Thirteen Things About Chickens

1. There are hundreds of breeds / varieties of chickens. Big chickens, little chickens, chickens of all different colors, chickens just for meat, chickens just for eggs, chickens for feathers…
2. Chickens can lay brown or white eggs. The color of the egg depends on the breed of chicken, and you can tell which color egg it will lay by looking at its earlobes. White earlobes mean white eggs, brown earlobes mean brown eggs. There’s no nutritional difference between the two.
3. Actually, chickens can lay blue or green eggs too. The shell, that is. But only a special breed of chicken does this - naturally, it’s called “the easter egg chicken”.
4. Chickens eat everything - bugs, grass, weeds, fingers, toes… well, they would eat the last two, if you let them.
5. Chickens can fly. Not far - perhaps twenty feet - but they can. And do. But most of the time, they strut around on the ground.
6. Handling chicks frequently makes them friendly. Mine follow me all over the place, though only some of them allow me to pet them. I didn’t handle mine /quite/ enough.
7. Chickens lay an egg approximately every 25 hours. Many of the breeds bred to be great layers will lay an egg a day for many days in a row, before they skip a day and start over. Some breeds only lay an egg every two days. It also fluctuates depending on the time of year, health and food quality, and age.
8. They begin laying eggs at approximately 4.5-5 months, and will lay very small eggs at first! Then they gradually get bigger.
9. Egg production is dependent on light. In the winter months, without supplementary lighting, chickens may stop laying eggs altogether, as they need a good 15-17 hours of daylight a day to produce eggs. This mechanism is what prompted chickens to lay eggs in the spring and hatch them when the weather was favorable, and stop reproduction in the winter, when chicks would most likely die of exposure. Supplementing light (just a lightbulb will do) will keep them laying through the winter, though the cold may slow production a bit.
10. Chickens do not need a rooster to lay eggs. Egg production happens whether there’s roosters around or not - they just aren’t /fertilized/ eggs. (Rather like a woman menstrates every month, whether she has sex or not.) There’s no nutritional (or visual, or taste-ual) difference between fertilized and unfertilized eggs. The only difference is that if incubated (either in an incubator, or under a hen’s warm body), a fertilized egg will hatch into a chick. Most commercial chickens never see a rooster.
11. A hen is born with as many egg yolks (tiny, undevloped yolks) as she will ever produce. If she uses those up, she’ll never lay an egg again.
12. A hen will lay her best in her first year of laying. Then her production will slowly dwindle.
13. 22 chickens provides way too many eggs for a single gal and all her neighbors, too. *drowns in eggs*

Thirteen Things About Small Towns

1. You really do recognize people by their cars.
2. Often, homes and addresses are referred to by their previous owners. Example: “Oh, you live in the old Smith place?” when the Smiths lived there no less than 30 years ago and has had 3 owners since.
3. Charge accounts at local businesses are just ‘how things work’. “Charge it!” you say, and the clerks write your name at the top of the slip without having to ask.
4. Everyone knows your business before you do. “I heard your mother got a new haircut! What do you think?” *blink* “She did?” Buy a pregnancy test? You’ll be getting calls of congrats before you can read the results.
5. The bars and the grocery store are the only things open on Sunday.
6. Everything is in walking distance… but everyone drives there anyway.
7. It’s strangely common to drive around town just to see who’s at the local bars that night.
8. Everyone seems to be somehow related to everyone else. Creepy.
9. The local cops let the locals drive drunk… as long as they’re just going straight home. After all, you can’t just arrest /everyone/… soon, nobody would go to the bars, and then there’d be hell to pay.
10. You can connect to everyone in town within 2-3 degrees. Guaranteed. “Jane Smith - who’s that?” “Oh, it’s John Doe’s sister. You know John Doe, don’t you? He married Sue Smith - used to be Sue Black?” “Ohh! I know who you’re talking about!”
11. You cannot go have dinner with a friend without someone else in the diner sitting down for a chat. For that matter, you can’t go to the post office, grocery store, or anywhere else without ‘chat’, either.
12. There’s a lot of incompetent people working in various places… but you can’t fire them. That’d just be cruel… And besides, who would take their place?
13. 20 years later, you will still know the names of everyone you graduated with in high school… and their siblings… and their parents… and their high school sweethearts.

