ingrid

I’m getting organized.  Scientific even.  I bought a white board at SCRAP and nailed it to the wall in the chicken coop to keep track of number of eggs per day.  I am even sort of trying to track who is laying what.  So far the results are dismal.  It seems that we are getting three eggs a day from the same three chickens–Rita, Hasty, and Evelyn.  Hmmmm.  That would mean that Agnes and Rosey aren’t laying at all (old ladies), Hildy is on sabbatical (I don’t know what her excuse is as she is only 1 1/2, Bella is molting, and Frankie is just a lazy, good-for-nothing chicken, eating a lot and not pulling her weight, sort of like Inez except that Inez is not a chicken.  (I don’t know when I decided that it was funny to joke about babies not doing their part, but it still cracks me up.  It seems to be the only acceptable way to talk trash about a baby.)  Frankie, like Inez, might just be too young as she was hatched at the end of June last year.  It is hard to tell with chickens who reach laying age right as the days are short and the rest of the flock is not laying anyway.

Evelyn might well be my hardest worker around here.

She is laying almost every day.  This last week she popped out this MASSIVE egg.  It was the second of its kind to be presented by this lady.  When I told Brad that it was a double yoker, he was unduly surprised.  ”Those are real?” he said.  Of course they are real!  Even though he had heard about them all his life, because he had never seen one, he didn’t really believe they were real.  Weird denial of reality is what I call that.  I hear that the sun is made of gas, and you know what?  I believe it.

This is a comparison photo:  normal egg from Hasty, giHUGIC egg from Evelyn.  This worries me a bit actually.  It is fairly common for chickens who produce these huge suckers to get egg bind, a condition where the egg literally gets STUCK inside them.  A friend on our street lost a chicken to egg bind lately.  I am freaked out that I might have to reach up in a chicken and break an egg to get it out if this were to occur with one of our hens.  Here is hoping it doesn’t.  A friend of a friend also told me that she gave her hen a warm bath when she had egg bind.  The egg came right out.  Hmmm.  I guess I like baths.  I’ve never had one with a chicken though.

More photos to impress and (in the case of Anne) disgust?

Ahh yes!  Look at those old lady hands!  (It was because I was working with clay all day; I got a lot of terra cotta stuck in the cracks in my hands.)

We need to hurry up and come up with a use for this egg as it does not fit in the carton.  Really.

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I like to check the weather on line.  Here is something to look forward to:

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

It looks like it might rain this week.  Do you think the question marks are saying something?  Like maybe, “what do you make of all this rain?”?

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I had one of these weirdo eggs back a few months, and I fully intended to write about it.  Unfortunately, it seemed to have rolled right off the counter and broken on the floor before I could take a picture of it.  That is what happens to anything that the kids decide is small or “cute”.  They touch it too much and then break it.  I had better watch out for Inez.

Anyway, this is the illustrious “fart” egg or as the English so charmingly say, “wind” egg.  It happens when a chunk of reproductive tissue within the chicken breaks off inside her body and flows into the egg production part.  Her body naturally wraps the chunk in shell and plops it out dutifully.  If we break this little guy apart, there will not be a yolk, but rather a little chunk of grey tissue.

Isn’t that fascinating?  I tried to tell a chicken-keeping friend about this and she started making gagging/vomiting noises, so I had to stop.  I really wanted to tell my story!  I don’t know what her problem is.  I think it is way cool.

Another chicken neighbor has quite a collection of bizarre eggs, some tube shaped, and one covered in wavy divets.  Her husband blows the eggs out and keeps them in a bowl in their living room as a sort of conversation piece.  If I didn’t have a million other things to do today, I would do that too.  It seems clever, but as I have to get to the store and buy school supplies, finish dealing with rotting figs, pick up Francis at school, cook an amazingly clever and balanced gourmet meal, and get Francis to soccer practice by 6pm, well, you will just have to settle for this picture:

It is very small, you see. Small like a pen.

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The Rose That Grew From Concrete by Tupac

Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete?
Proving nature’s laws wrong it learned to walk without having feet.
Funny it seems, but by keeping its dreams, it learned to breathe fresh air.
Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else even cared.

I like this little poem by Tupac Shakur as a teenager, before the swagger, before the attitude, before the dramatic death.  It’s a simple little ditty, but you can hear the voice of the kid who wrote it and he is without pretention, definitely the rose.  And a smart little bugger too.  I used to teach this little gem and say, “Look who was obviously good in English class?”

Oh yes, and I am delighted that of all the sunflowers we planted, this one seems to want to grow in the concrete.  We didn’t put it there, but long live the sunflower!

