Pretending to Farm

Backyard Chickens, Part One

In my addled mind, chickens occupy two distinct roles, the ones I buy pre-packaged at the grocer for eating and the ones I feed every morning for loving and eggs. And never the twain shall meet although I do get the question all the time: 

“Do you eat your chickens?” 

“I dunno, do you eat your golden retriever?” 

See? Twain don’t meet. 

Recently, the backyard chicken frenzy has become just that. It’s as if all of a sudden suburbanites everywhere woke up, realized that city zoning allows for sometimes up to 10 hens (but no roosters), looked at the price of eggs, especially organic free-range eggs, and declared, “My Lord Honey, I’m gonna get me some of them there chickens.” Or something along those lines. 

As I am a bit of a chicken-raising veteran myself, what follows is a tutorial on the ins and outs and pros and cons of raising your own hens. Let’s proceed. 

 What You’ll Need (Before) 

 • Shelter 

• Nesting Boxes 

• Yard Space 

• Decent neighbors 

 

 Shelter for your hens can be anything from a casual lean-to to a miniature McMansion. Chickens are not fond of weather extremes, typically do not like to get wet (Madder than a…), and will go on strike if faced with either for any length of time. Since my husband began his illustrious career as a carpenter, something that has saved us immeasurably over the years, we got a little ambitious with our hen house, spent more on materials than any real farmer would have, and built what could, if we ever sell this place, and after a few gallons of bleach applied, easily convert to a child’s playhouse. You do not need to do this. You do need to provide 2-3 sq ft of space per hen in an area sheltered from wind and rain that has a door and small ramp for the chickens to enter and exit. You will also need to be able to access this area for egg gathering, coop cleaning, and chicken tending. You can do this by designing your hen house tall enough to stand in, which is what we did, or by engineering it to have a hinged roof or side. Hen house plans abound on the internet and, for the less tool-inclined, many prefab ones are available at feed stores or through mail order. 

 

 Nesting boxes provide just that, an area for your hens to nest in and lay their eggs. If you will only be keeping a few backyard chickens, two nesting boxes should suffice (the rule of thumb is one box per 2-4 hens). Again, we went overboard, as if every hen we owned was going to suddenly need to lay their eggs in unison and damn if they were not going to each have their own personal space in order to do so. Frankly, I’m surprised we didn’t hang name tags over each box, write little notes of encouragement for each hen, and wire the place for sound serenading them with Mozart all morning long. 12” x 12” x 12” is an adequate size for a nesting box; we made ours 12 x 18 x 12. Egg laying sounds a little painful and one should not be cramped for space while performing painful maneuvers. A stoop along the front of the boxes is a nice touch, providing a jumping on point for the hens to access their boxes. Finally, each box should be lined with straw or wood shavings. We use the latter as it is easier to scoop or shop-vac out during cleaning time and it composts well. 

 

 Yard Space is mostly up to you and your circumstances. Although chickens need a minimum of 4-5 sq ft each of the great outdoors, if you do not have a predator issue (including your own dogs and/or cats) letting them have run of your entire backyard can be a fun experience. Hand-raised chickens are very sociable and like to follow you around, even sit in your lap as you lounge on your patio. We’ve had chickens come inside and watch tv with us but we are very strange people. Keep in mind, however, that chickens love to and in fact need to scratch in the dirt and will quickly make mud patches in your manicured lawn. If your yard is large and you only have a few birds, the damage might not be so bad but scratch they will. They need the inorganic elements in the soil to aid their digestion (cage kept birds are given gravel as a substitute, no fun at all). If you do have predators as we do, adequate fencing is a must. No, chickens do not fly but they jump and climb and can easily vault a six foot fence. In the six years we’ve had chickens, the coop has evolved into Ft Knox, completely fenced on all sides and above. We used chain link and chicken wire for the side fencing and a combination of chicken wire and bird netting for the top. Once your neighborhood predators discover that you have birds and tell all their friends and neighbors, they will come by often looking for weaknesses in the grid so be prepared to check your coop security for small holes and bent, as in pushed-in, fencing. We have learned this lesson the hard way; the chickens even harder. 

