for my car seat.  You chose not to.  This was your destiny.  Not mine.

ME:  Point taken.  I should have no problem juggling you, your 50-pound car seat covered in new layers of material, your 30-pound sister who refuses to walk, her bulky toys, and the pile of reusable bags.  I'm sure there will be open parking spots near the store entrance.  It really shouldn't be that far of a walk.  This will all go really well.

MYSELF:  I.d.i.o.t.

**********

ME:  Honey?  I'm kind of out of games and local errands.  Do you want to do a story-time with me?  Or take Daughter to see a movie?  Or plug that hair-dryer into the outdoor outlet, position me under the drainage spout, and play catch?

HUSBAND: What?  I can't hear you!

ME:  That's because you're working outside in the middle of Noah's Revenge and I'm shouting at you from the porch.  I know the chicken coop needs to be finished, but couldn't you just --

HUSBAND:  Speak UP!  Can't you see the geysers shooting sideways out of my ears?  Also, could you wipe off my glasses?  They're so foggy!  I haven't seen anything out of them in about 3 hours.

ME:  HOW ABOUT AFTER LUNCH YOU TAKE DAUGHTER TO THE LIBRARY?

HUSBAND:  Can't!  Have azaleas to plant! 

**********

ME:  Honey?  Remember that little stream or creek or sewage slurpie that runs alongside our house?  It's kind of almost overflowing.  Should we be concerned or buying sand bags?

....

ME:  Honey?  That little stream or creek or sewage slurpie is now kind of a raging river.  Should we call the Maine tourism board or its equivalent and list our yard as an attraction?  I think that's what white water river rafters look at and think "vacation!"

....

ME:  Honey?  That little stream or creek or sewage slurpie is now kind of a boiling witch's cauldron.  And...hey!  Call the cops!  Someone is white water river rafting down our yard! 

HUSBAND:  Hey, great!  I'll call the cops as soon as I make a kayak out of that birch bark I've been saving and the left over wood chips!  I've always wanted to see how it feels to have raging floodwaters underneath me.  This is my Man versus Wild moment!  I can finally understand what Bear Grylls felt like all those times he was wearing bear skin and eating poisonous mushrooms.  This is the best weekend ever!!!!!!!

ME:  I strongly disagree. 

Before the Parade Passes By

The older I get, the more I despise certain holidays and appreciate others.  On the "more despise" list are New Year's Eve and St. Patrick's Day.  On the "more appreciate" list is Memorial Day.  All the others currently occupy the same place on my emotional reactionary radar as they always have.  I will keep you posted if any move up or down in my rankings. 

This is kind of the same type of enjoyment you get from hearing about NFL power rankings.  I know.

Memorial Day is sneaky in its awesomeness.  Everyone has a vague sense of its meaning: honor the people who have fought to keep this country the type of place where a woman can decide if she wants to vote into the presidency a man who happens to be black.  But no one quite understands what makes Memorial Day remarkably different from Veterans' Day, other than that the former is in May and the latter is in November.  Everyone looks forward to the long weekend Memorial Day affords, but no one expects a card or a present to mark the occasion.  It's a holiday that asks little of its celebrants while recognizing those who sacrificed a lot.

Therein lies the awesomeness.  When's the last time you ever had a to-do list associated with Memorial Day?  Never.  What's the last Memorial Day gift you stressed over?  You don't have an answer, because that's a trick question.  Who's the last relative you dreaded coming over for the big Memorial Day meal?  No one, because on Memorial Day, you only have to be with the people you choose to be with.

And when's the last time you took a moment or two or ten to think about the guys and gals that wake up in the morning to a pang of homesickness and a knot of worry about whether the day will bring a roadside bomb or a downed helicopter or a surprise Joe Biden pep talk?  Hopefully yesterday is your answer.  But before yesterday, your answer was probably Veterans' Day 2011.

So on Memorial Day you go to a parade in the morning and you give the smallest thanks in the history of thanking in relation to the gift you've received.  You clap at the uniforms, cheer for the bands, and maybe tear up at the speech or the singing of the national anthem.

Then you go home and you fire up the grill.  You see some friends.  You get a sun burn.  You keep forgetting it's Monday.  You watch some basketball.  You go to sleep.

