I win, chicken. I WIN!!! Or at least, I think I do. I hope so. I can’t be sure. She’s beat me before. Many times. Many months. Shoot, who am I kidding. It’s been a year of trying to coop her up. To keep Phoebe – the Houdini of Hens – in her little chicken yard. This great escape artist. The hen who couldn’t be penned. But I think I’ve got her. I think I’ve done it. I think I’ve won. Hoorah! A year back I nicknamed Phoebe the Bomb Crater Chicken because she had a knack for jumping the picket fence to her area, rooting around in my nicely manicured backyard and digging holes like a B-52 had made a bombing run. Pine needles would be strewn about. Plants devoured. And I risked breaking an ankle as I ran about trying to corral her while yelling, “Come back here you dang-blasted Bomb Crater Chicken!” It was quite a sight to see, and some tourist trains considered adding this spectacle to their itinerary.
Beware the DIY dude on YouTube … or should you?
Washing machine un-level again … wife perturbed … must … resist … temptation … to Google it. Must … resist … temptation … to watch … rubes … on YouTube … who … know … less … than … strained … carrots … AHHHH! Can’t do it! Me: Google, find me morons who know why washing machine goes un-level. Google: I have just the moron for you! And so it goes … I hate appliances. I used to think the problem with appliances is you can’t buy cheap. So, I started buying more expensive ones. It was then that I realized something very important: Expensive appliances are just higher-priced cheap ones. They break the same amount, but the repairs cost more. That’s when the DIY-er in me comes out. The urge. The pull. The tractor beam that calls me to the light. Or the Dark Side. Or whatever the heck makes very dumb people with questionable repair skills think there must be a cheap and easy solution within our grasp. It’s called: YouTube! Have you heard of this fairy tale land? It’s where the desperate and the deranged go to find solutions to their problems. It’s a place where any so-and-so can record a video and proclaim their expertise at being expertly stupid.
A Florida yard braces for more leaf-burning cold
I have a Florida yard. A Florida yard is loaded with nice, flowery plants that don’t need a lick of water, attract butterflies and hummingbirds and bees, and look pretty much bountiful all year-round. EXCEPT … if the temperature dips below 86 degrees. At which point the entire yard packs up and moves to Miami on a Greyhound bus. Or worse, shrivels up and dies, leaving behind a brown, crunchy wasteland. The surface of Mars is not so desolate, barren or sad. My dune daisies are wrecked. The porter’s weed looks like it has been stricken by a case of vegetative mange. And the bougainvillea — so happy to impale me with its saber-tooth thorns just a couple of weeks ago — has dropped every leaf it could find, ordered more on Amazon, and then dropped them, too. The aesthetic of my yard right now? Dead sticks in creepy forest. I tried to save them all. Or as best as I could considering we had several nights of sub-freezing weather, and I can’t really get too motivated with anything involving the word “sub.”
Mysteries of the kitchen
I’ve been watching a lot of TV shows about mysteries: Mysteries of the unknown. Mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle. Mysteries of the weather. Mysteries concealed on satellite images. Mysteries of why we gain weight even though we SAY we don’t eat too much ice cream or drink too much beer. But while I’m hooked on finding explanations for all of these worldly and even cosmic curiosities, it has also made me wonder about why we can’t solve some mysteries closer to home. Like literally in my kitchen. Because there are big mysteries in there that defy explanation and evade all answers. So, I put together this “Mysteries of the Kitchen” list in hopes that one day we might find a way to explain them all (hopefully on TV!): • Why do Youtube videos make it seem like kitchen appliance repairs are so simple, raising my hopes and encouraging me to pop out a water dispenser panel on the fridge? But the guy in the video didn’t break two critical pieces of plastic when he did it, and then spend the rest of the afternoon Gorilla-gluing his fingers to his fridge. (Or maybe they just edited that part out?!?)
Hey Hurricane Irma, you left a tree on my house!
“There’s a tree on my house.” If you ever say these words out loud, your ears will hear them, question what was just said, and spark an internal debate: “A tree on my house? Is that what I just said? No! There can’t be a tree on my house.” Only, yes. It IS a tree. And it’s leaning on my house. Look! There it was. A photo in a text from my neighbor. My neighbor, Forest, stays through all the storms. Even better, he sends me texts, photos and videos at all hours. This year during Hurricane Irma he even streamed live video from his upstairs porch. The news is always good. That’s what I was expecting when the texts came in the morning after the storm. But they showed damage on the street. A transformer dangling from a pole. A massive tree that took out power lines clear over to Riberia Street, two blocks away. Then I saw it. It was agonizingly slow to load, taxing the struggling cel network in the powerless neighborhood where my family had evacuated to. It was of a pink house — boy, that’s similar to mine! — with a big cedar tree parked against an upstairs porch. GASP! “There’s a TREE on my HOUSE!!!”
