Category Archives: Days in My Life

I don’t just sit around and watch TV.

The Quiet Place

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Nothing is really as quiet as it seems.

“You live in a quiet place.”

Rooster
Future dinner guest of honor.

That’s the first thing the hispanic man said when he got out of his small four-door sedan in my driveway. He took a step back and opened the back door where his young son was sitting in a booster seat. He’d come to get the pair of two month old roosters I’d advertised on Craig’s List for free just the day before.

I was surprised by his observation. Most people commented on the view, which can be breathtaking if you’ve never seen it from my property’s perspective. I thought about his words and said, “Sometimes.”

We worked as a team to catch the two roosters, which were both white with gray patches on their backs. They’d been hatched by my broody hen who preferred sitting on eggs to laying them. Two months after playing mom to these boys and their four broodmates, she was sitting on eggs again and already had two chicks.

He put the two roosters in a small pet carrier just large enough for a 20-pound dog.

“There’s another one in there, but I’m not sure which one it is,” I told him.

“It’s the brown one,” he said. We walked back to the fenced in area and he pointed it out. I thought he might be right. I went in and caught it easily. He put it in the carrier with the other two.

“Are you going to eat them?” I asked.

“Yes. But I might wait a few weeks for the brown one. He’s small.” He showed the carrier’s cage door to his son, who had remained patiently in the car. “Pollo,” he said.

Then he put them in the trunk, shut the lid, and drove off.

I was glad he’d be eating them. Better that then setting them to fight.

– o –

Much later, after spending time at the local airport watching the rapelling crew practice and having lunch with a friend and looking at a trailer for sale and checking on an AirBnB house I manage I got back home. I listened to the radio as I did chores.

His observation came back to me a while later when I was out on the deck, fetching a bedspread I’d hung out over the rail out there.

Even though the radio was off — I’d grown tired of listening to voices talk about the same old thing — it wasn’t that quiet. Out in the distance, I could hear a dirt bike revving its engine as it sped around on a dirt track in someone’s back yard. I could hear a dog barking. I could hear a motor — maybe a lawn mower? — down in the valley below me. If I listened hard enough, I could hear the cars on the road across the river.

I put the bedspread in the dryer and turned it on, then went back outside to see what else I could hear. The dryer through the vent. Rover the cat’s nails as they dug into the 8-inch square posts holding up my deck roof while he climbs the twelve feet to my perch. A single cricket starting its night song early.

You live in a quiet place.

I wondered where he lived and how much louder it was. Did he live near an orchard where there was always the sound of sprayers or mowers or work crews pruning or picking or working on irrigation? Did he live near a major road where there was always the sound of traffic rushing by? Did he live in a densely packed neighborhood where you could always hear some man shouting, some woman yelling, some kid screaming, some dog barking, some car with a bad muffler growling?

I remembered what it was like in Manhattan, on the overnight stays on 57th Street near First Avenue where my college boyfriend’s parents lived. Fourteen floors up in a building with a doorman and a guy would would fetch your car from the garage when you called on the house phone. Out on the tiny balcony or inside with the windows open even a crack, the sound of the city was a constant quiet roar, punctuated with car horns and sirens. It was never quiet there, just as it was never dark.

Even here there were times when it wasn’t quiet at all. In the late winter and early spring, when the temperature dipped down to the low 30s, the wind machines — two bladed fans on tall poles — would come to life, spinning their blades on rotating heads that sounded just like helicopters coming and going over the orchards around them. Sometimes they’d start as early as 11 PM and run all night long, finally shutting down an hour or so after the sun finally began warming the air around them. But how often did that happen? Four or five times in a whole year?

The orchard sprayers were a different story. They ran almost daily, usually in the morning, sometimes starting before dawn. I’d wake at 4 and go out onto my deck and look out to see their headlights among the trees. Pesticides, herbicides, anti-fungal chemicals, and who knew what else? During the day I’d see the spray like a cloud around the sprayer as it moved through the orchard. The chemicals didn’t bother me; they never traveled far. But it was the sound — a steady whine — that you couldn’t avoid. Even that was seasonal, though, and when the trees were picked, the sprayers were mostly silent.

You live in a quiet place.

Back in the chicken yard, my remaining rooster, father of the three that had left in the car trunk, crowed. Another cricket took up the evening song. A larger, closer dog barked. My roof clicked as it always does when the sun sets and the metal panels start to contract in the cooling air. A train rumbled by two miles away and then tooted its horn at a distant crossing as I knew it would.

The dryer finished its short fluff cycle and the vent sound faded. Inside my laundry room, The Samsung dryer would play Bach in simple tones before shutting off.