Decent neighbors can be hard to come by. Fortunately, most of ours are very nice, understanding, and are easily bribed with farm fresh eggs. Yet, we have The One; every neighborhood has The One. Before you set up your coop, it’s a good idea to tell your neighbors what you’re doing, see if they have any huge objections, and then ignore them if you are following your proper zoning laws (I know mine by heart). As long as you don’t have roosters and keep your coop clean, I honestly don’t know why anyone would object to your adventures in pretend farming. The benefits of farm fresh organic free range eggs are immense. For very little work, you are gifted with the best tasting eggs on God’s green (brown) earth. You know where they’ve been from the moment they entered the world as well as knowing the health and antibiotic-free state of the hens from which they come. It’s a win-win and I for one am pleased that the echos or boomers or whoever they are have caught on to the wonders of raising hens. 

Later, I will talk about selecting the right chickens for your needs as well as how to care for them once they are at your home. If you are jonesing to learn more right this minute, backyardchickens.com is a great overall source for all things chicken as well as a great place to ask questions and check in from time to time. 

Until tomorrow…

What You Missed

One thing we learn on a farm, even a small pretend one like ours, is that life can be cruel; and, in the last 17 months, we have definitely had our share of cruelty. Loss occurs without narrative or explanation; it occurs via storms, tumors, and predators; it occurs with little emotion from nature itself. 

Although at times I have perceived nuanced sadness from the farm lot and the in-house domestics, mourning is an individually human adventure and mourning we have done. Hey, you wanna mourn some, too? It’s fun; you get to eat all the Ben and Jerry’s you like straight out of the pint carton and people say nice things to you and make you feel all warm and loved inside. Spoons at the ready? Let’s catch up.

 3. Chickens

   

Some of you might recall the Great Chicken Massacre of Summer 2006. Coyotes had discovered the Rancho Laurena Chicken Shack in our backyard and couldn’t get enough of that free range poultry goodness. This led to the purchase of Spartacus, our most excellent guard llama, and essentially took care of The Mysterious Case of the Disappearing Chickens. Well, guess what Nancy Drew? Bobcats ain’t afraid of no llama. And they’re sneaky. And husbands think they’re mountain lions. So the chickens started disappearing, first, the bolder ones who eschewed the comforts of their home for the wilderness of the trees and then the elderly and ailing. We began receiving telephone calls from our area’s mandatory nosey/crotchety neighbor. Poor bitch, she actually had to bend over and pick up a few chicken feathers. Then she had to start hanging feathers with notes attached on our back fence as if we were in danger of impending tribal warfare. 

To give her credit, she was the one who fingered bobcat as the perp though David saw the attack cat early one morning and said it was at least 50 pounds where bobcats who don’t eat fried food top out at 35 so it must be a mountain lion, right? Right? After a particularly bad loss in which all the roosters but one died in defense of their harem, many of which we lost as well, the boys four spent a day in the farmyard battening and boarding and we have lost no chickens since (though we have received a couple more notes from Injun Ginny). 

 2. Ducks

   

It was a dark and stormy night, actually, the stormiest since we moved here. Thunder. Lightning, the way it shook was frightening. You gotta knock, knock, knock on wood. And then awake to a bunch of dead ducks. 

Poor Robert was on a school break and had the misfortune to be saddled with the post-storm farm chores. A scant two minutes after he went out into the farmyard he returned to share this particular non bon mot, “I’m sorry Mom but all the ducks are dead.” Yeeeaaaahhhh, metal poles were maybe not the best materials to use in the construction of the duck pen. With the exception of one horror flick worthy inside out bird, the rest of the birds were without injury and, if not for the fact that they were ducks and could not hold a glass or wear Nikes, one might have thought they committed group hari kari to get on that space ship orbiting for losers. Lightning, shockingly effective killing method. 

Yes, things are no longer ducky here at Rancho Laurena 

 1. Molly

   

Molly deserves the number one spot because, after all, her passing affected us more than any other. She was a crazy old bloodhound but she was our crazy old bloodhound and, for that, we loved her. 

In case you have forgotten/never knew, we adopted Molly from a woman at Camp Pendleton whose husband was injured in Iraq and whose new handicapped housing would not allow pets. Unknown to us, Molly arrived in heat and we awoke the following morning to the raucous sounds of bloodhound sex in our backyard (they howl, you know). Next came puppies and bottlefeeding and wildfires and evacuations, all enough to drive a sane dog a little crazy and this adopted one certifiably batshit. 