Thank you, armed forces of all generations.  You do the hard and dirty work and only ask for a parade and a burger in return.  Sure makes Jesus look like a pretty demanding guy.

Yesterday, we celebrated in high Memorial Day fashion.  I dressed my kids in red, white and blue.  My husband, mother and I took them to our town's parade.  We waved the little American flags the parade hosts were passing out to the 200 or so people lining the parade route...which spans about a quarter of a mile.

Needless to say, our town's parade is quaint out of one eye and kind of a let-down out of the other.  The attendees are either families like mine, with young children, or our town's oldest citizens.  In fact, Memorial Day may be the one day of the year that older set breaths natural air.  It makes for a somewhat odd mix along the parade route.  The younger set is ferociously prowling for the free candy, and the older set is maintaining a strict proximity to the ambulance camped out on the corner.

This year's parade lasted about 7 minutes.  Less than the time it takes me to check out of the grocery store.  Here's the breakdown:

• Minute 1: 8 old fashioned cars driven by old fashioned humans
• Minute 2: 1 old fashioned sleigh or something driven by grandma and mama, who spent most of her time making sure her daughter (holding a pail for some reason) doesn't fall off
• Minute 3: 1 girl on a unicycle holding the hand of 1 gullible friend
• Minute 3:30: 3 make-shift "floats" with metal folding chairs, on which sit veterans from unidentified wars waving nervously as the "float" lists and creaks
• Minute 4: 1 team of spelling bee contestants lugging their purple-spangled trophy in a red metal wagon
• Minute 5: 1 cluster of volunteer firefighters, followed by 1 firetruck
• Minute 6: 80 highly-embarrassed high schoolers pretending to be a marching band and playing the exact same song that faux-band has played at this event since 1983
• Minute 7: 133 6-10 year-olds, plus their parents, wearing their Little League uniforms and carrying sagging bags of candy

Not surprisingly, but perhaps inappropriately, it's the last group that really gets the crowd riled up.  Everyone was quietly oohing at the old cars and scratching their heads at the unicyclist and the spelling bee cluster.  The band elicited lots of "poor things" comments.  The actual veterans got polite claps and waves.  But the Little Leaguers.  Boy oh boy.  It was as if Harry Potter were giving a piggy-back to Justin Bieber while he read the Hunger Games.  The young portion of the crowd erupted in squeals and extended hands that looked like a greedy version of a politically incorrect hand salute.  The hysteria of mere dozens of sugar-jonesing youngsters is a thing to behold.

Not to brag, but I had anticipated the hysteria-wave.  To be frank, the previous 6 minutes of the parade had been something of a snooze.  I had talked up the parade big-time.  Even invited another family to come with us.  And up until the Little Leaguers, it had inspired the same degree of patriotism that cutting a "Made in Taiwan" label off your t-shirt does.  I felt responsible for the let-down, but figured I might have a chance of salvaging the morning with the whole candy thing. 

When I saw the arrival of the polyester uniforms on the horizon, I got my pack of candy-eaters ready.  I put them front and center on the curb.  I showed them how to make grabby fists.  I screamed "this is what we came here for!  Make me proud!"  And I waited for it to rain dum-dums.

Well, there was a barrage of sugar, but it didn't make it to the sidelines of the parade, as any decent barrage of sugar should.  Instead, those wily Little Leaguers were simply THROWING THE CANDY AT EACH OTHER.  Those kindergartners and 3rd graders snatched their caps off their heads and started filling them with the Swedish Fish that the Pizza Pirates were throwing, or the nerds that the Wal-Mart Walruses were underhanding.  My assembled preschoolers watched on in increasing panic and horror.

It was right about the time my daughter reached for a jawbreaker and had it ripped out of her hands by someone wielding a catcher's mitt that I did it.  I jumped into the oncoming traffic of the slow-moving parade, spied a lollipop shaped like a princess castle, and went for it.  Just as I began to smoosh my son in the Baby Bjorn to reach down to grab what was rightfully mine, a 4-foot-thief came in to steal it.  Like any mature woman and mother would do, I STUCK MY FOOT OUT AND STEPPED ON THE TREAT SO HE COULDN'T TAKE IT.  Like some kid at a birthday party fighting for the pinata innards.

I woke from my trance only when my husband screamed out, over the din, "Abby!  What in Christ are you doing?!?"