Was this quiet? I guess that depended on what you knew. It was quieter than Manhattan, but it wasn’t nearly as quiet as the 40 acres I used to own with my wasband at the top of a mesa 30 miles south of the Grand Canyon. Five miles from pavement, it was so quiet that you could hear the sound of a raven’s wings flapping as it flew by. It was so quiet that one morning, when I tried to turn the radio down because it seemed so loud, I discovered that the volume level was already set to 1. That was a quiet place.

I turned and went inside to finish making the bed, leaving the door to the deck open so the sounds of this quiet place could come inside.

Lights at Night

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Beautiful, but at a cost.

As the days are getting shorter, I’m finally rising and going to bed when it’s dark out again. This morning, I took a few moments to contemplate the predawn lights of Wenatchee from my home. And it really is beautiful.

Lights at Night
The view from my deck looking out towards Wenatchee at 4:51 AM this morning.

When I was a kid, my family would occasionally take a drive up to the east side of the town we lived in, Cresskill, NJ. Back in the 1960s and into the 1970s and beyond, developers had begun building luxury homes on a hillside that climbed away from the town toward the Palisades. We used to call it “the rich people’s hill” because the homes were huge and it was obvious that only rich people lived there. I remember one of those drives being in the evening, after the sun had set and the lights of Cresskill had come on. I remember seeing all those lights, like diamonds in the darkness.

That’s what my nighttime view here reminds me of sometimes.

I cannot begin to describe how wonderful it is to live in a place so removed from, yet within reach of, a small city like Wenatchee. I have all the conveniences that the little city offers — shopping, dining, theaters, nightlife, services, and even an airport with airline service to a real city (Seattle) and beyond. Yet I’m not down in it, crawling around in — or listening to — traffic. Even as I sit here now, typing out my thoughts as the sky brightens out my windows, the only sound is my wine fridge humming and my rooster crowing. Even when they’re spraying down in the orchards far below me, the sound seems more earthy, more natural, than the sounds of the city.

But the lights. Sigh.

I’ve begun to notice bright ones getting closer. When I returned from my winter travels in spring 2018, I noticed four new bright spotlights over some sort of maintenance yard down by the river. You can see them on the right side of this photo: three in one color and one in another. And last spring I noticed a new bright light across the river, likely shining down into someone’s yard. Why?

Here at my home, I have subdued lighting at night. There are solar accent lights along my driveway and the path to my tent and the posts tops on the uncovered side of my deck. There are motion-sensor lights that go on when someone — or something — walks near them. None of these lights shine up. And that’s it. I see no reason to pollute the sky with light at night.

And that’s what it is: light pollution. The only complaint I have about my home is the fact that it never gets truly dark here. (Well, it actually does, but only at night when it’s foggy.) And because I don’t have (or need) curtains on my windows, it never gets dark inside my home.

It was with a bit of sadness that I sold my old telescope last year. It was parked near the door to the deck for years and only used, with disappointing results, once or twice. Although I’m likely to pick up a more compact one with tracking that I can take on my winter travels — plenty of dark sky out in the desert! — I just have no use for one here.

It’s blue hour right now, light enough to see the empty sage land between my home and the orchards and lights beyond it. The city lights are starting to fade. It’ll be a hot sunny day today.

But at night, I’ll see those lights again, enjoying the view while lamenting my loss of dark night sky.

A(nother) Short Story about the State of US Healthcare

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Who wants a “pre-existing condition” these days?

I thought I’d take a moment to share a few recent thoughts related to the healthcare situation in the United States.

I’m in my late 50s now and have, for the first time, begun spending a lot of time doing close work with my hands. Making jewelry with fine wire and small tools doesn’t put a lot of strain on my hands, but it apparently does work the muscles and joints more than I’m accustomed to.

Arthritis runs in my family. I clearly remember my grandmother on my mother’s side, who lived to be about 90, complaining about it once in a while. She had typical “old lady hands,” that included thick knuckles and crooked joints under wrinkled skin. She’d spent nearly a lifetime doing close work with her hands in a garment factory, starting work when she was as young as 13 and working until many years later when my grandfather had a stroke and she had to stay home to care for him.

I’ve had knee problems on and off throughout my life. They always got worse when I was heavier and disappeared when I lost a lot of weight back in 2012. But before they disappeared — back when I had a lot of disposable income and a decent health care plan — I went to a doctor about it. Arthritis, he said, pointing at the x-rays.

Handxray
X-ray of a hand from Wikipedia. I’ve got my own x-rays around here somewhere.

More recently, a fall off the back of my truck that sprained an ankle apparently fractured some bones in my left wrist, which I’d landed on. While trying to diagnose the occasional swelling and severe pain (caused by “floating bodies,” we later discovered during arthroscopic surgery that removed most of them), the doctor took x-rays. He pointed out the early signs of arthritis in my wrists and hands.

So yeah. I have arthritis.

