the REALLY BIG HAT

The other day as I was trying to get to sleep I was thinking about what I would do the next day. Sitting in the sun and reading a book sounded really really good to me so I made my plans. I would find a big bucket and fill it with water [for my feet] 8) then I would get a comfy outside chair. I sighed as I thought of the tan I hoped would replace the usual sunburn. I imagined myself sitting outside, feet in a bucket, a book in my hand [Narnia, the horse and his boy, I’m reading them all before the movie comes out...] sitting there quietly sipping my orange juice. ahhhh! That’s the life alright! But wait! I need a hat. I cant use my cap because the brim hardly keeps the sun out of my eyes, and the sun reflects off the white pages of my book which totally makes the hat feel ridiculous.
"I need a big hat!" I thought to myself. I could borrow one of mums hats... but the only good one she wears in the garden... no that won’t do...
I spent ages thinking about making a really big hat. The next day I was up early [well... early for me...] and making a scale model paper hat for one of my little sisters Barbie dolls. It looked fabulous! The only problem was finding a bit of paper big enough... no way! I couldn’t even find a piece of cardboard large enough for a really big rim. So I thought and thought and thought.
Finally mum suggested a paper mache one. I spent all day making a newspaper skeleton. I had to find two buckets the same size as my head.... and so on and so forth. It took all day.
The next day I was about to concentrate on making some flour and water paste when my big sister
[Who is great at bursting bubbles] came along and showed me an easier way to make one.
Pop! There went my creative bubble. After reading her info I managed to blow up another one which is still intact. The idea was to get one piece of paper [my bro found some plain newsprint - the perfect size] and smear flour and water paste all over it. Then get another slice of paper and stick it on top. Put on a shower cap and have someone help you mould it on your head. [This looks totally ridiculous coz you have to wear it for ten minutes... I was doing it with my little sisters because big hats are cool. When we moulded it on Katrina, Lydia started singing here comes the bride.... That got us into fits of laughter coz she really looked like it, but the veil was made out of wet paper mache... ho ho ho] after ten minutes we placed it down somewhere flat to dry.
Yesterday we painted our hats. They looked so awesome. Because mum and dad were out we turned up Disney music really loud and danced around the room with our paintbrushes spraying paint everywhere [don’t worry, we tidied up...].
Lydia’s turned out the best; it looked like a big flower on top of her head. Katrina’s was really Katrinaish with a soft green background and little red and blue flowers all over it. Mine was the weirdest. I painted it all blue and then put heaps of yellow stars on it. Deciding that it didn’t look very Theresaish I secured a yellow paper crown around the head bit. Now it looks really ridiculous... but I love it. 8)
That’s the story of the REALLY BIG HAT. Seriously, the brim is huge! I hope the wind dies down so my hat wont blow off my head!

Aliens are invading my tongue.

The other day I noticed one of those sore white pimply thingys on the end of my tongue. Yeah... really sore. That night I must have bit my tongue or something coz the next day there were two sore white dots. "Mum look at my tongue" [traditionally I had run to my mummy for moral support]. "What’s wrong with my tongue!" I whined "its sore and its spreading!" I envisaged my tongue covered in white blobby things [that are really painful] but thankfully mum reassured me. The next day I looked in the mirror. "Mum look at this! Its wobbly! eeeekkkkk!!!!!" the little white thing was taking over my tongue, all the other residents were moving away from it so that there was a kind of moat around this thing. I tried to pull it off but it was REALLY REALLY REALLY sore. So I gave up. The problem with it was that it was on the very end of my tongue, the bit that I stick through all the gaps to clean all the other bits of yummy biscuit out. It grew and it grew. I imagined these little greeblies invading my tongue and that white thing was their HQ. My family is now really tired of me poking out my tongue and explaining about the Aliens living in my tongue. Ok, it’s really random but hey it makes me feel better. Its still there making as much pain as it can but I am resigned to make peace with the aliens and then we can live in harmony.