Molly was, above all, David’s dog. That dog loved him more than all of Troy loved Helen. Even when old, obese, and very infirm, Molly followed David’s every move, slept beside him, worshipped at his feet. Though perhaps not quite as obsessive, David returned Molly’s feelings and it was a far right nightmare scenario made in heaven (yes, the approval of gay marriage will lead to legal man-dog love). 

In one month’s time, what had been a small fatty tumor on Molly’s torso grew to the size of a large bisected soccer ball which bounced sickeningly at her side. The vet said nothing could be done, that a real danger of bleeding out existed, and that Molly’s rainbow bridge time had come. Sadly, we said au Revoir to our crazy old bloodhound and buried her in that Stephen King novel in our backyard. 

We’re still a little sad but, on the bright side, our food bills are lower. 

So there you have it. I may have missed a few things but I tend to suffer from a combined case of post traumatic farm death disorder and can’t remember shit. Tomorrow, I shall talk about things less rigor mortissy. Until then...

Fowl Respect

I just found out that May 4th is International Respect for Chickens Day. Man, I wish I had known sooner; how’s a girl to plan? After all, our chickens are special creatures. They expect that little something extra and, foolish pretend farmers that we are, we have become putty in their beaks, particularly since the whole we-descended-from-dinosaurs thing.

Take this guy for instance. Even though he’s an incubated-on-premises rooster with questionable lineage, he thinks he’s all that. One movie night (hey, they watched them in “Chicken Run”), he saw Harry Potter and the something or other and decided his hero was Lucius Malfoy, the cad.
Ever since, he’s been wearing his feathers like this and doing his best to become a dark wizard. The jokes on him though; he hasn’t even figured out how to disappirate yet and wand holding? Let’s just say challenges lie ahead for him.

Our other rooster, Guinness, isn’t far behind Lucius in the ego department. As he is named after the very best of beers and, in particular, the most attractive of stouts (can you say cascading goodness? I knew you could), he struts his stuff as if he were the second coming. To top that, he has no respect for the hens and takes them at his will and whimsy. He’s like the villain in a bad romance novel, towering over his harem of hens, their breasts heaving, their beaks open and panting (or maybe it’s just the heat, damned if it isn’t in the nineties already).

The hens handle the abuse remarkably well, thanks to treats throughout the day such as tomato tops, half-eaten-by-Pint apples, and melon rinds. They also get alfalfa in the morning to supplement their regular layer pellets. The eggs they lay (a full dozen yesterday!) are lovely and tasteful and are their special way of rewarding us for our non-lustful attentions.

I like chickens, and yes, even respect them. If you had 15 dinosaur descendents in your yard, you’d respect them, too.

You’ll have to excuse me now. I have to start planning a “fowl” celebration (Shhh, I think I’ll make it a surprise. Chickens just love it when you jump out and scream at them.)

Enough Ham to Feed a Small African Nation

Due to my current semi-invalid state, I have donned my Crown of Delegation and sent my minions hither and there to keep the cogs and gears of my many rat cages in motion. Although I can tell the halflings do want to help, my entreaties are met with varying degrees of enthusiasm (or lack thereof). I am living in a House of Sighs (not to be confused with Venice’s bridge under which lovers will be assured eternal love if they kiss in a gondola at sunset).

Small tasks become the proverbial mountain out of a molehill whilst the larger ones that instill guilt through all my nether regions are eagerly taken up as if a gauntlet has been thrown. I’ll never understand men, whether they be three, fourteen, or forty four. But I digress.

Yesterday, I asked Young David to snap some shots of the lambs both for my own enjoyment (because I miss them something terrible) and yours. He came back with the following. Teenagers.

You think he’s happy with himself here? He just successfully moved my truck from the front of the house to the driveway. I’ll spare you the 201 photos he took of the precisely parked vehicle.

Like the rest of the family, the boy’s a ham. It’s a wonder they haven’t made sandwiches of us all.

David, sweetheart, child of my womb, joy of my declining years (that last one came from my grandmother; it was probably her second favorite phrase next to telling the mailman she only wanted checks and love letters), I asked for lamb photos. I think you’ve spent enough time around here to know these are chickens, roosters to be exact.

Now this one is a hen, though I have to say I like the composition of this shot. It’s rather artistic.

Nope, that’s a llama. Spartacus is doing a darned good job guarding the new babies. As an added bonus, he looks like he’s going to donate some nice fiber to the spinning cause after I wash it and pull out all the guard hair. I wonder if I can spin in my current physical condition. My right knee is still killing me and I’m getting a hypochondriacal suspicion my patella is fractured as well. (I go to the orthopedist this afternoon for appropriate ridicule.)