Thirteen Things I Anticipate This Spring

1. Chickens! Yes. That’s my big exciting thing coming up! I’m getting some peeps!
2. Growing daylight. It’s nice to wake up after a long day of sleeping and still see some daylight. Makes me feel less like a vampire. (Not, mind you, that I have anything against vampires…)
3. My first-ever big veggie garden. Last year, I could just do some herb gardening in pots. This year I have a huge garden plot, and I can’t wait!
4. My first ever flower garden. Maybe this year, my father won’t stop by with his super herbicide and kill them all off in his quest to rid the world of weeds.
5. Warmer weather. I’m looking forward to shedd the long sleeves and scarves and the heavy coat!
6. Better fruit selection at the stores!
7. Rain that doesn’t turn into ice or snow. One of my favorite scents is the way the air takes on that ‘it just rained’ scent. That’s one thing I miss terribly about Washington. It just doesn’t rain enough here.
8. New Clothes. I’ll be needing a few new shirts and things this spring or early summer. Woohoo!
9. The lack of credit card debt! Extra money! I’ll be putting most of that toward new furniture. I need a couch and a bed and a decent dining table, and maybe some new end/coffee table type things.
10. More energy. Something about this time of year just gets me going on all my projects.
11. The return of greenery - things will grow! Grass and leaves and flowers. Oh my.
12. Cleaning out the garage. I both loathe and look forward to this. The place is a mess, but it’s just too cold and dark right now for me to do much about it.
13. If I’m lucky, a week-long vacation!

Thirteen Things About Ostara

1. Ostara is a pagan celebration of spring, normally celebrated on March 20th or 21st, at the spring equinox. The equinox is a time when night and day are equal on Earth. The Spring equinox marks the beginning of the light half of the year, where day gradually grows longer than the night.
2. The name Ostara is thought to have come from the goddess Eostre. All this probably sounds familiar - as Easter is yet another name supposedly stemming from the same.
3. At its heart, Ostara is a fertility rite, celebrating the return of life in the spring.
4. Eggs and rabbits - two ancient fertility symbols - are its main themes. Both remind us of new beginnings, new life, and growth. These are present in modern day Easter, as well, in case you ever wondered what the heck bunnies and colored eggs have to do with it.
5. In certain pagan lore (mostly Wiccan), the young God at the Goddess choose this time to mate. A child is concieved: the young sun god that will be born nine months later, at Yule.
6. Modern day Easter is always set according to the spring equinox, as well - it set each year on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the equinox, which is why the date varies so much.
7. Rumor has it that at the exact equinox (down to the minute), the world spins just right, and you can balance an egg on its tip. Curious. I’ve never had the opportunity to try it.
8. Pagans often choose this time to plant magical or herb gardens, or at least prepare for them, to concescrate their tools, and to bring balance to their lives and their spiritual workings.
9. Traditional Ostara colors: pastel green, yellow, and pink.
10. Some Ostara gods and goddesses: all love, fertility, and virginal gods and goddesses.
11. Traditional foods: Eggs (especially hardboiled), fruit, leafy green vegetables, dairy foods, apples, nuts, sprouts, hot cross buns, honey cakes.
12. Plants and herbs associated with Ostara: Acorn, celandine, cinquefoil, crocus, daffodil, dogwood, Easter lily, gorse, honeysuckle, iris, jasmine, jonquils, narcissus, olive, peony, rose, tansy, violets, woodruff and all spring flowers.
13. Decorate for Ostara with spring flowers, bunnies, eggs, and garden motifs.