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No, not YOU kids.  That isn’t how I feel.  It is Agnes.  She is totally done with being a mother and has reverted to queen mean chicken.  I watched her peck Helen (twice!) this morning.  After that, Helen kept her distance and hid out under a hydrangea most of the day.  Frankie was smart enough to stay out of her way from the start, but Frankie seems to be a flighty one.  It has been weeks of watching those three hanging out closely together and now suddenly Agnes is telling them loud and clear to clear out.

I had read about this, but continue to be curious.  Why are chickens done mothering at 4 weeks?  I know their brains are small, but how does this serve their chicken society?  Let me know if you have any thoughts on this.  Meanwhile, I am going to sneak out into henhouse and see where the chicks are sleeping.  I know for a fact that they were tucked under their mother just yesterday.  If she has hopped back up on the roost we’ll know that the new game is on.

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HOLY CRAP!  She is EATING her own eggs.  Seriously.  I  have a problem on my hands.  Or maybe I have a stew chicken ready for the pot.

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I just moved Agnes to a box in the shed (quieter and private quarters that she can stay in when the chicks hatch.

Here is a mystery….

There were only 10 eggs.  I put 12 under her last week.  I am SURE of that.  Where did 2 go?

I cleaned out the whole hen house and even raked around the ground below trying to find any telltale signs of those eggs.  Nothing.  I dug around the edges for holes showing rodent paths.  Nothing.  I shook out the straw.  Nothing.  There is a foul smell in the henhouse which could come from rotten egg innards, but unless the chickens ate whatever parts of the egg remained, I can’t figure how there would be no trace besides the bad smell.

Because I can’t think of any better ideas, I am espousing what I call “The Templeton Theory” which is that a rat came in and rolled the eggs away in the night.  It seems unlikely actually, but it is all I can come up with.  I also liked that scene in the book (and the cartoon!) where he goes rolling the egg off under the pig trough and all the animals are completely disgusted.  Let’s hope this doesn’t end in sorrow-orrow-orrow (anyone get that joke?).

Meanwhile, I need to pick up my Chicken Health Handbook at the library.  Problems are getting more advanced for this novice chicken keeper.  What to do?  What to do?  I might hire this sentry to keep watch over the girls this next week.  She looks trustworthy.

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So my neurologist says that the spot is still a spot (out damn spot!), but doesn’t seem to have any problems with it.  She says that it is a mass of tissue that has malformed or shows trauma of some sort (maybe migraines, maybe oxygen deprivation, maybe, maybe, maybe….as you can see, they don’t really know these things).  I am officially “released” from her care.  Nothing is wrong with my brain, it is just decorated differently.

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I was feeling sort of dull and like I hadn’t experienced anything new lately, so I thought I would convince someone to shove me in an MRI machine.

On Thursday I tripped down to the old “Cancer Center” (note to Providence: this is not a comforting sounding place to go for a doctor’s appointment) at Providence and hopped up on the gurney for an adventure into sound and space.  I think they played Pink Floyd in there, but I am not sure.

Actually, they didn’t.  And I had experienced an MRI before, but not in a year or so, so it was time to take a peek into the old brain to make sure everything was getting along well.

You see, about a year and a half ago, I started having these really alarming episodes.  I would suddenly feel a little sick to my stomach, then the light would look sort of weird and otherworldly, and then I would just get all blind in 1/3rd of each eye.  I could see okay from the outside of my eyes, but somewhere in the center would be a big blob of nothingness.  Blind.  Truly.  This would last for about 30 minutes and then disappear, leaving me confused and sort of tired.

The first time this happened, I was sort of scared.  I needed to drive and get Francis somewhere and yet I knew I could not drive being unable to see.  The second time it happened I sat right down and cried.  I thought, “I knew it!  I’m going to be blind by 40!  Why did I fantasize about being Helen Keller?  It’s just not that great!”.

The third and fourth time it happened I did something that I rarely do:  I got on the phone to my doctor and tried to find out what the hell was happening to me.  My doctor sent me to get an MRI “just to check things out”.  I don’t know about you, but I had no idea what I was getting into.  I knew that they put you in a tube and that the space is sort of tight, but as I don’t have a lot of claustrophobia issues, I thought I would be fine.  I sort of imagined that I might be able to take a nap while I was in there.

Little did I know that being strapped down to a table and plopped in a MRI is about the LOUDEST place you could ever hope to be.  That first MRI was awful.  I laid in that white plastic tunnel and just cried as I was blasted with robotic nonsense cacophony.  I felt like the noise just drilled into my brain.  I hated it.

