Chicken Lady

(Mary Britton Clouses's photographs of her rescued chickens.)

3 weeks ago the Husband went off to visit some friends in Joburg and somehow procured himself a job installing a bathroom?  Having experienced a D.I.Y project with the man in which our marriage nearly ended installing skirting boards in the bus* and making a bed out of crates (the legs of the bed all faced different directions), I was a little alarmed by this development (and his texts repeatedly using the phrase ‘learning curve’).  As such I have developed a policy of the less I know the better.

While the Husband has been off playing plumber, I have been living alone.  After 3 weeks alone I have realized that I am less a Carrie Bradshaw single and more of a strange cat (chicken?) lady Singleton.  I tend to wander about talking to my poultry in a sadly one-sided conversation.  After they have responded to my cries of “Cooo-cooo-coooo-coooooek” they view me exclusively as a fast food outlet.  They have become so programmed in their twice daily corn snacks that should I forget to feed them I am want to find a beady chicken eye peering in the window at me, or chicken excreta on my doorstep.

As I hate grocery shopping single life has allowed me to avoid this unnecessary pursuit and hone my womanly-gatherer skills instead.  From the depths of my store cupboard I have created a smorgasbord of pasta/savoury biscuit/toast based products, washed down by an ice-cold beer or two (Atkins would be spinning in his grave at the levels of carbs passing my lips en route to my hips).  Initially I worried that my beer vice was the beginning of a slippery slope towards old soakdom.  However I only hit the sauce after 6pm and my single friend, J9, assures me that when imbibing alcoholic beverages alone one appreciates the experience more so it is in fact discernment and an experienced palate that I am creating and not an addiction.  I do marvel at the fact that whilst I am drinking beer and eating 2 minute noodles in bed over four back-to-back episodes of ‘Girls’ most of my peer group are wiping small poopy bottoms and putting miniature humans to bed.

Luckily I have the cult T.V series Girls to keep me company.  It is my latest in T.V obsessions following on from Madmen, Homeland and Breaking Bad.  My Breaking Bad obsession is still quite rife (I mean who doesn’t like to see a High School Science teacher turned Meth-cooking criminal bad ass in the spirit of Hunter S. Thompson?) 

Heisenberg says 'Relax'.

I made this little homage to Breaking Bad, using my newly developed graphic design skills.

Now Girls is totally rocking my little (and presently rather small) world.  Oh, the delight in finding a group of 20-something girls more confused and crazier than I.  How nice to know I am not the only one having a total an utter freak out about my place in this ever expanding world population 7 billion+.  Of course the 'Girls’ in question are muddling through their early 20s whilst I am hurtling towards my 30’s at an alarming rate.  I think my present chicken lady behavior may be a precursor to a turning 30 crisis.

The lack of quantifiable signs of success is causing me a little panic. If Facebook is to be believed everyone I know is getting married/nauseously happily married/having babies/excelling at their chosen careers/going on very expensive holidays/curing cancer.  I on the other hand appear to have misplaced my Husband, be technically unemployed and spend large swathes of my time wandering about with chickens in between making (bad) serial T.V. homage art?

Sometimes I wonder if too much choice is my problem.  While I thank feminists everywhere for burning their bras and cracking glass ceilings a niggling part of me wonders if maybe it would have been a little bit easier if the only life choices available to me where like in my grandmother’s day – secretary, nurse or housewife.  And here I draw on my Madmen obsession to ask if it wasn’t a little easier when suited and booted men earned the bread and called the shots, while ultra feminized women smiled and blushed and coyly teased till they had themselves a husband.

Of course I’d never want to play the 1950s housewife and I’m radically oversimplifying things - my grandmother was a housewife and mother of five who then went on to become a highly successful ball breaking businesswoman.  She and women like her have left me little choice but to take a big swig of my beer and put my big-girl pants on.  After all, brave people have ignited expensive lingerie and flung themselves under horses so that I might be a weird chicken lady, the C.E.O of a Fortune 500 company or a domestic science executive should I so desire and for that I am eternally grateful.

I should also consider eating a vegetable as I heard an urban legend about a university student who lived on a diet of beer and toast and caught scurvy. I’m guessing malnutrition is probably not the feminist ideal.

*The Husband and I inhabited a bus for a while - complete with carpeting, skirting boards, bed (with legs pointing in different directions) and wood burning stove.  We also lived in a tent for a month, but that is another story.

