It is funny when we look back and see how we get involved in certain matters. I am often asked how I got started writing. My reply is quite literal: “Because my son went to school and I had no more children.”

Some of you might remember back in January when I posted about being prodded into this chicken adventure because a novel I was working on was not going as planned. So I made a new plan: rest my mind by pursuing the long held dream of raising chickens and having home-grown eggs. Simple, sweet, and totally ignorant. Now here I am four and a half months later.

The first thing I’ve found is that the chickens are not simply providers of meat and eggs (or in my case just eggs, because I doubt I’ll kill any. We’ll have an old-chickens home), and a lot of expense and manual labor. They provide a great deal of laughter. Watching chickens is like watching cartoons. I might have provided a cartoon for a neighbor, too, one morning, when running around and around the outside of the chicken house, in pajamas and robe and rose-printed rubber boots (all pink), wielding a garden rake after the errant escaping Buff Orpington I have named Maisie, in honor of the vintage comedy starring Joan Blondell. Too bad there is no photograph of that incident. Possibly my name should be Maisie.

Princess Puny, our little special-needs chick, may still be small but by no means special-needs. A perfect example of persistence, patience, and pressing on.

A small boy is excellent for taming chickens, but I believe the hens provide a far move valuable service of taming the small boy.

They give opportunity for quality time between grandfather and grandson. Oh, the excitement of finding the compost bin giving up mealy worms for the girls!

I can also report that the aim of a diversion with chickens providing writing energy has worked. I have secured the return of rights to a couple of my early properties that are no longer in print. Re-reading one, More Than A Mother, I was thrilled to find it delightful. I’ve been having a great time revising (a writer can never leave anything alone) and getting it ready for e-book format. I’ll tell more about that adventure in a future post, but for now let me say that the adventure and laughter with chickens have provided inspiration. Just imagine when I finally begin to get eggs.
Starting Monday Out Right…

If we couldn’t laugh, we would all go insane. ~ Robert Frost.

A cheerful heart is a good medicine; But a broken spirit drieth up the bones. ~ Proverbs 17:22

Make a point of laughing today, especially if it is hard. You might consider getting chickens…