This knee-being-broken idea is probably just my resident paranoia, like when NBC’s David Bloom died of a pulmonary embolism in Iraq. I was sure any day one of my varicose veins was going to send a blood clot to my lungs, putting an end to my current life here on Earth but hastening my reincarnation as a duck.

Whoa, wait a minute, what do we have here? Lambs? Yes indeedy, it’s Sean and Katie. I guess two out of four ain’t bad. Maybe after I get my permanent cast today, I’ll be more comfortable venturing into the yard of divots, sand, and BB-like animal droppings and be able to take my own photographs.

Until then… any cast color suggestions?

I Am David

Morning farm chores have taken on a new urgency, unseen before the Great Coyote Massacre of 2007. The small envelope between darkness and dawn is now a crucial time, a time in which the coyotes are still on the prowl and Lauren, the sole surviving turkey (irony noted), gets the urge to alight from her roost in the over-the-coop Palo Verde tree and take a morning stroll. Why she does this I don’t know. She’s seen bloodshed; she’s seen an all-out poultry massacre as a matter of fact but she still needs to get out. I suppose I can identify with my turkey namesake.

It is during this ominous timeframe that we Pretend Farmers are on tenterhooks.

Has she come down from the tree yet? Is the yard safe? Is Spartacus on guard?

On most days, it works out just fine and our worries are for naught, that is as long as we do our duty as good farmers and open the coop gate for Lauren, stand back, and let her decide on her own (because no one living on these premises named Lauren can be forced into doing anything against her will) to deign to enter the enclosure. At this point, we open the locked-up hen house to witness the pullets and cockerels pop out the door and throw scratch to one and all.

By the way, the GCM-surviving elder stateswomen stay perched on their roost, staring down their beaks with disdain at the grain-gobbling teenagers.

They are so new poultry.

On Monday, however, all went to Hell in a handbasket. As I have told you before, we Supermaxed the duck pen. Impenetrable (knock on wood) steel mesh covers its ceiling, chicken wire and rebar is dug three feet into the ground around it, and a block wall that one day I will get around to painting finishes the sides. The chicken coop now has ten-foot fencing and similar ground reinforcement.

What used to be the turkey pen has been neglected. Sadly abandoned, its structure has begun to resemble the rotting tobacco shacks of my North Carolina youth. Since we do not have any more turkeys except for Lauren who prefers the company of chickens to no one, it has not been Supermaxed. Back to Monday.

With three bloodhounds in tow, Hunky Husband headed out to insure Lauren would follow her routine and that our fine feathered friends were all safe. Instead, what he found was a scrawny and wily coyote in the abandoned turkey pen. I suppose normally the coyote, seeing a human heading his way, would have swiftly jumped over the non-Supermaxed gate and high-tailed it out of there. You should all know by now, however, that we are not normal and normal things do not happen to us. This is my life; this is how it has always been. David just happened to acquire it by marriage.

David opened the gate but the coyote, paralyzed by the fear of three snarling and bellowing 120+ pound bloodhounds whose volume out-crescendo-ed the Met just backed up and snarled (the featured photo is a re-enactment). He tried to exit via the back of the pen but that part was Supermaxed with the ten foot fence and although he made it a good seven or eight feet, ten was too much for him. Enter David, assuming his Biblical namesake and persona.

Armed with thick pigskin gloves, he grabbed the coyote and the beast bit him (but thankfully did not break the skin or that would have been a whole ‘nuther story). Chaos ensued and I’m actually not completely sure how the match went for a while (and could certainly not give you a take down, reversal, or pin point count) but, in long, David managed to muzzle the creature with clenched hand and throw him over the ten foot fence to the mercy of the German Shepherds next door. Adrenaline is a beautiful thing.

Thus ends the tale (and maybe the tail) of the RVCWA’s (Rio Verde Coyote Wrestling Association’s) latest match. Hunky Husband came out the victor and all the farm animals, both fibered and feathered, stood high and proclaimed, “I am David.” (I suppose it was a pre-emptive measure in case the coyotes were planning to punish the man.) Me? I’m just proud of him… and also glad it wasn’t me out there.