Gardening - not just for Grownups.

As I approach my 30th birthday I have developed a keen interest in gardening and animal husbandry.  To be fair the husbandry bit was thrust upon me when my mother become was given some chickens and so I in turn became the curator of 4 scrawny chicks.  I wasn't overly keen on chickens (I ran screaming from them the first day I was ordered to catch one).  The fear is based on their beady chicken eyes and their large talons.  But after a bit of a slow start I've grown quite fond of my nkukus.  My sister and I have finally named the brood after an anonymous 3 weeks. From left to right we have Leghorn (runt), Fat Elvis (clearly reincarnated fried-peanut butter sandwich eating Elvis), Queenie (aristocratic and haughty) and Near-Death (scrawny, bald and approaching the End).

The Universe has obviously decided that the time is right for me to nuture something and in my inability to sprog has sent me chickens.  Unfortunately it has simultaneously foisted upon me the urge to grow a herb garden.  My brood likes nothing more than to use their prodigiously long talons to scratch up my newly planted chilli and basil plants.  Thus time spent previously nurturing hangovers is now spent feeding chickens and erecting all manner of fences to keep said fowls away from me 'erbs. 

I must say that the Universal Yin or Yang whatzit has good timing for my animal husbandry/gardening skills are developing at a time when I am officially growing too old for "what I call nightclubs".  The most recent ill-fated jol, found a group of my not-since-schooldays friends venturing into 'Crowded House' on 'Old Skool is Kool' night.  We foolishly believed that we could cut some rug (that's dance, to the young people) and leap aboard the cane-train like we did in our youth.  

Unfortunately the Golden Oldies played were circa 2010, with a token mash up of Toto blessing the rains down in Africa, Creedence looking out my backdoor and John Travolta  going automatic-systematic Greeced lightning.  Our elderly posse appeared to be only people not currently at school and apparently wearing their actual school uniforms (or girlfriend's uniforms?) in a cutesy Britney Spears (before she went crazy and cue-ball bald) manner.  We were all in agreement that shooters where verboten for the evening as none of us can handle the horrific after affects of jagerbombs any longer.  We even had to disembark from the cane train, after agreeing that cane spirit and cream soda (aka green mambas) had a rather laxative effect on our elderly digestive tracts and beer left us bloated and worrying about empty calories.  Then of course we crossed into that middle-aged territory of not being able to hear each other over the pre-pubescent whinge of Justin Bieber.  When we did manage a snippet of conversation it was generally about the copious amounts of young flesh on display and a general agreement that parenting standards where slipping if mothers were allowing their daughters out dressed like ladies of the night.  Eventually we conceded defeat after my dear friend Klong thought her loosened bowels could not withstand queuing for the bogs with underage girls while they discussed who to invite to the next school disco.

I felt this was an appropriate time in my life to make peace with the truth that "The Past is a foreign country: they do things differently there" (thank you Leslie Poles Hartley for that pearl of wisdom, I will add that to other parental gems such as "if you pull the tiger's tail you had better hold on for the ride").

While my nights of partying like it was 1999 appear to be on the wain, my present almost-30-something state is a peculiar place.  Whilst all around me Facebook declares non-stop marriage and sproggery I am in a strange netherworld of gardening and a somewhat eccentric husband, as is illustrated by this little tale: I returned home late one evening after visiting my folks to find our house in total darkness.  Having left the Husband at home, I suspected  that we a) had a power cut or b) something more sinister as this is the country in which Olympic heroes allegedly murder their girlfriends.  On high alert I hustled officiously up the drive, when from out of the darkness stepped the luminescent spectacle of my naked husband all a glint in the moonlight.  Somewhat taken aback by his birthday attire it took me awhile to register the packet of sunflower seeds in one hand and  beer in the other. 

Husband: Oh, good you're back.

Me: [Bemused] Yes I am.  It is very dark, is there a problem with the   

lights?

Husband: No.

Me: Then why pray tell are they ALL off?

Husband: Because it's full moon.

Me: Yes, [losing patience] but why are the lights off? [Casting eyes southward] And why? Are. You. Naked?

Husband:  I'm planting sunflowers. [Gives me a look implying I am a bit simple]  Everybody knows that you do your planting at full moon. DUH!

And in that one sentence the Husband proved that while I may have traded nightclubs for gardening and husbandry life is anything but dull.