Thirteen Things About My Family

1. My great-grandparents on my father’s side were homesteaders in Montana in the early 1900s. My grandfather went to school in this same town. My father grew up in the same house I lived in all through my schooling years. I used to live in the same apartment everyone else in my family has lived in once upon a time.
2. They used to own a dairy. We still have a lot of old milkcaps that say: Phone 10, from back when telephone numbers were two digits long.
3. It’s written in one of the town history journals/books/things that my great grandmother was noted for having had a cure for ear infection: just a few drops of urine in the ear will do the trick. Um, no thanks. I’ll suffer.
4. My father was a rebel who ran off to new york as a teenager to see his biological father (okay, so he was a stepchild - my grandmother divorced dad’s real father because he was a drunk who slept around on her all the time) and came back with long hippie hair and did a lot of pot.
5. This town has never forgotten that. And never will.
6. My mother grew up 10 miles away and was a cheerleader and the class salutatorian. Of course, she fell for the bad boy with the motorcycle and the long hippie hair.
7. My father wore his hair long until I was a teenager.
8. And he still does pot. *palmface* But I never knew about it until just recently. Because, like a smart guy, he didn’t do it in the house… until recently.
9. But hey, gotta give the man snaps - he hasn’t had a cigarette since mid-February! And he’s generally stopped drinking. Not that it’s helped his demeanor much.
10. In case you didn’t realize it, he and I… don’t particularly get along. But I have a fantastic relationship with my long-suffering mother.
11. I fear my brother is a bum. He’s 3 years younger than me and his only job is a part time gig working for my parents, even though he has a welding/car fabrication/some mechanical bullshit degree that can get him a job paying like, $38 an hour to start with.
12. My mother wanted to be an accountant. But instead, she became a farmer’s wife, then a mother, then a bookkeeper for a couple years, then… a bartender/bar owner. Thanks to my father, we now own the coolest bar in town, which isn’t really saying much, but it is a pretty cool bar. Unfortunately, we can’t seem to get rid of it… wanna buy?
13. I missed one! Thanks for bringing it to my attention. Let’s see, one more fact… Both of my grandfathers have died, but my grandmothers are still alive and kicking… They’ve both moved into the local Assisted Living center, and we’re hoping they don’t resort to kicking each other.

And that’s all, folks!

Thirteen Random Things About My Week

1. It’s payday tomorrow! Er. Today actually. In about four hours! Then I have to buy some yarn!
2. I finished my grandmother’s scarf. Pictures of the scarf in progress are below a couple posts, and frankly, they’re good enough. It doesn’t look much different, except… longer. But ooh, it’s scrumptious. Mom wanted to keep it, too.
3. I bought a movie today. The first movie I’ve bought in… years? Yep. It cost me seven dollars and fifty cents, and it’s called Young Guns - an old western with Emilio Esteves posing as Billy the Kid. I have a thing for outlaws. Was the first Rated R movie I ever saw as a kid. I fell in love, too. The outlaw thing.
4. My cat got shaved today, too. Took my gray persian, Tsuki, to the groomer and let them hack off all her hair and matts and tangles, and she’s a new kitty. She’s about half her former size, and she was small to begin with, more like a half-grown kitten than a full grown cat. But now she looks plain silly - like a cartoon cat with a liiiiitle itty bitty body and a big head. These pics don’t do her justice, but here they are anyway:
   
   

   
   

5. One of my other cats, Sebastian, now does not recognize her by either sight or scent, and has been trailing her around with his nose in her butt and hissing at her every time she looks his way. Tsuki is not the least bit disturbed by this, but I find it incredibly rude.
6. I read… one whole book. February was not a good reading month, obviously.
7. I got several new pairs of socks, thanks to my mother. They’re… uh… cute. You know, kitties on them and whatnot. I really wanted some like, striped socks, or plain nice colored ones, but I got kitties. Oh well. Fun feet!
8. I have nothing to knit and suddenly, it’s driving me mad. I either don’t have the right yarn, or not enough of it, or the wrong needles, or the wrong pattern, or no pattern… it’s madness!
9. I roasted a chicken, and as of last night, or night before, I am finally done eating all the leftovers. Except some of the chicken itself. And I’m so sick of that I might have to feed it to the cats.
10. I got my shipment of books from QPB. What did I order now? The Book Thief which is actually hardcover, not paperback… hehe. Oh well. And Amy Tan’s Saving Fish From Drowning which looks good, and is somewhat larger in size than expected. And a mystery book, because I am a sucker for grab bags. The book turned out to be… er, I forgot its title, but it’s a collection of writings from a large group of authors who submitted what they considered their ‘best’ work to go into the book. So basically, stories and writings, and even a comic from Scott Adams, that each of these authors consider an example of their best work. Could be interesting. Looks intelligent, anyway.
11. I’ve been suffering sinus headaches and stuffiness. Again. I think I’m allergic to the cats, because it never goes away. Either that or it’s an allergy to life itself. Hmm…
12. I finally got my ftp server working at home!! Hurrah! Only one glitch, and it’s a relatively unimportant one anyway. One more thing to cross off my list of ‘geekly things to do’.
13. I’m terribly glad that TT is up and running again! Need to make time to do more visitations of people this week!

