Spring Chickens

Progress on the painting of Elizabeth's sculpture. It's going slowly, unlike the woods woman. I'm confident that it will eventually be okay, but it isn't as much fun as the first one was. I don't know why, and my only guess is that I don't like the color as well. Or maybe the size isn't as inspiring.....too small. Or maybe neither of these. Oh, well.

The last few days have really seemed like spring. In fact Lisa and I went outside to paint on Wednesday. We did get too cold after a few hours since we chose to stand on the breakwater, the coldest, windiest spot in town. Nevertheless, it was fun to give it a try and we brought our paintings inside to continue working.

Today, driving back from Harrington, I saw the evidence everywhere that people had decided to leave winter behind. Even though the temperature couldn't have been more than the low sixties, people were out in T-shirts and sandals. In Machias there were couples sitting in chairs on the porches attached to their homes in the mobile home park that faces Route 1. All along Rte. 190 women from the reservation pushed strollers, wearing tight jeans and those shirts so popular now that leave the midrift bare. Boys zoomed by on motorcycles. In Eastport high school students strolled along the streets with sweatshirts tied around their waists, in some cases in clouds of dust from the public works department trucks busy sweeping up the winter accumulation of sand and dirt. I watched it all over the steering wheel of my car, which I held with age-freckled hands and silver-ringed fingers. At some point I changed from the observed to the observer, smiling in the distance with a kind of pleasure I never felt when I was the one who took out my summer wardrobe in March. It's a quiet smile that goes well with my purple-lined all-weather coat, which is just perfect for today's temperature.

The season did not go uncelebrated by me, however. I stopped at Elmer's Discount and bought fifty feet of chicken wire and some posts to make a bigger pen for the chickens. I want them to have a good summer, with lots of room. I got taller wire and posts, since Demeter flew over the shorter fence yesterday. I knew she would, eventually, since she did it last year, but I hoped it would take her longer to remember how to do it. No such luck. The dogs told me all about it yesterday. I heard them barking in an unusually excited way, and when I looked out, Demeter was happily (if stupidly) pecking away not eighteen inches from the dogs' noses on the other side of their gate. That ended her outdoor adventures until I can build her a higher pen.

Couch, Bath, and Cereal

I managed to get a few things done around the house today, though not much. When I first began to wrap myself in a comforter and sit on the couch to keep warm, I felt like a prisoner, trapped and itching to get up and accomplish something worthwhile. It irked me to be so confined and tangled up, my movements restricted by the heavy blanket and the dogs weighing me down. Now I have become so accustomed to my post there that I hardly feel right anywhere else in the house. I can hardly wait to get my few chores out of the way so that I can plunk myself down and settle in with the phone on the coffee table in front of me and a good book in my lap. I tuck the yellow blanket under my legs, pull three layers of it over my lap. Lytton sprawls along my left leg, Patrick leans his head against my right side, and Benny drapes himself across the back of my neck.

Part of the experience this week, I now realize, had to do with the book I was reading, "Affinity." I finished it last night...a tale of 19th century London described on the back as having "perfect pitch in representing the bourgeois Victorian life, the puritanical misery of prisons in the 1870's, and the spiritualist subculture...." It was certainly all of that and more. Every day I lost myself in the dreary life of that prison and the relationship between the Lady Visitor and the prisoner, a young girl who was a medium. Today when I opened a different book, Margaret Atwood's "Cat's Eye" which is our book group assignment for tomorrow night, I found it quite lacking in style and content. I've read the book, actually twice, and loved it, but it didn't fit the whole scenario I become accustomed to. Sadly I got up and did laundry, put away dishes, and changed the sheets on my bed. I need time between books to adjust.

When the afternoon was winding down I filled the bathtub with hot water and got in for my daily soak. It is my warmest time of day. I lie there submerged as much as I can be in the claw foot tub and watch the light fade in the window. I see the tops of the trees disappear into the dark, and then the curtain blocks the outside completely, its white laciness becoming solid and opaque. The flourescent light takes over and the bathroom becomes a bright cave of steam and warmth, smelling of soap and shampoo, humming with the sound of the space heater. I've closed the door to keep in the heat and Patrick is just on the other side, waiting. The other two dogs are lying on my bed, but are also alert, also waiting for the sign. I don't rush, though, because they are patient. The door is a louvered bi-fold door, and when they hear the hair dryer, they will jump on the door to open it and bound inside. It's our routine.

Now I'm ready for what has become another part of my daily ritual--my evening bowl of cereal. When I did my grocery shopping Friday I bought Shredded Wheat, Cheerios, Grape-nuts, and a half gallon of milk. That was to add to my supply of Raisin Bran, Wheat Chex, Granola, and Oat Meal. The appetite supressant I got seems to be working to the extent that nothing appeals to me but cereal. I will say, though, that a person can eat a lot of cereal.

Annie

I went out to the chicken house with water this afternoon. Demeter and Hannah clucked out the door when I opened it, but Annie did not appear. With all too familiar dread I opened the top of the roosting house and saw her lying there. Her head was tucked under her wing as if she were sleeping, but when I nudged her, she was hard and unmoving. Evidently she had died a natural death. There was no sign of injury or struggle. An egg was beside her.

I went back to the house and got two plastic garbage bags, trying to seem nonchalant to the children next door who were playing in the yard. I thought I was taking the event in some kind of stride after the experiences I have had with mangled chickens, but as I lifted her up and felt her soft, beautiful golden feathers I burst into tears.

Just a chicken........

Thursday

Today I spent a lot of time trying to move the mailing list David sent me from his email to my address book. One of my duties for the gallery is to send out the minutes of the meetings to the gallery members. I received the minutes from June in the mail and had to type them into the computer, then send them out. It infuriates me when I am unable to make this computer do what I perceive to be a simple task that even the most untutored user can do. I have a great deal of trouble moving things from one place to another. After a good hour of trying various things, I finally just typed the list into the address book. This did not take much time, but the fact that I couldn't do what I want to do left me irritable and out of sorts. So far the "drag and drop" skill eludes me except in my photo program.

This morning my two watercolor students came for their lesson, and when they left I found an unexpected packeage in the mail. It was a combined birthday and valentine gift from Sabrina and Jesse. As I opened one present after the other I was just more and more delighted. It was such a surprise, for one thing, that I was taken completely off guard. Also, the gifts were so perfectly me that each one made me laugh out loud with pleasure. The birthday card was a glittery picture of Elvis Presley. There was a box of chocolates with a funny valentine, a DVD of the first season of "Northern Exposure," a cool art magnet, and some great art and anti-war bumper stickers for my new car. The dogs got a big bag of chicken treats, too. I was very touched and the whole thing made my day and then some.

Otherwise I spent the rest of the afternoon reading, wrapped in my comforter against the cold, the dogs snuggled against me. I am tired from working on this gallery business. And under the surface has been the gnawing worry of possible animal disaster. Lytton was not acting his usual self for a few days and I was afraid his back or his bladder stones might be acting up. Carrie had emailed that one of her cats had to go to the emergency vet, then back for blood work and tooth extractions. We talked on the phone last night and all turned out ok, but there was a real chance for disaster there, too. Also, Alice's dog, Roze, was sick. All of us escaped serious consequences this time, but the joy of loving animals sure has its down side. And we all suffer with one another when one of our babies is in danger. Carrie spoke so well for all of us softies when she said that she is really not enjoying having fish anymore, but she keeps the one she has left because it's still "a little life."

I have such wonderful children.