A Bright, Bright Sunshiny Day

Today marks the beginning of a new era, a good era, filled with happy children and healthy farm animals and coyotes who know their place in the world, i.e. not in our farmyard. I feel it in my bones.

First of all, it is the Winter Solstice, the shortest day, light-speaking, of the year. For the next six months, it can only get brighter from here. I love those days when the light lingers far into the evening, bringing out the badminton set and the archery equipment. Not that I am good at either of those things, I am about as coordinated as an amoeba. No one stands anywhere near the target when a bow is in my hands for fear of looking like Steve Martin in his early stand-up routines. It’s still fun, though.

Today also marks Seinfeld’s “Festivus for the Rest of Us” so those of you who don’t participate in any of the myriad holidays that not-so-coincidentally fall at this time of year can pull out that aluminum pole, air your grievances, and display feats of strength. I’m a big believer in celebrating as many events as possible so, although we have no pole to set up (thankfully) and we air grievances on a daily eye-twitch-creating basis, we do have a family wrestling match which takes care of displaying those feats of strength (or weakness if one is referring to me). Hunky Husband always wins, of course, but he teases us enough to make us believe we could take him down before he puts the final kibosh on us all. Yup, not only is he handsome, the man is as strong as the proverbial ox.

The final and most convincing-to-me reason that a new positive era has begun happened early this morning as the Pint-Sized Farmer and I were doing our farm chores. (David is serving jury duty. When I told him he could probably get out of it, he told me it was his civic responsibility which made me feel like a gutter crumb for suggesting he skate in the first place. If you’re keeping track, that’s handsome, strong, and ethical. I did well.)

Pint and I were spreading scratch for the chickens, both astonished at how large the now-pullets-and-cockerels are getting, when one young bird looked right at me and crowed. It was a small crow, almost silent and very high-pitched, but it was a crow nonetheless. I haven’t heard one of those since the Great Coyote Massacre of 2007 and it was sweet music to my ears. Our little farm is reawakening to a better-than-ever time and I am blessed to be a witness to it. Once again, life is good.

I Need a Break

They came again yesterday, the brazen bastards. It was 2 pm and Jessica was using Robert’s bedroom for class work while Pint was not-taking his nap. She heard the ruckus and ran outside to see them in the chicken coop, having entered once again from on high. We now have two fewer chickens, a Buff Orpington and a Phoenix hen. Because we interrupted their attack, they were massacred but left behind, two deaths for naught.

I am back to full zombie state. Hunky Husband has his I’m-going-to-figure-this-out-and-thwart-the-predators mind set. He spent buuku bucks at the big orange box store on a million different ways to prevent their breaking and slaughtering.

My glass is most definitely half-empty. The coyotes have found their food source, tasted blood, and refuse to stop until they have decimated us and our flock.

Unless something miraculous and inspiring happens, I’m taking a break/slowing down on the blog. You all don’t want to hear my ongoing woes and frankly, it makes me cry all the more to write about them. Thank you for the time and encouragement you have given me.

I'll be back.

Patience Is a Virtue... Damn It!

When Hunky Husband is out of town, as he is today, farm chores lay precariously and solely on my shoulders. Through no fault of their own, the twins provide no help; the sun is still tucked behind Four Peaks when they board the bus to school. Granted I could wake them early, force them to don miners’ lights, and send them outdoors in 40-something degree darkness to throw hay flakes and scratch chickens, but that’s not my style. After all, pretend farming should be fun, right? Vampira, otherwise known as Jessica, offers no assistance either. Frankly, if it’s before 10 am, she scares me. One of these days she is going to master the look that kills and I will be as dead as Daffodil the Hamster whom I found this morning. Yes, we lost yet another animal, blimey.

One Pint-Sized Farmer, however, is more than eager to “help.” Unfortunately, his definition of helping involves riding in the feed cart, bogarting my farming equipment, and, in general, tripling the amount of time it takes to complete morning farm chores. But that’s okay.

He likes his version of helping, loves the animals and, since this is not an everyday occasion, I am typically a patient grandmother and enjoy watching him farm. Why I decided to blow that all to Hell this morning by bringing out my inner masochist and adding way more farm chores than needed to my agenda, I have no idea but this is what I did.

You see, the garage chicks were outgrowing their accommodations. Each time I went to their box to check on them in the past few days, shavings had been flung into their food and water, making partaking of either near impossible. I decided it was time, time to move the chicks outdoors to the hen house.