Thirteen Things About Letting GoSomething

Since this is Thursday Thirteen’s Retirement Edition… the last one ever, I thought I’d commemorate it with a few last notes on letting go.

1. All things must come to an end. The Buddhists have a saying: This too shall pass. Everything, good or bad, will eventually pass us by.
2. There is a natural cycle to earth - birth, life, death, and rebirth. When one cycle closes, another can begin.
3. Tears are only natural.
4. Laughter truly is the best medicine.
5. Memories get sweeter with time.
6. Some of the best things in life are the most short-lived.
7. When the time comes to say goodbye, have no regrets, but burn no bridges. Life can bring you down this same road again in the future - but then again, you might never see it again.
8. Honor your blessings, and grieve for your losses - not the other way around.
9. Try not to worry too much about what could have been. Life has a funny way of taking us right where we need to be - even if we can’t see it at the time.
10. What fulfills you one day may bog you down a year from now. Let it go and cherish the good memories you once had… rather than letting the bad fill you up and breed resentment.
11. The world does go on after tragedy. Move with it. All things soften with the river of time.
12. Let go of the old to make room for the new.
13. Don’t cling to the past, or relics of it - remember it, cherish it, and honor it, but don’t let it rule the present or the future.

I’ve been reading. Read 9 books this year already. They’ve all been good, except this last worthless pile of paper called The Two Minute Rule. I cannot believe the author, Robert Crais, has a dozen or so books published, because this was one lameass book. Did he ever get the “show, don’t tell” lecture? Because he needs to.

He also needs to get the “contrived endings don’t make for good endings” lecture, because this one made me gag. It made no sense at all. None. Nada.

I consider myself a writer. I write, after all. Lots. Never published a bloody thing, probably never will [frankly, I’m a chronic unfinisher], but obviously, I /could/. I mean, I could write this shit. Is that all it takes to get published? Words on paper, even if they’re deader-than-a-doornail words with no emotion, no feeling, no life?

Oigh.

So here’s my TT for the week - 13 Ways To Write Badly. This book didn’t violate all of them (though a good lot of them, I’ll say), and I could go on for a lot more than 13, but this’ll do.

Thirteen Ways to Write Badly!

1. Tell. Don’t show them anything - your readers don’t want to experience the story, they just want to hear it like news on the radio.
2. Introduce characters in the first chapter by first and last name, give them a point of view to tell their side of the story, make like they’re an important character, and then never look at them again. Ever. This gives your story an aura of mystery, even once the readers finish! Excellent!
3. Give everyone stupid nicknames and throw them around every now and then just for the heck of it. Readers love that shit.
4. Talk brand names. Who needs honest description when a brand name will do?
5. Contrive an ending. Your character was a bank robber? Make him rob a bank at the end to save the day, even if it’s unnecessary and more, outrageous. Excess drama makes for a bestseller!
6. Pitable characters are good characters. How can readers possibly like your character if they don’t pity them? Make sure your character is depressed, unhappy, and miserable, and then make sure he’s a complete failure, and then make sure he knows it and thinks it… often. That’s right.
7. And don’t forget to tell them so. None of that showing business. Your readers don’t wanna think! This is important here!
8. Flat, one dimensional characters are the way to go. Don’t put any more time into the characters than your readers will - a few thoughts on the matter is good enough. I mean, giving anyone but the main characters personality is a total waste of time.
9. Characters shouldn’t change. Not in the book, anyway. If you make the characters grow or change, people will just think you’re a crappy author because you couldn’t make up your mind.
10. If you must make them change, make it big changes. Instantaneous ones. No pressure needed. Just do it, and get it over with fast. Don’t make them dwell on it, or your readers will, too, and then you’ll be that crappy author who can’t stick with anything.
11. If you’re not writing about a miserable, pitiable character, make sure you’re writing about Superman. Everyone loves superheroes, because they can do no wrong and know everything.
12. If you don’t have a plot, put lots of drama into things - sex and emotion and turmoil and things that go round and round and round so nobody ever realizes your mistake. You’ll be fine. I swear.
13. If you DO have a plot, don’t make the above mistake. Plot should strictly be plot. No emotion. Don’t let those characters have feelings, or it’ll sideline you. Well, not many feelings. And for god’s sake, don’t show it if they do. A quick: “He was surprised.” will do the trick. Point A to Point B. Nothing more.