I looked up, wiped the drool from my lip, and shame-facedly resumed my position on the curb. 

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you respect Memorial Day.  You take a perfectly good day and act like the worst version of yourself so that the heroes you're celebrating can feel that much better about themselves. 

In spite of myself, I still had a great day. 

See?  Memorial Day is indestructibly awesome.

My Bill

Last night I was watching Giuliana & Bill again.  In the episode, Giuliana went to see a mock-up of a magazine article that she was interviewed and photographed for one day before her mastectomy.  She and the magazine’s EIC reminisced together about her cancer fight, and Giuliana remarked that she would never have been able to get through it without Bill.  “I am lucky to have a Bill,” she said.  The EIC agreed.  I did too.

I’m lucky to have a Bill, too.  Not Bill as in Bill Rancic.  Giuliana and I aren’t Sister Wives.  A Bill as in my forest-fighting, animal-wrangling, do-everything husband.

I think it goes without saying that I am not an easy person to deal with.  My internal temperature is usually set just north of “snarky,” and I’m often quietly asked to remove myself from many public settings.  Like playgrounds.  Cocktail hours.   Bail hearings.  Especially bail hearings I try to make into adult playgrounds by bringing cocktails.

I say and do stupid things all the time.  Literally, all the time.  There’s not a second that ticks by over the course of the day that I could confidently say I dominated.  Maybe it’s because I look like I’m one eye-mask away from being the frumpy-version of a caped crusader.  Maybe it’s because I tried to do a sit-up at the gym and I got stuck on the way down.  Maybe it’s because I tried to fill awkward silence by telling a terrible story that was meant to elicit laughter but instead managed to hugely insult my listeners.  Or maybe it’s because when I try really hard TO dominate some moment in time, I just screw it up royally.  Like the time last night when I tried to microwave organic “fish nuggets” for my daughter and almost set the house on fire.  That’s an example.

But somehow, right around the time of my 21^st birthday, my then-friend decided that all of my short-comings were something he could take a long view of.  He didn’t care that I walked around reading a book.  He didn’t care that I was prone to tears.  He didn’t care that unless a task required memorization and regurgitation, I would be able to contribute frightfully little.  He was willing to hang around because…well, I have no idea.  The universal appeal of biting sarcasm?  My strong proof-reading skills?

Regardless of the reason for his gamble, he took it, and twelve years later he’s waking up with me on my 33^rd birthday. 

We’ve survived law school together, law firms together, and lawlessness together (I’m referring, of course, to all those times we go over the speed limit).  We studied for the bar together.  We spent our first year of married life together in a fourth-floor walk-up in Hoboken that made up for its lack of a/c with its abundance of mice.  We traveled through Spain and Portugal, staying at hostels where we pushed dressers and chairs in front of our doors at night.  In one of those rooms, we found out we were pregnant with our first child.  We watched the entire Sopranos series on DVD over the course of a couple weeks in the wee hours of the morning after too many hours in the office.  We renovated two apartments, one by ourselves and one with help.  We rode subways and buses together to work.  We spent two years trying to figure out why we weren’t able to have another kid.  Then we got pregnant again.  Then we lost the pregnancy.  Then we got really tired and decided to make some big changes.  Then we got pregnant again.  And then we moved to Maine.

Through it all, my husband has been the problem fixer.  Sometimes I help, but he’s team captain.  From clogged pipes to broken screens to boo-boos to front stoops to unorganized drawers to complicated taxes to hurt feelings, he fixes.  He has words for moments when I have none.  He has patience for story-time and elderly aunts and stubborn jar lids and tightly-taped packages when I don’t.  He has an eye for detail, an ear for nuance, a touch of genius.  He can be a frigging riot, and he has been a one-man dance party.  (Twice, actually.  In the same month.)

He’ll figure out what to do with all those wood chips, and it will probably be something along the lines of fashioning them into a water-tight dinghy.  He’ll finance his company’s next deal during the day and come home to order pizza when I charbroil dinner.  He’ll laugh at me when I’m unintentionally funny, and explain to me why jokes about head lice aren’t appropriate anywhere, most particularly during preschool drop-off. 

I am the one thing he’ll probably never be able to fully fix.  And maybe that’s how I nabbed him. 

I look forward to many more birthdays of trying to figure it out. 

In the meantime, I’ll just remain thankful for my Bill.

