Alarming!

Yesterday we had to be “on the road” by six ayem in order to make it to Portland in time for the first of two doctor appointments for Nyel. Being creatures of habit and routine, we elected to do all our morning things as usual and set the alarm for an hour earlier than our customary 5:00 get-up hour. Things did not go well.

First of all, my computer had gone into some sort of coma state in the night. In order to revive her I had to remove her battery for fifteen minutes or so and, though that did the trick, I found I had lost all but the title of my morning blog – a blog which I had carefully written (but not yet posted) the night before.

What followed was an hour-and-a-half-long nightmare in an attempt at recovery, reconstruction and revision. I don’t know about other writers, but once my pearls of wisdom are committed to the page – virtual or otherwise – I have no ability to recall them. And, somehow, I know that a ‘new’ telling of whatever it was will be but a poor shadow of the original. That hour and a half was frustrating beyond belief.

Toes Up in the Coop

Just as I had hit the “Post” button, Nyel came in from chicken duty. “One of the Wyandottes is dead,” he said. My inane response was, “What happened to her?” – inane because she had been locked up in the coop for the night with the other hens and if there had been a break-in by critters of the night, Nyel would have stated his news differently.

By then it was already after six and Nyel had to leave her where she was – in a heap in the corner of the coop. He’d have to deal with burying her later. He assured me that the other girls were fine – still on their roost at the other end of the coop, probably oblivious to the fate of their sister. “They’ll be fine,” Nyel assured me. (And they were.)

At The Ready

We scrambled to get ourselves, thermos of coffee, books for waiting-room reading etc. into the car and out of the garage. And then, wouldn’t you know that the garage door did one of its hang-up tricks and would NOT go down? Nyel finally had to get out and lower the pesky thing manually. “Third bad thing this morning,” I said helpfully. We spent the first twenty-five miles or so wondering what a “natural cause” of death might be for a chicken.

We made it to Nyel’s appointment on time, even with a stop at Safeway for a couple of sandwiches to go. And the entire beginning to the day was pretty much wiped clean when Nyel go the welcome news, “No more brace and cane only as needed for the next month!”

And what did I learn for the day? When it comes to “early to bed, early to rise,” four o’clock in the morning may be carrying things a bit far. Either that or Murphy’s Law trumps that particular Ben Franklin proverb. It surely did here at our house yesterday!

Posted by: Elizabeth <elizm@kmun.org>