Springtime – Manic Monday

If it’s Springtime in Utah, my true love gave to me…

Twelve birds trying to pen-brake
Eleven hours of watching MASH
Ten cabinet doors to hang
Nine sleeping dogs and cats
Eight beings with coughs in the house
Seven humans on our land
Six weeks and counting
Five packages of tp in the store
Four adults going nuts
Three dogs that are happy
Two cats that are not
And waking up to freshly fallen snow

So life took an extra turn when I woke up to frozen solid animal waters and snow on the ground. The best part was that I was so tired that I didn’t even notice until my eldest nephew pointed it out to me. I’d been out there before he had when most everything was kind of frost covered and I hadn’t even noticed.

This wasn’t the first time since the Spring Equinox that I’d woken up with snow outside, so I’ve kind of had parts of this bouncing around in my head for a few weeks. Finally got to get it all out, though. (And the reference to coughs was that we all had colds of various degrees. We were tested and came back negative, but somehow still passed our colds off to the dogs. Everyone’s getting better, though.)

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Stir Crazy – Manic Monday

For I have felt fear
Lurking behind me
Even as I seek shelter
Especially with what I face before me

So my dogs figured out how to open the chicken yard this morning. No chickens or ducks were harmed in the events that followed, but I spent about an hour with my niece and then nephew trying to catch our birds and put them back. Most of them were fairly easy to catch with the help of our oldest dog. Vincent is very skilled at pinning our chickens without hurting them and can even pick them up without harming or killing them.

Our rooster, on the other hand, got out of the yard entirely. My niece and I chased up all up and down the easement to the south of our property. He kept trying to run out onto the road, which is a major road in our valley. We finally managed to pin and capture him, but it was very tiring and we were all scratched up. The easement is mostly a steep little hill that leads from our fence to the road.

I’m pretty sure commuters got a kick out of watching a grown woman and a teen chase a rooster alternately away from the two roads while occasionally lunging in an attempt to catch him. (Our house is on a corner.)

He evaded us every time until we were able to herd him around the fence and into the actual front yard where we pinned him in a hedge that partially shields the house from the road.

Manic Monday

My sister has returned to work
Even as her children remain home
Letting everyone know the risks
To keeping things running, yet safe
Don’t think we aren’t worried
Or flippantly scoffing
We have to keep going forward
Not leaving things on a cliffhanger

My sister’s job is going on a three-shift format to reduce the risk of people getting sick. There is an option of working from home if you have to quarantine, which we did use for two weeks after she came back from California. (It was a business trip, and everyone was sent home early when things really started to move fast in the U.S.)

I’m very grateful for the fact that my anxiety meds were adjusted right before things went down with the pandemic. Very grateful. It also helps that I generally get along well with my family.

Also, in the mental health history of my family, we’ve always done better when we have cats and/or dogs. We have cats, dogs, and a bunch of farm animals. That helps a ton.