Pass The Peace Pipe

I've known my husband for more than a decade; we've been married almost 8 years.  And it's true what they say -- you are always learning something new about your spouse.

This weekend, I learned that if my husband were Native American, his name would be Sir Chips A Lot and his animal spirit would be a beaver.  Which I think would make him a member of the Passamaquoddy tribe, but I'm no expert.

Alas, he's Puerto Rican.  So I gave him a borinquen name, which is cabron, por que no puedes jugar al golf?  Roughly translated, that means "Hey Asshole, can't you just play golf?"

You know about his chicken mongering.  You know about his skunk trapping.  Someday I'll tell you about the rusted-out, 1960s Jeep truck he bought days before our son was born that sits at the top of our driveway.  Today's focus is on the wood-clearing efforts he has dedicated the past two weekends to.

Editor's Note:  Yes, our home is available for weddings.  No, I don't know when the next vacancy is.  Yes, if you want to use our livestock in your still shots, it's an extra cost.  No, I don't think you'll be able to use the truck for your drive-away.  It doesn't have seats.

This husband of mine has never met a hamper he likes to put laundry in.  The last time he made a bed was in this dream he had about military school.  He thinks wet towels dry best when they're lying on the floor.

This same husband was annoyed by all the sticks lying in the woods surrounding our house.  He thought they looked too messy, just lying there being sticks.  He wanted to clean out those grounds so that they boasted nothing more than plain old dirt.  Like God and tent-pitchers intended.

So last weekend he spent two days clearing out all the sticks.  He laid them in piles along the perimeter of our property.  Picture, if you will, our home as the scene of one of the obstacle course challenges the Hunger Games tributes had to tackle before earning their scores for sponsorship.  It was real homey.  If your home is a dam.

He spent last week like some pioneer man, drinking his coffee standing at the window, staring out at his piles of sticks, deep in thought.  As if he was going to reckon when the locusts were going to strike or if the weevil bugs were going to threaten the crops this year.  Only in his version, he was wondering how he was going to get rid of the woods he'd just removed from the woods.

His answer: a wood chipper.

Now, I know I live in Maine.  I even grew up in Maine.  But all that living has been done in the populated part, not the potato part.  So before this past weekend, I had no idea what a wood chipper even looked like.  It's not like we have BYOL (Bring Your Own Log) parties on Saturday nights where the kids get to decorate safety glasses with puffy paint and glitter.  Yet somehow my better half seemed to know about these contraptions, and he was confident it was just what we needed.  THEY EVEN RENT THEM AT THE HARDWARE STORE RIGHT DOWN THE STREET!  It's as if a wood chipper was our destiny.  We couldn't NOT rent it.  (Screw you, destiny.)

So on Saturday afternoon, my husband borrowed my father's truck and went to pick up our Hungry Hippo.  My children and I were frolicking in the lawn, just waiting for Norman Rockwell to come paint us.  All of a sudden, it got shady and the temperature dropped.  I looked up from the daisy chains we were making and saw a small tank making its way down the street.  I started leading the way to the bomb shelter, thinking surely we were under attack, when I saw a familiar looking arm waving gleefully out of what I slowly discerned to be the driver's side window.  It was my husband. Towing a large, lumbering, yellow thing I now know to be a wood chipper.  Into our driveway.

We spent the next five minutes just staring at each other.  He was grinning.  I was not.  We were each trying to figure out why the other was having the reaction he/she was.  Finally, we both gave up and the conversation returned to our relationship.

We had to figure out where to put this wood chipper.  It was currently behind the truck at the very end of our driveway, and if we agreed on anything that Saturday, it was that we could not send a spray of wood chips into the main public road.  My husband volunteered to back the entire rig out the driveway, and then back it into the driveway.  That way the chipper would be at the top and could then be angled to shoot wood chips along the side of our driveway and kind of back into the woods. 

Problem is, my husband had never driven a trailer before.  So he had a hard time figuring out how to maneuver the world's largest truck attached to a man-made mountain of metal.  For every two feet he backed up, the wood chipper only jack-knifed two feet more in the exact opposite direction we wanted it to.  At one point, the right front tire of the truck was perched precariously on the low stone wall lining one side of our driveway, and the chipper was about to take its first bath in the shallow creek that runs along the other.  It was at that very moment where I turned to my daughter and asked her "How do you think Papi is doing?".  Her answer: "Not very good."