Kia-ora my friends. Yesterday I went to the hospital. Ooooooohhhhhh!!! Exciting ay? Well, no actually we had to wait for AGES!!! Seriously. Dad took mum and me because the driving was rather intimidating mum. We managed to arrive with five minutes to spare at the radiology department; Princess Margret Hospital. [The oldies hospital…] the waiting room was really nice and boring, lovely décor though… well sort of, looked rather hospitalish though. Waiting rooms are really good movie materiel if you think about it. It would make a really creepy thriller. SCREAM!!! Now I’ve got the heebee-jeebies. About five minutes LATE a lady dressed in white with cool glasses came out and called my name. I trembled as I followed her down a slightly winding passage subtly falling behind so that mum could walk in front and step into that spooky room before I. Seeing that the room had a TV in it I sighed and walked in. “ok, lie down here with your shoulders across the pillow” said the lady. “alright…” I mumbled trying my hardest to look relaxed. When I was down in that recumbent position she squirted a cold ticklish jelly onto my neck. I chuckled and told her that I was really really ticklish. “Were not going to do much talking” she told me in her soft [but really hard deep down] voice, “you will have to keep very still so no talking.” By now I was cracking up. I was about to be seized by what one would call a fit of giggling when she put ‘the machine’ on my neck. I stiffened. I couldn’t see what it looked like. But to me it had teeth on it so don’t move or she might accidentally slit my throat. It vibrated along totally giving me the creeps. After about five long minutes of this I began to relax, enjoying the soft feeling running along my throat. But I was mistaken, she hadn’t reached the middle yet, when she did she sat looking at the computer and loosened her grip on the ultrasound thingy. It was really heavy, too heavy for my neck to stand. I was going to croak “stop choking me!…cough…splutter… ahhhhh….!” But I imagined her hard look and even more pressing. So I contented myself with a very large grimace hoping she would get the picture. She didn’t, out of the corner of my eye I could see the picture on the TV move when I swallowed. This was followed by lots and lots of swallowing, until she told me to stop. Waiting…. And more waiting. We were meant to take the results to the doctor at the other hospital but they weren’t ready yet. After about half an hour we realised why, the creepy lady came out and said that the doctor wanted to take a look at me. Her expression was that of outward worry but inward glee. That got me really scared. The Doc was pretty nice, but he told me to stop swallowing. Then to poke out my tongue. What? “Poke out your tongue” he said “like you’re doing the haka” that got me going. I happily pretended I was Peri Wipu but without the neck slicing bit because the lady was holding the thingy against my goitre. It turned out that I have what is called a sist just above my thyroid. They don’t know whether it is attached or not. He got me to poke out my tongue to see if it is attached to the base of it. It wasn’t. A sist is a little blob of something filled with liquid. They said, “its nothing to worry about, but the doctor at the other hospital might like to do a CT scan.” Yeah. Nothing to worry about. We arrived at the big hospital in town at about 3:00. After ages of walking around trying to find the Nuclear Medicine department. I braved the cold and took of my jacket to display the anti nuclear Tshirt I had made that morning. With a sneaky grin on our faces mum and I sat down to wait for more waiting. To tell the truth I don’t really care about being nuclear free [I thought It would be quite an exciting experience to have my thyroid zapped, but I’ve got the wrong condition.] I just care about politicians keeping their word and no nuclear bombs. After waiting…. Waiting…. Waiting we were called into this little guys office. Well, he wasn’t that little, just looks little. Especially the way he looks at you because he doesn’t! He just looks out the window with an eyebrow movement. I was cracking up, thankfully he moved on to more serous matters like explaining stuff that I already knew. Dr _______really liked my Tshirt and as we walked off to the blood test people he showed it to the nurses. He decided not to do a CT scan and other scans saying that the Tshirt told him it wasn’t a good idea. I have come to the conclusion that I quite like blood tests. I don’t know why, they can be a bit painful I suppose. The first time I was distracted by the lady’s ‘Dorothy from the Wizard of OZ shoes’. This time I was distracted by the lady’s chatter about my Tshirt and blabbing on about this that and the other thing. Her back was turned as she slotted my blood into the whatever it is when I looked behind me. There on my right was a jar of lollipops. I mouthed my excitement to mum and then realised that they were probably only for little kids. But when she turned round she offered one to me! Isn’t that exciting!? She said, “I believe that no one can ever grow out of lollipops,” I agree entirely! A big cheesy grin spread across my face as I walked back to the car. In the elevator I enjoyed the envious glances of a little kid [looking at my lolipop] and the pitying glances of the elderly in the car park [looking at my sticking plaster from the test.] Ok, this is really long ay? After all it was a really exciting day! Aha! I’m a poet and you didn’t know it! Ho ho ho.

