Malay: Thank you for finally featuring me in one of your posts, Julie. I have been waiting rather a long time.
Malay: Next time, get the hose out of the way and please get your light settings right!
Malay: Newkid was okay but I am a survivor, Julie.
Malay: I would prefer it if you would refrain from photographing me with Prince from now on.
As indicated in a previous post, whenever I get to the end of my tether, the first person I talk to is Anthony – always.
I think it is remarkable that when I am the needy one, he becomes incredibly supportive and completely forgets his own neediness.
This is Malay, our only remaining rooster. He has Anthony’s tenacity!
I bet that shocked you! Of course I am not pregnant; after all I am 53 and Anthony is in a nursing lodge. But I keep having dreams about being pregnant and they are so real that I wake up in the morning and am surprised that I am not pregnant.
Last night, everything in the dream was initially as it is in real life: Ants was in the nursing lodge and Ming was 18. Then it got really bizarre because in the dream I had only just given birth to a beautiful little girl, to find myself pregnant again. I was bewildered at how this could be possible and my friends were looking at me askance as if I were some sort of alien, or else had dabbled in an affair. I woke up whilst still pregnant and trying to figure out how and why this had happened.
I don’t find these dreams disturbing at all; I find them rather interesting adventures. Also it is easy to see why I might be having these dreams: (a) the birds are madly mating, and loudly, because it is Spring; (b) Anthony has begun to think I have found another man; (c) Ming is giving me the whoops; and (d) Tapper, the duck, is still sitting on her eggs hoping they will hatch. As for deeper, psychological interpretations, well that is probably a minefield that I would rather avoid at the moment.
Perhaps these dreams are a signal that something really great is about to be born. That would be good!
[Or perhaps it’s just that we are inundated with eggs, the peafowl keep pooping on the chookhouse, or I need to go to the gym? Who knows!]
The chooks lay all of their eggs in the same place – in the chook house – and Tapper, the duck, lays hers there too. The geese, on the other hand lay them anywhere and everywhere. There aren’t that many goose eggs but every now and then I see one in the middle of the lawn and I wonder whose egg it is. Then, the other day, I was sitting at my little picnic table near the bird yards and Ola just popped one out right in front of me (it’s the same one I put into Ming’s scrambled eggs the other night).
I have now asked Ola if she wouldn’t mind laying her eggs in the yard. She has agreed.
Chooky: Here you are, Julie.
Me: Oh, thank you, Chooky!
Chooky: Sometimes I amaze myself.
[Note: Actually these eggs were a joint project shared by Chooky’s five identical sisters]
Take a good look at this gorgeous rooster (named Tina Turner for obvious reasons) because you may not see him again.
Why? Well, quite simply, I have fallen out of love with him.
Why? Because he attacked my left leg the other day (the same leg attached to the twisted ankle) with such ferocity that he drew blood in five areas above and below my knee.
Ming had a friend visiting and, as I limped back to the house, I showed this friend my blood-stained jeans and he was very sympathetic (not).
Okay, so for the next few days these puncture wounds got bigger and infected and I could hardly walk and I had to get antibiotics. The worse it got, the more determined I became to outwit my foe.
Keep tuned for the next enthralling episode.
Bubble: I miss the emus.
Seli: So do I.
Woodroffe: So do I.
Angelina: So do I.
King: So do I.
Okami: So do I.
Pearly: So do I.
Malay: So do I.
Phoenix 1: So do I.
Ming: Well I DON’T!
Today I discovered that I am just as skilled at laughing as I am at crying, so I googled ‘laughing’ and found another new word!
Today I told Anthony that I had rung the taxi company to get the money back for the unnecessary second trip yesterday and we would be reimbursed, but all he could say was, “I didn’t like the way that taxi driver put his arm around you.” I couldn’t stop laughing.
Today I wrote a blogpost about being nagged by Ming, our 18-year-old son and the first thing he said when he got home from music school was, “What’s this dirt on the carpet? You came inside with your boots on didn’t you.” I couldn’t stop laughing.
Today, one of our roosters, Tina Turner, who has taken over the whole chook harem, attacked me more viciously than ever before when I went to feed the hens. He drew blood! Well, I kicked him in self-defense and he somersaulted in the air. I couldn’t stop laughing (it’s okay, he is fine as you can see – he loves to dance on that table!)
Today I rang the guy who has repaired our nearly dead ute (truck) and explained why we still hadn’t picked it up and he started singing a refrain from that song ‘Julie, Julie, Julie, do you love me?’
I couldn’t stop laughing!
These are our six newish hens safe in the chookyard, with our rooster, Tina Turner, outside the yard but wanting to visit them. He, and our other three roosters, have not been given visitation rights yet and I have advised the hens not to make eye contact with any of the guys until I have given them the ‘birds & bees’ talk, hence this photo!
Oh yes, and they are all also watching the goose olympics.
I am laughing and chatting and listening to music and watching the birds and giving Ming a hug and cooking dinner and turning the television on and washing the dishes and changing the sheets and blogging and reading a good book and checking facebook and deciding whether to give the emus half a cabbage or a whole one and half-noticing the sunset and hoping the phone won’t ring and hoping the phone will ring and making a shopping list and trying to find my diary and paying bills and answering emails and making a to-do list and feeling glad about some things and sad about other things and thinking about pruning the roses and baking bread with the flour I bought a few months ago that probably has weevils in it and wondering whether to have a coffee or a tea or a diet coke or a beer and feeling hungry and feeling sick and wanting to go to bed and wanting to wake up and cleaning out my office and organizing my paperwork and resigning from my job and loving my friends and loving my family and loving the dogs and wishing I had continued to write columns for magazines and wishing I had written more than one book by now and and hating getting older and loving getting older and wondering what it would be like if we had more than one kid and remembering how I nearly got frostbite in Canada and wishing I had rung Tulia in PNG before he forgot about me and wishing I remembered everybody’s birthdays and wishing we had more money and laughing and chatting and helping Ming with lyrics and loving grammar and being amazed that he has the fireplace lit and feeling glad that it isn’t going to be as cold tonight as it was last night and wishing the day were night and the night were day and dreaming about eating fairy floss and Disneyland and sunburned shoulders and feeding the squirrels and wanting to find the keys to wind all of Anthony’s clocks and opening my mouth to say something to Ming but he is busy and wondering how my niece’s preparations for her wedding are going in Scotland and thinking it might not work to take Jack the Irish terrier into the nursing lodge and wishing the kitchen staff would bend the rules and give me scraps for the chooks and delighting in the anticipation of fresh eggs and thinking how lucky I am to live in such a beautiful place and wondering why good people suffer and reminding Ming to set the alarm so he will get up to help milk the cows for the neighbours and finding the library book I lost several months ago and laughing because I forgot to remember to do whatever it was and then ….
…. it hits me like a car crash – the grinding metal of grief and I stop breathing, terrified that there might be another slamming of brakes, swerving of lights, skidding of tyres but, instead, there is silence, so I creep into the bathroom and lock the door and put the noisy fan on so that I can muffle into my collar the horrible sounds coming from throat so that Ming won’t hear me or worry about me or get impatient with me or wonder where his dinner is and, eventually ….
….I come out of the bathroom and into the light-filled, Aga-warmed kitchen and continue to stir the stew I have made with fresh vegetables and meat and Ming comes into the kitchen excited about his new lyrics and a new tune and wants me to listen and, once again, I am laughing and talking and listening to music, knowing that by now Anthony will be asleep.