The lesson here is that we should start letting our 3-year-old plan our weekends.

Finally I started shouting directions at my husband, which were of course very helpful and very precise.  They didn't compute, though.  Soon I was just standing expressionless in the middle of our driveway, stone-cold still except for my mouth, which was screaming "LEFT!!!  NO MY LEFT!!!  OKAY, YOUR RIGHT!!!  WATCH THE BIKER!"

At that point, my husband put the car in park and asked me why I was berating him so publicly.

I said I wasn't berating him, I was just giving directions.

He requested that I please do so in a more loving tone.

I responded that he was dangerously close to death-do-us-parting.

So we abandoned ship and decided that we would PUSH the wood chipper to its final resting place.  That effort turned out not to be so bad.  The chipper finally got to where we "wanted" it, and I got to squeeze my spleen out my ear.

With all systems go, my husband spent the next 36 hours chipping wood.  Feeding sticks and logs and tree limbs alike into the mouth of a digestive system that would make a champion hot-dog eater jealous.  It's moments like this that make a guy appreciate hanging on to that hard hat he lucked into during a company outing. 

Everything -- from our house to our cars to our 7-month-old -- soon became covered in a thin layer of saw dust, and our neighbors all brought over casseroles to thank us for the droning hum coming from our house.  It was busy.

At one point on Sunday, my aunt and two cousins stopped by for a visit.  They hadn't gotten the memo about our wood-chipping extravaganza.  They stepped out of the car, saw the activity, and looked at me.  I could tell they were trying to decide if they should greet me with a "hey!  how are you?" or a "we're so sorry for your loss."  They left soon after.

But eventually it ended.  The last bit of earth was cleared, the last stick was munched.  The wood chipper was returned to its rightful owners, and peace was ours again.

The sun was shining.  We had a late lunch.  We de-sand-blasted my husband's exposed body parts.  We bonfired his "work clothes."  We tossed his ear plugs. 

Then he looked at me and queried:

"Now what do we do with all those piles of wood chips?"

It's at times like that you really do wish you were Native American and that someone was passing you a pipe.  Both because they can weaponized and because you can smoke your husband normal.

Coop, There It Is

When my husband isn't busy wrestling woodchucks and skunks, he has been occupying himself with building a chicken coop.  In our backyard.  That is going to house actual chickens.

We've come a long way from New York City, baby.

Our efforts to domesticate poultry begin on May 1st -- just in time for my birthday -- and I am sure I will have more to say about becoming a Mother Hen after I've done some late-night feedings and rocked Chicken Little back to sleep after a bad dream about sky-falling.

Today, I just want to talk about the chicken coop itself.

My feelings about having a chicken coop with real live chickens are lukewarm at best.  My grandfather was the ultimate Mainer/farmer/man's man, a guy whose idea of entertaining me and my sisters was to take us to the racetrack for some betting or enlist us to pull up buckets of water from the fresh-water spring he dug.  Even he would warn us, as we mucked out horse stalls, that chickens were the stinkiest animal you could find on a farm.  I'm a bit queasy at the thought of those odors greeting friend and Johnny Depp alike during a cook-out or drop-by visit.  Their little beaks also freak me out, and I have images of myself streaking across our backyard as my heels get nipped by a gang of crazy chickens who want their eggs back.  I hear those eggs are dirty when they are first laid (I imagined they'd come out as pristine as I find them at the grocery store), and I have enough to clean without "chicken eggs" being added to the list.  Finally, my daughter is paralyzed with fear in the face of any non-human living creature, from ants to water buffalo to cats and dogs.  In fact, before we go anywhere, she asks me "will there be a cat, dog, or any animal of the four-legged variety," and only if I swear on a bible that there will not be does she agree to come along.  Now we're introducing a flock of chickens into her own backyard.  A backyard I predict she avoids until she's 52 and we're dead and she has to come tie up the loose ends surrounding our estate because we forgot to add a provision in our will about who the chickens go to.

BUT, my feelings about my husband are several degrees above lukewarm most days, and he really wanted to Dr. Doolittle the place up.  So here we go.