This is how the MRI works: (from Alberta Health Services informational webpage)

MRI is a non-invasive procedure that uses powerful magnets and radio waves to construct pictures of the body. MRI imaging is based on the magnetic properties of atoms. A powerful magnet generates a magnetic field roughly 10,000 times stronger than the natural background magnetism from the earth. A very small percentage of hydrogen atoms within a human body will align with this field. When focused radio wave pulses are broadcast towards the aligned hydrogen atoms in tissues of interest, they will return a signal. The subtle differences in that signal from various body tissues enables MRI to differentiate organs, and potentially contrast benign and malignant tissue. Any imaging plane (or “slice”) can be projected, stored in a computer, or printed on film. 

I love how peaceful that description is.  It is a “powerful” sound, not a deafening one!  The machine makes the worst sounds I have ever heard.  It makes crazy “we are now melting your brain” noises so even if your eyes are shut up tight, you can’t help but imagine the machine malfunctioning and shooting laser rays into your skull.  And you can not escape.  And you can not move.  And you can not sing along to try to make the noise better, nor pray, nor think as the noise is roaring through your brain even with the earplugs and baffles.  So basically it sucks and makes you feel like you are dying even if you are perfectly healthy.  And you are stuck there for more than an hour.

So a year and a half ago, I did my “just in case” MRI and they found a special extra thing in my brain that they called a “lesion” but I like to think of as a brain spot that gives me special powers.  They injected me with this dye stuff during the MRI to see what would happen with the brain blood barrier and apparently, the dye tells them that the lesion is probably not something bad.  Bad lesions, versus special extra ones, take on blood.  Cancerous tumors and such suck up all sorts of blood, so please, everyone who loves me, do not get dramatic on me…. I’m not dying yet, or rather, I am, but just VERY, VERY SLOWLY.  After the special powers were found, I was sent to a neurologist and she wisely diagnosed me with occular migraines.  The special powers might not have anything to do with the migraines or they might be the markings expected to be found in the brains of those similarly afflicted with the ‘graines.  I was told to come back to have my “brain do-dad” (her real words!) checked out in 6 months.  I was also told that I was not to take birth control as a migrainey person was at a much higher risk for stroke when using hormonal birth control.  I then did what any reasonable person would do after being told to not take birth control pills:  I got pregnant.

When pregnant, you can not be MRI’ed, or should avoid it if possible.  I did.  I continued to avoid it for another 12 months, but then I had to face it.  I faced it last week.

There were some bumpy spots on the road to the big white tube.  I had an appointment scheduled for Monday morning bright and early.  When I got there and was all ready to jump up on the tray, they noticed that I had written down that I was breast feeding currently.  

“Oh, you do know what the contrast does to your breast milk, right?” they asked.  Wha?  Apparently the substance in the contrast dye passes into breast milk and scientists have little idea of what it might do to babies.  They do know that it kills people with kidney problems though.  Hmmmmm…..

The technician then asked me if I had 24 hours worth of breast milk built up because I wouldn’t be able to feed Inez for 24 hours.  WHA?  Nursing women will know that this is unbelievable!  That is a lot of breast milk!  Of course I didn’t have that much!  So I was rescheduled for the end of the week, which in my mind would still not be quite enough time for me to pump that much.  I feed Inez about 8 times a day, maybe 4 to 6 ounces at a time.  When I pump, I get about 8 ounces if I haven’t recently fed her.  When I have fed her, I am lucky to get 2 ounces.

So this was my week:  feed the baby, feed the family, feed myself, pump out milk.  Rinse and repeat.  After about 6 hours of this schedule, I felt exhausted.  I felt like Someone had hit me over the head, or maybe I had the flu, or maybe had run 15 miles but forgotten about it.  

Time for a picture:

This was awful.  If I never have to interact with a breast pump again, I am fine with that.  It is exhausting to have your body feed just one baby.  It is over the top to try to feed and create a future food supply at the same time.  I was baffled thinking that I could drink a whole Nalgene bottle full of water and hope to extract more than that in just a couple days.  How could I possibly put in enough liquid in order to take out that much?  But I did!

Anyway, I did the MRI on Thursday and it wasn’t half bad.  The sounds were horrible, but not as horrible.  Because they only needed to look where my special powers are, it was much, much shorter.  

Inez and I even lived through the 24 hours of no nursing (during which I had to continue to pump out my zombie breast milk and dump it down the drain to infect fishes in the Willamette River).

Science is a wonderful thing, but I am happy to not have to be part of the wonder this week.  I go to have the images read in a week or so.  I’ll let you know if anything is exciting, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

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