Lemon Trees and Dirty Streets

I've been wanting chickens for some time now. In the Fairmount Hotel I'd fantasize about taking over the building - growing food on the roof, grazing goats and sheep in the courtyard, and letting chickens run rampant on the wrap around porch. In our St John's home we discussed the viability of building a coop in the yard, Kenneth drew up plans, but I was pregnant and we got suckered into taking a birthing class instead of dropping two hundred bones on lumber and chicken wire. I did learn to focus on my breath when the pain of a gasping uterus got out of hand, and how to navigate through hormone and anxiety fueled storms with a carefully scripted dialogue:

"I'm hungry, let's get some dinner."

"I hear you saying that you're getting hungry, and that you would like to get some dinner. I am also hungry, and feel that we should stop at that Pho place by Fred Meyer's and eat there."

"I hear that you want to some Pho, and I agree that Pho would be a good choice, but I feel like we should order it to go and take it home so that we can watch a movie."

"It sounds like you are saying that you would like to watch a movie and eat at the same time, but I am feeling like by the time we get our food home it will be cold and we may have already murdered one another in a state of temporary insanity caused by extremely low-blood sugar..."

and so on until we forgot to use the dialogue and reverted back to yelling and pounding walls. (the throwing of things and the pounding of walls I must shamefully admit, was all mine. Those hormones, huh?)

We never got those chickens. The best time to embark on a great chicken adventure, we were informed by those better informed than we, is the springtime, and our spring was all booked up by this newborn baby adventure we had scheduled the previous spring.

Now that we are living in LA, in a room that has become completely overrun by six-legged creatures of a particular succulence to the aforementioned type of fowl, I find myself wishing once again for a small flock of chickens to clean up this mess. Dreams of motherly little birds clucking with pleasure at the bounty of ants on our floor dance through my head. These ants. They walk on us at night, crawl up the sides of coffee cups, and hunt for stray cat kibbles on the bathroom floor.

Last night Kenneth woke with a start when Emily's hand grazed his cheek - he thought it was a mouse crawling over him.

I'm getting homesick. Homesickness is crawling over me as frequently as the tiny colonists. When I change Edie's diaper, there it is again! Thoughts of the Pacific Northwest march past me, on me, running here and there. I miss Washington, and the kooky Willamette River Valley town of Portland. There's one on the screen now.

All I can do is put food away and sweep the floor often. We'll see about the rest eventually.