Now, I must admit, as the days tick by, I'm pretty impressed by the whole chicken coop enterprise.  My husband grew up in a suburb of San Juan, Puerto Rico; he is an attorney; he can speak several languages; he has skin that has never known a blemish; he has eyebrows that today's runway-walkers would kill for.  This same guy has designed and constructed a chicken coop that would make Martha Stewart and Ty Pennington's love child blush.  It has glass-paned windows, a sky-light, a flower box, a hook for a hanging plant, doors that swing open on brushed-nickel hinges, trellised walls for "cross-ventilation," and a roof made of sticks he found in the woods behind our house and thatched together himself.  It is a chicken coop extraordinaire, situated at a just-right angle in the back corner of our house.  If the chickens don't like it, I might move in myself.

He is proud of it, and I am proud of him.  So proud that I am willing to risk our daughter's emotional stability and the ire of every guest ever to pull into our driveway.

Here's the problem.  Our lone adjacent neighbor is an asshole.

To be fair, the lady that actually lives next door to us, in the sense that she receives bills there and takes care of the lawn and when asked "where do you live" provides that street address, is the perfect neighbor.  She keeps to herself and lets us keep to ourselves.  It's her brother that's the asshole.

This guy lives in Texas (of course) and swoops in for visits with Sissy every quarter or so.  On his most recent trip home, the chicken coop was in its earliest stages.  Sensing something afoot, this genius moseyed over and, with the subtlety of a Secret Service agent looking for a good time in Colombia, interrogated my husband as to his intentions with said coop.  My husband was forth-coming, and even went so far as to give Asshole his business card should further communication about what we were doing on our damned property ever be necessary. 

Yesterday, it arrived.  The little emailed missive poorly disguised as a friendly request from neighbor to neighbor.  Asshole just wanted to know, if it wasn't too much trouble, could we please move the now-finished coop to the other side of the lawn.  Pretty please with a cherry on top but really he doesn't care what we prefer do it now or he's going to make our lives miserable with a Chinese water torture of his follow-up emails written in sickly-sweet idiot speak.  Asshole has the nerve to blame the request on his sister (whose only previous interaction with us was to pass along her congratulations, through my mother, on the birth of our son).  Asshole also thought it pertinent to "explain" that the reason for the request is that on their side of the privacy fence that divides our lawns is their "fire pit."  He left it for us to insinuate why that'd be a problem.  Maybe when Asshole and his sister roast marshmallows over the pit they feel badly that the chickens can't join in.  Maybe it's harder to get a fire to start when there are chickens nearby.  Maybe when chickens hear people say "let's go hang out at the pit," they hear "spit" instead and think they're about to get roasted, apple-in-pig-mouth style, and start making a fuss.  I don't know.

What I do know is that last summer, I never saw anyone at or within a stone's throw of the fire pit.  But now our chicken coop is cramping the style of that wasted space.

My husband was of course frustrated but resigned himself to the fact that he'll have to do some disassembling and cart the coop to the approved space.  I am frustrated but resigned myself to the fact that I'm going to have to start ticking through my list of Things to Do in Retaliation to A Prick:

1.  Gather signatures from all the people in his past and present who agree he's an idiot and present it to him at Christmas on a scroll like the one Santa keeps of naughty vs. nice.

2.  Fire blaze my initials onto his front lawn.

3.  Hire Ke$ha to give nightly performances of Tik-Tok in our backyard for the entire summer.

4.  Tell Octo-Mom he's looking for boarders.

5.  Make him live the rest of his life in Texas.

Feel free to chime in if you have other ideas.

I Smell Trouble, Part Dos

This morning my husband left for work really early.  While I was giving my son his wake-up bottle, I reviewed the emails I had received overnight.  I had gotten one from my husband at 6AM that caught my eye. 

Title: "Good news."

Content: "I caught the skunk."

Allow me to explain.

As some of you may remember, our home was recently invaded by a skunk attack.  We lived to tell the story, but it shook us to the core.  I started scanning the local real estate listings, but fortunately I am married to someone smarter and calmer than I.  Never one to back down in the face of adversity, my husband copped some serious Ace Ventura pet detective skills and got to sleuthing in our back-yard.  I would catch him just sitting out there, skunk-whisperer style, waiting for the grass to share the secrets of the lawn with him.  Eventually, it coughed up the following facts:

1.  A skunk is roaming our lawn on a nightly basis, foraging for food.

2.  When that skunk is tired and full, he takes a day-long nap under our shed.  The one connected to our house.  The one we walk by every time we exit and enter our house.

