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A return to normal

A buddy and his husband came over tonight to bring us some chickens (live ones). I have noticed over the years that if people get backyard chickens and have to get rid of them for whatever reason, they end up here. I'm not complaining - our flock sometimes resembles the island of misfit toys, but that mix gives us baskets of rainbow eggs.

In tonight's case, my friends ordered female chickens, and one was missexed. They brought him over (aptly named Rooster Cogburn) and a few girls for good measure. When ordering chickens through the mail, you can order males, females, or "straight run," which means there's no sexing done on the chicks. So, you "get what you get, and you don't throw a fit."

Ordering straight runs have cut for me both ways in the past. Once I got a box full of boys, which was frustrating, but they mostly became yummy soups. However, there are times that a high percentage female straight run order has saved me big money. It's usually more expensive to order females rather than straight run - and when ordering a lot of chickens, those dollars can add up fast.

Ordering a straight run also is like getting a very slow to reveal scratch-off lottery ticket. If it's not a breed that's easy to tell which sex is which as chicks and it's too late to sex yourself, it's a game to wait and see what you have. Hear a crow? Another loser. See an egg? Winner winner, not a chicken dinner.

Anyway, even when ordering just females, a sneaky man can still get in the mix - and that's what happened to my friends. Sexing fowl is an art and inexact science; you never know when there's a clandestine penis.

I tried my hand at fowl sexing for the first time this year, and it's not easy. At least in waterfowl, the diminutive duckie dingledangle you're looking for is less than a centimeter, primarily housed in the body cavity, and best discovered with a magnifying glass.

So, I took the chicken delivery tonight, though it was primarily an excuse for cocktails, cheese, and visiting. I used to hang out with people all the time, and I'm not sure what changed. We've been lucky to find some delightful neighbors with good wine taste and conversation, which is always fun. But, the hum of constant socializing has fallen off since human babies and COVID.

It was so nice to just sit and the table and chat. I served three kinds of goat cheese, because what is the point of making cheese if not to share with your friends? I also included a bowl of Pub Mix, the ultimate snack to tuck into in the midst of good conversation.

It felt . . . normal. As an extrovert, I could converse with people for hours as a way to recharge my batteries, yet I seem to do it less now than ever before.

It wasn't until my friends left tonight that I realized no matter how much we're all working toward it, things still don't feel normal anymore. Sure, we all have the fleeting moments, the goals, and those anchors pulling us back toward normal, but a brief reprieve made me remember just how abnormal we still are.

It seems like in every direction I look; we're in some uncharted water without a rudder. Every day is something new and unprecedented.

I need a break from unprecedented. It's time for some boring, predictable, normal. I want to log in to social media without wondering what atrocity or outrage will greet me. I want to stop feeling so drained when faced with the state of our world. I want to sit around sipping cocktails, telling stories, asking after family members, noshing on snacks, and getting random chickens with covert dingdongs delivered to the island of misfit toys.

So, that's precisely what I'm going to do. Cheers.

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