Now back to coverage of the Florida Summer Heat Games
“Now we return you to live coverage of the Florida Summer Heat Games where native Floridians prove their mettle in a series of insane outdoor events testing their courage, their stamina and their ability to overcome sweltering temperatures and oppressive humidity. For these competitors, household projects take on epic proportions in weather that could cook a rack of ribs quicker than you can say ‘BBQ.’” “Today we have competitor Brian Thompson, who is tackling a small wood-working project that he SHOULD have done in the cool temperatures of April. But that’s the beauty of the Games, Bob. Dumb people doing dumb things in the kind of heat that will buckle a bridge.” “You’re so right, Jay. And Brian has his work cut out for him, doesn’t he?” “He sure does. He already passed the Sweat Stain Rorschach T-shirt Test when he went inside for a drink of water and his daughter pointed and laughed at what she said was the shape of a three-legged elephant in a party hat. I personally saw a lion-tailed macaque throwing up, but it’s hard to make everything out in this heat haze.” “That’s right, Jay. Brian has been working on a project that should have taken him all of three minutes, but he’s managed to turn it into a day-long affair thanks to his incompetence and this insufferable heat. Now, he did survive the morning’s Mosquito Mowdown, when 15,000 blood-sucking skeeters descended on him, tapped his jugular and drew 12 pints. He turned white […]
Lessons in childhood chores
I started rubbing my hands together. Scheming. Thinking about all the tasks and jobs and things I hate to do. My wife — I can’t even remember why —said to my daughter one day: “It’s time you had some real chores. You need to come up with a few ideas.” I popped up out of nowhere, complete with a puff of smoke. “I’ve got some ideas!” I said. I think my daughter hadn’t finished something or tried to order room service after the kitchen had closed. Something that kids are known to do to set parents off, and get them threatened with more tasks around the house. It was music to my ears. Free labor! Handing off tasks I hate. Giving up household duties that threaten life and limb — MY life and most of MY limbs!
Flight of the bomb-crater chicken
My chickens have it pretty good. A nice, roomy house, an enclosed run where they can stretch their legs, and even a “private” yard with a picket fence so they can explore a bit when we’re home. All I ask in return are two simple things: 1) provide us eggs and 2) don’t venture out into MY yard where they dig giant holes, toss around pine needles and devour anything green like a giant swarm of drunken locusts. Two simple things! And two of my three birds abide. But then there is little Phoebe — the bomb-crater chicken. A house, a run and a yard are not enough. She needs to roam and explore. She needs to wander MY yard, scratching for bugs, eating plants and digging massive holes that that look like a World War II air raid. How does Phoebe get out? Well, chickens do fly, you know. But most of the time they’re too lazy, too fat or frankly, lack the smarts to remember they have this skill.
The evil side to the friendly fire alarm
Need proof that technology has a mind of its own? Has a sense of mischief? An evil streak? How about this: Why does a smoke alarm decide that the appropriate time to let you know it needs a battery replacement is at 2 a.m.? Not at 4 p.m. on a weekend, just as you’re launching into other house projects. Or 10 a.m. on a weekday, when no one is around to care. Two … in … the … MORNING! And does it gently prod you? Offer a nicely-worded reminder? Nope. Instead, it emits a sonic burst so shrill and piercing that it feels like a stream of molten lava has been poured into your ear canal. For some reason, fire alarm manufacturers see no need to differentiate between, “RUN, fool! Your house is on fire!” and “Please, sir, kindly gather up a 9-volt battery, but only when you have a moment.” Practically the same thing in my book. This is what happened in the Thompson house at 2 a.m., directly above my head, while I slumbered in the deepest of sleeps. You don’t come out of those easily, and certainly not from a single blast of the fire alarm. The little bugger is kind enough to issue a single “blurt” before pausing for 30 seconds or so.
That old house fascination
A postcard arrived in the mail. One of those gimmicky ones made to look like real handwriting. It said, “I’m interested in buying your house …” My wife always takes great offense to things like this. We get them every once in a while. Part anger, part sarcasm and part joking, she said she wanted to contact this person and tell them we would be happy to sell … for a price that was three times what the place is worth. “Actually, could you imagine that?” she said. “We could buy a huge lot somewhere and build whatever we wanted.” “Yeah,” I said longingly, picturing never having to nail down a loose porch floorboard or fixing another termite-eaten piece of siding on the century-old downtown house. “I can imagine it!” My daughter wasn’t so amused. “We’re not selling the house,” she declared at dinner. “Not for any amount.” “Nothing?” my wife asked.