the sky is falling

ok, one day I will write a proper blog. Never fear... but I just felt like putting this in.
It all started one stormy night in the late nineties. Lightning flashed across the sky, branches were whipped off trees. A mother hen sat there scared stiff. The thunder boomed in her head. She must protect her chicks, but can she? She squawked as she watched yet another of her children run out of the cover only to get blown away. She couldn’t stand it any more. There were only two left, could she stand by and watch them suffer the same fate? Her head was spinning from all these thoughts, should she run? Should she stay? The pressure was too great; she ran squawking into the rain leaving her beloved to fend for themselves. “Cheep!” came the desperate cry of the little yellow chick. “Mummy!” screeched the brown one. They lay there huddled under a small branch shivering until a big hand came and picked them up. That is how theysurvived. Never to see their mother again.
Their new caregivers had so many chickens that they didn’t have time to care for two little chicks. So they passed them on to their neighbours who were chickless. They gladly accepted them and promptly gave them names of their own. The white one belonged to one of the daughters whose name was Katrina. After much humming and harring she decided on the name Chicklet. Kind of like piglet [because she was really into Winnie the Pooh at the time] but a chick. The second baby chicken was given to Theresa [me by the way…] who couldn’t decide on a name. My chicken was the little brown one and looked just like a little kiwi, but it was also very sleepy from its long night in the storm so I named it Sleepy Kiwi. A very original name and I was sure no other chicken was ever named Sleepy Kiwi before.
As the chicks grew we speculated on which would be a rooster and which would be a hen. Katrina thought hers would be a hen, I thought mine would be a rooster because roosters are awesome. Well… I was soon proven wrong. Both ways; roosters aren’t that awesome because they mostly end up in the pot and mine was a hen anyway. Katrina wasn’t very disappointed to find hers crowing one morning, so we ended up with a little couple and soon forgot that they were siblings. We also had some ugly bossy red chickens whom sad to say didn’t deserve names.
As they grew up our chickens had some quite exciting adventures, like the one with the rat. It used to sneak into their cage to either eat their food or their precious eggs. The family got fed up with it so moved the cage and dug up the hole. Everyone was armed with sticks and spades apart from me; I was shivering on the swing making sure my feet weren’t touching the ground. When the rat jumped out everyone danced around trying to whack it with a spade, but Holly our dog had the most fun. When it was injured enough it was left to her….. [The gory details that were going to be written here have been omitted, but I must say that it remained her toy for a few days, then she lost interest and it decomposed somewhere…].
When Sleepy Kiwi became broody mum would put some of the red chicken’s eggs under her. Her first batch was two roosters who ended up in the pot [tasted good though…]. Poor things. Her second batch was two white hens and a brown one who looked extremely like her aunty/surrogate mother. One of the white ones became Andrews and since he was away we dubbed her Snow White. The brown was Lydia’s and because she was a master at jumping was named High Jumper. The last white one is just the white one. No name has befallen this chok, no one has claimed her. I think she might be Paula’s or John’s… but I am not sure.