I grabbed an extra feeder, filled it with chick starter, and set it in the corner of the building. I chased, caught, and relocated our two Narragansett turkey hens, who had suddenly become interested in the new coop food, into the pen of misfit fowl. I set up a new water dispenser. I ran an industrial waterproof extension cord to the house-where-eggs-were-once-plentiful and set up the heat lamp for those finally-chilly nights. I put a small cage against the back wall in case the full-grown chickens decided to torment the babies and the young ones needed a panic room. As the final step before actually moving the chicks, I spread fresh white pine shavings on the floor of the hen house and in the panic cage, Anthony escorted me and “assisted” with every move, often requiring a break to kiss a chick (the boy is starting early) or to try to give his grandmother apoplexy by climbing on the motorcycles nearby the brooding cage. During each of my activities, he also needed lifting over the knee-high fence that prevents fowl escapees at the coop entrance gate. Heaven forbid he not follow me into and out of the chicken coop Every. Single. Lap.

By this time, I had almost forgotten the point of all this labor but then heard the peep-peep-peeping of our fast-growing chicks. Repeating the whole gate-lifting with full escort process, we moved the babies, one by one, until all ten of them were in their new home. Phew, 8:30 am and I was pooped, looking forward to a hot shower, and maybe a few moments of relaxation before I proceeded with my day.

And that’s when I found the dead hamster. Is it too early for a drink?

Or do I have to wait for this to happen?

Tigger

Born Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Died Sunday, November 4, 2007

May his little soul rest in peace. I thank him for sharing what little time he had with me.

Maybe We Shouldn't Name Them

Yesterday, I once again sacrificed my breasts to the good of one of God’s creatures. How many is that now? Three children nursed for a cumulative total of 3 ½ years (rocks in socks if you were wondering, thank goodness for bras), and two chicks, one who died there and one who is about to leave this Earth but, alas, not while singing its swan (chick) song in my cleavage.

If you remember, it was just over three weeks ago that we experienced the Great Coyote Chicken Massacre of 2007. Those of you who have incubated eggs before know that the chicken gestation period is 21 days. Hence, we now have 7 new adorable fluffy chicks with which to replenish the flock. Add them to the four we bought Pint for his birthday and that means we have (for now) 11 chicks to replace the 22 we lost. We had a few too many before; we have too few now (not enough farm fresh eggs make the Dillons a grumpy family; thank goodness for the ducks’ hard work).

Speaking of, I don’t think I told you that Melanie’s chickens sent us eggs to pacify and console us after the GCCM. Farmers (and chickens) are awesome beings. Interestingly, their yolks are deeper orange than ours; I think they have (I know it exists but I haven’t seen it for some time) grass there. Because of this, our chickens are now getting a small handful of alfalfa each day to compensate. There’s nothing like adding a little anticipation to cracking open an egg. Yes, I lead an insular life here; it’s the little things that keep me going (sort of).

Back to poor dying Tigger (yes, he is the only one we have named and yes, this was before we knew he was probably not going to make it). Unlike the others, he wasn’t (isn’t) active; he doesn’t eat or drink on his own; he seems to have no pecking or scratching instinct at all. This is bad, very, very bad.

Bleeding heart that I am, and trying to focus on something other than my own ills, I pulled him from his now garage-dwelling cage mates and brought him inside. He felt cold and listless so into my cleavage he went. I one-handedly mixed a warm solution of sugar water and chick starter into a liquidy mash and began slowly dipping his tiny beak into it. He rallied, peeping his gratitude more and more strongly to me and I began to have hope. As the next step in Operation Enliven Chick, I got a small dish of mash on its own. Alas, he did not, would not, and could not eat it. I held his little head and simulated pecking into the dish, but it did not take. We napped together and I told him I was glad he had spent a little bit of his short life cuddled up with me and then, resignedly, I put him back into the cage with the others, unable to weather the experience of yet another animal dying on me (literally).

This morning, he is still barely hanging in there. I’ll be surprised if he makes it through the day. I do know, however, that miracles happen, and although I don’t expect one, I would welcome it nonetheless.

Life is so fleeting and unexplainable. Why do some live and others die? Why do some suffer and others skate? I have no answers. I know we’re supposed to make the most of the time we have but I’m afraid lately I haven’t been doing so well at that. It’s time to pull up my invisible bootstraps and try harder.