Chicken Update

Some people asked me what ever happened to Shawna the bad girl chicken.  Well, it's like this.  I was awfully sick and tired of her putting her beak into everyone's business and eating up the eggs.  She also led more than her share of girlies astray, so yep, girlfriend had to go.  The problem is, I live with a bunch of wimps.

I finally got the nerve up to do it.  I researched how to butcher her.  Let me tell you something about butchering a chicken:  you don't want to do it.  It's a messy, messy process, and that's not even talking about the defeathering, which is a nightmare of its own.  I'm pretty sure, after researching it, that I never lived in a third world country in a former life.  So yeah, I was killing her for the sake of knocking her off, cause she was, quite frankly, pissing me off.

So I researched ways to do it.  Broomstick method seemed the easiest way, but then again, I have a helluva stun gun, and why not put it to good use?  I was concerned, however, that the million volts (I'm not joking -- I asked for one that was big enough to put a crazy person on their ass) might just be too much.  I mean, I might find myself wracked with guilt if she exploded.  And I sure as heck didn't want to end up power spraying her off the house, or worse yet, me.  But I slept on it and decided to do it anyway.

But how does one use a stun gun on a chicken without hanging onto them?  Cause yeah, holding onto anything you are stunning with a million volts would not be advised.  I ended up in the garage, found some weedwhacker string, and made myself a chicken noose.  Not for her neck, mind you, but to hang her from.  Because hey, did you know that if you hang a chicken upside down, they chill out?  I had it all figured out.  So then I snuck into my bedroom where Jim was sleeping.  He's a Marine, remember, so although he was snoring when I went in, he popped wide awake within literally two seconds, and said "what are you doing?" in a rather firm voice.  "Nothing, boo.  Go to sleep."  "No.  What are you doing?"  "I'm gonna kill Shawna."  "What?  How're you gonna do that?"   "I'm getting my stun gun."  

The voice got noticeably louder as he said "don't you kill that chicken while I'm here."

It was at that point that I realized that you can be trained to kill someone in 72 different ways, but still be a softie when it comes to a troublesome chicken.  And so it is that Shawna The Problem Chicken was donated, still kicking to the Poultry Project.  And dontcha know, I took two more chickens there two weeks later, and darned if that stupid bird didn't run right up to me from amongst a crowd of about thirty chickens.  That darned bird never could mind her own business. But oh well, she's someone else's problem now.

And that's the way it is.

This Is His Brain on Drugs

So, my boo had a knee replacement done recently.  Now he has a matched set, as the doctor said.  We had a fine time of it, spending three days at Community North recovering.  We found that the food is good there (who knew?), the couch is comfy to sleep on, and the staff was a lot of fun.  They hung out in our room a lot, cause we are a fun little duo to hang out with.

Especially when Jim's on drugs.  Ya know, the man is a connoisseur of all things beer, but the man sure can't handle his Percocet.  He knew going into this, since he had experience with it, that there are two important things, when it comes to knee replacements:  1) do your exercises and 2) take your pain medicine.  If you skip either of these, life goes to hell in a handbasket pretty quickly.  And so it was that "Ron, that crazy Phillipino" physical therapist entered our lives as a little guy with a big wallop.  His suggestion, "every time a commercial comes on, do some of your exercises," was outmatched by the Marine who simply turned the channel more frequently.  He learned his lesson after about twenty minutes of that nonsense, and went right back to bending and stretching.

He did fine the first couple of days, but then they changed him to Percocet, and it REALLY got interesting.  At that point, he saw faucets marching down the hall, started singing, and even yelled "Shagalicious!" so loudly that the people in the nurses' station started laughing.  A friend of ours came to visit, and my boo sat there conversing, then turning into a blathering idiot mid-sentence.  I found he could handle 1 1/2 pills, but two made him nutsy cuckoo.  As in, when we got home, he took two and then told me to bring him "a tampon and some of that clusterf*** ice cream from the kitchen."

Gotta admit, I laughed.

Funny thing is, he would say these things, and then his face would go blank and he would say "I don't think that came out right, did it?"  "No, boo, it sure didn't."

So when we got home, I actually cooked.  I know, but miracles do happen.  I had to think about what he could eat, cause his tummy was still a bit upset.  I decided to make him some tuna casserole, because he loves the stuff.  It turned out really well, I must admit, and he cleaned his plate.  A day or two later, he asked what kind of leftovers we had.  Not much, I said, because Thomas had been over the let the dogs out while we were at the hospital, and he had cleaned us out (thankfully).  I mentioned the tuna casserole.  ::blank look::  "What the hell are you talking about?  Who made tuna casserole?"  "I did.  And you cleaned your plate.  It was on Monday."  "WHAT?  I thought that was chicken."  "Well, boo, you were on drugs.  But it was Chicken of the SEA."

::sigh::  My boo is morphing into Jessica Simpson.

Heavy Thoughts from a Skinny Girl

Jill has been working out and mindfully eating lately, and the results show, cause the girl is looking wonderful.  She and Michael popped in this weekend to keep a couple of wedding related appointments (and to see a movie with her mother.  Yippee!  Popcorn!)

She said on the way to the movies that she didn't intend to eat any popcorn.  I, however, skip meals for movie popcorn, so I hadn't eaten since breakfast.  It was not after 7pm, so I was hungry.  After Jill mentioned that she has "been bad" lately and needed to get back in line, she explained.  "It wasn't when I went to McDonald's that I realized that I'd messed up my diet.  It was when I found myself eating cold macaroni and cheese with my bare hands, because I was too lazy to get a fork.  That's when I realized that the diet was toast."