3.  That skunk has access to our shed all because my husband left a tiny gap between the foundation and the lawn that was enough for the little rascal to creep under.

4.  We need to start using fertilizer.

Now I am sorry, but other than a Middle Eastern dictator trying to outrun the Arab Spring, a skunk is among the very last creatures I would like to invite to live under our shed.  I don't know what it is about that place, but apparently it's cozy and there's a No Vacancy sign out front that our forest friends can read, because just last summer we had a woodchuck living under there, which my husband also had to catch.

(As an aside, for those of you reading this who don't live in Maine, I feel really great about all the free advertising I am doing about the joys of living in this state.  See you soon.)

Anywho, once my husband isolated the variables at work, he put his two elbows to the table, propped up his iPad, and got to studying.  If you have any questions about skunks -- their foraging habits, spraying tendencies, options for higher education -- just drop me a line and I will pass them along to him.  After sleepless nights of serious analysis, my better half decided on the solution to our problem:  shoot the skunk.

I think the real reason why this solution thrilled him so was that it meant (a) an excuse to go to Wal-Mart; (b) an excuse to wear a stupid hat (bought at Wal-Mart); (c) an excuse to buy a BB gun; and (d) an excuse to sit up all night patrolling the lawn for signs of life to shoot at.

The only problem is that I hate guns, and I especially hate the thought of a gun in my house.  But my husband convinced me we'd only keep it until we (he) killed the skunk and then he would return it.  Cross his heart and hope the skunk to die.

What happens next was a near-tragedy of epic proportions.  The skunk indeed emerged from his cocoon under our shed, and indeed began foraging for dinner, just two gun lengths from my husband's perch in our half-bathroom.  My husband, heart-racing and palms sweating, knew that this was his moment.  He aimed, shot, and hit that sucker....somewhere.  So he aimed, shot and hit that sucker....somewhere else.  The point is he hit him twice but the area of impact was unclear, and our furry striped friend managed to limp BACK UNDER OUR SHED!!!  To die a slow, smelly death right next to our porch furniture.  Lovely.

Deflated but not defeated, my husband brought out the big guns.  And by big guns I mean not an actual gun at all but the "Have a Heart" trap that had served him so well with the woodchuck.  He laid out a can of tuna -- because skunks are stupid enough to enjoy mercury-laden sea bait, I guess -- and waited.

And last night, Petunia got hungry.

Upon reading the announcement that our uninvited guest had finally been evicted, I was equal parts joyous and horrified.  Okay, mostly horrified.  I called my husband as soon as I finished reading his email.  Here are the funnest parts of our conversation.  I'll leave you to guess who is saying what.

"YOU CAUGHT THE SKUNK AND JUST LEFT THE HOUSE?!?  WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?  I MEAN WHAT DO I DO?   THERE IS A SKUNK IN A TRAP JUST OUTSIDE OUR HOUSE??  I MEAN WHAT DO I DOOOOOOOOOOO???"

"Um, nothing.  I will take it away when I get home from work tonight."

"BUT, BUT, IT'S RIGHT OUTSIDE!!!"

"I know.  In a trap.  It can't do anything to you.

"BUT WHAT IF IT SPRAYS AGAIN?"

"It can't.  It can't lift its tail.  And you don't have to go near it."

"BUT WHERE IS THE TRAP AGAIN???"

"Outside, near the bathroom.  You can go look at it."

"Go look at it???  Are you HIGH?  I DON'T WANT TO SEE IT!!!!"

"Then why did you ask where it is?"



I hate it when it talks to me like that.

Needless to say, I spent the morning hover-crafting around the house, yelling at the children anytime they went to the western wall of our house and commanding that we speak/gurgle in low voices so as not to alert the lurking beast .  I was just waiting for that skunk to knock on the door, accost me for marrying such a wily trapper, and spraying me for all he was worth.  I shuttled my children to the car like we were the von Trapp family fleeing Austria -- moving quietly but humming softly to keep our spirits up in the face of near-death. 

And we aren't going back to that House of Horrors until my husband has taken the skunk to Canada.  I pray to God he does not get sprayed in the process.  I hear divorce is expensive.