When Sleepy Kiwi became broody once more mum proceeded to move her to the other cage at risk of being pooped on. She hopped off, so mum moved her back in with the others. This happened many times until one time she stayed on for about a week. Then she would hop off for about ten minutes, hop on again for about a week. We all though they would be duds because she was so unfaithful. I would stand at the hole and whisper to her encouraging words hoping she would get the message and stay on the nest. She did, I was sure it was because of what I told her, she was a brainy little hen and if you talked her through something she would most likely do it nicely.
It usually takes only 21 days for an egg to hatch. We waited… and waited… and waited some more until 22 days were up. Mum cracked all but one of the eggs, they all had runny yellow gue in them. We pleaded with mum to leave the last one because there was a little chip out of it. So we left it, and waited… waited… waited. We had decided that 24 days was the deadline, if nothing had happened by then we would crack it. It was on the 24th day that we heard the cry “mum! Mum! There is a little chick and its dead!” We all raced out to the chicken coup, not caring about our bare feet and the threatening rain. There we saw it, a poor little chick still wet from the shell on the edge of the nest. There was fear in Sleepy Kiwi’s eyes; she had given up. “Aawwwhhhh! Katrina… its dead!” exclaimed mum as she picked him up by the little toe and held him up for us to see. “poor thing…” tears started in everyone’s eyes when mum suddenly cupped the little chick in her hands and said rather loudly “his beak moved! Hes alive! Quick! Run Therese and put a lamp in a box with some straw!” she didn’t need to tell me, I was already halfway to the house running for dear life.
After a few hours of having four little kids watching over him a lamp shining on him, he warmed up and he revived. There was no question as to what he should be called. Dudley was his name. For some reason we gave him to Nathan, who shall we say… doesn’t like chickens… the only day he met his chicken was when it was half-dead in a box in the family room.
As you can guess Dudley was our next rooster. We definitely couldn’t kill poor Dudley! We saved his life. So Chicklet had to go. He was getting a bit bossy anyway. Later we realised our mistake. Dudley was our last chick. Sleepy Kiwi would go broody for the whole 21 days but nothing would come of it. After a few years of hoping we realised that Dudley was a dud. Still we couldn’t bring ourselves to ‘do him in’.
It was last year when our friends offered us a little rooster. Mum gladly accepted, but it meant that we could now see Dudley’s fate. He would not die an old chicken, but die the criminal’s death. Beheading. He didn’t even have his feet tied together because we in our foul little minds wanted to see a chicken running round with his head chopped off [and compare it to our sister who the term was often used on.]. It didn’t really work though; he just flapped a bit, jumping up and down. The new rooster was a Bard Red or something like that, so mum and Mark called him Bard. I just call him The Ugly One, somewhat out of the thought that an outsider took the place of poor dead Dudley.
It has been a year since then and I can already feel the influence the outsider is having. Sleepy Kiwi was broody once more so mum moved her to the other cage. Thoroughly upset she hopped off. Following the usual method mum moved her back in with the others. Then all hell broke loose. The white ones [identical twins] started pecking at her. “Ok” thought mum, “it’s just their pecking order, it will stop soon.” But it didn’t. The Ugly one stood by as the little chickens had some sport with their Aunty. Sleepy Kiwi went into the submissive position [head down] hoping that would make them stop. It didn’t. They attacked even more ferociously at the back of her unprotected neck. Mum told me something about her spinal cord being visible… yuck.
That is how she died. I wasn’t even there to protect her, being up north at a conference I had no idea about it until I came home. Someone mentioned it as an afterthought. “Oh Theresa, Sleepy Kiwi is dead…” “What!!!” …that was my reaction. Then stunned silence. “Its Just a chicken” I kept reminding myself.
It was a good thing it was teatime [and a good thing we were having mince…] or I would have ran outside and snapped the little chickens necks. I never really like the white ones.
I still can’t bring myself to go and see them. I avoided them today as I put a dandelion on my chicken’s grave.
It will take a bit to forgive the chickens that attacked without mercy their own aunty; their surrogate mother who had done them no harm.
R.I.P. Sleepy Kiwi, mother of all [most] Chickendom.
That’s the end of the story so far.