It’s gotten to the point that it’s starting to bother me enough to seek medical solutions that don’t necessarily include painkillers. (I can take Vitamin I (ibuprofen) without a doctor telling me to, and I’m not interested in anything stronger.) Would exercises help? CBD creams (as everyone keeps telling me)? Heat or ice therapy? Vitamin supplements? I’m not interested in querying Dr. Google because we all know that there’s enough bad advice there to drown out the good advice. I want to visit a doctor, have her take new x-rays, and tell me what I can do to slow the progression of this very common problem.

And here’s the rub.

If I go to an arthritis specialist — provided I can get an appointment with one — I’m making a very public (on my medical records) statement that I have a medical problem bad enough to seek medical help. In other words, I’m admitting I have a condition that, once admitted, becomes a “pre-existing” condition for future health care coverage.

Now, under the Affordable Care Act (ACA, AKA “Obamacare”), as it was passed by the government and enacted into law, pre-existing conditions didn’t matter. But things are different now.

Let me tell you another story about pre-existing conditions prior to the ACA.

Years ago, when I was very heavy, I was having digestive issues that included GERD, heartburn, acid reflux, and vomiting. To this day, I think it was a hiatal hernia but at the time I was unable to find a doctor to offer any advice beyond “take Pepcid AC.” Back in those days, I made the fatal error of mentioning “chest pain” as a symptom. As you might imagine, that triggered a flurry of heart tests, all of which came back negative. I did not have a heart problem, I had a digestive problem. I blogged about this in detail way back in 2010.

This profit-driven nonsense established me in medical records with a “pre-existing heart condition” that didn’t exist. All of the tests came back negative! So when my idiot wasband lost his job (again), made a late COBRA payment, and got our health insurance canceled, the insurance company refused to cover me when they started the insurance back up. I had a “pre-existing heart condition,” they said.

For six of the scariest months of my life, I had no health insurance because a couple of greedy doctors put me through a battery of unnecessary heart tests and an idiot couldn’t manage his money properly. It wasn’t scary because of my health. It was scary because if, during the time I was uninsured, I got some kind of real negative health diagnosis (think cancer) or had an accident at home (think falling down the stairs) that put me into the hospital or long term treatment, I could lose everything I owned. Medical bankruptcy is a real thing here in the United States and I was set up to become a victim.

I got limited insurance coverage back and later got my own damn insurance again so I didn’t have to worry about an idiot screwing things up for me. The ACA really helped things; it was as if those old medical issues simply didn’t exist. And, so far, I haven’t had insurance denied because of these things — although the rate has gone up dramatically since Trump took office. Next year, who knows?

So here I am in 2019. I have arthritis in my hands and want help to prevent it from getting worse quickly. But I’m afraid to make an appointment with a specialist because I’m afraid to get the condition on my medical records. So instead, I’ll keep waiting, letting the condition likely get worse. All because I don’t want to be denied insurance coverage in the future.

Is it right? Does it makes sense? No and no. But there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it other than emigrate to a country with decent health care for all. And believe me, I’ve been thinking about it.

So that’s my situation as I type this.

At least the CBD cream smells nice.

The Broody Hen

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I help a broody hen hatch 12 eggs.

Right around the time I returned from my vacation in early May, one of my hens got broody. A broody hen, in case you’re not familiar with the term, is one who wants to sit on eggs so they hatch and she can have chicks.

Although I’ve had chickens on and off for at least fifteen years, I’d never had a broody hen. The trouble with a broody hen is that she doesn’t lay eggs. She just sits on them. Worse yet, some of the other hens will lay eggs where she’s sitting so you don’t get eggs from those hens either. If you have chickens for eggs — which is why I have them — you don’t want a broody hen.

But I figured I’d let her sit until she got bored. She was sitting in the upper nest closest to the coop door and was in there every day that I peeked in to gather eggs.

And then one day, she was sitting on the nest farthest away from the coop door, leaving all her eggs — about ten of them — exposed and cold.

For some reason, I decided to take the eggs and stick them in my incubator. I set it up in the garage, added water to keep the humidity sensor happy, put a box of cat food cans on top to secure the lid, and forgot about it.

Until about four days later when she switched back to the first nest.

I gathered up the neglected eggs and added them to the incubator. At that point, I had 18 eggs in there.

Becoming a Chicken Mama

Life went on. She kept sitting on eggs in that first nest. I kept trying to pull the eggs out from under her, trying to discourage her from sitting.

And then one evening about 18 days after starting the incubator (according to the incubator’s clock), I went down to check the incubator and heard a chick. I saw the broken egg but didn’t see the chick right away. Turns out it had fallen off the platform where the eggs were in their turner and fell into a tiny crevice that normally would be full of water. Fortunately, I’d put water on one side only.

I had to take the incubator apart to get it out. Then I had to set up a warm place for it to brood. I had a chicken heater and a clear plastic bin and some pelleted litter material. Within minutes, I had a place set up on my dining table for the squawking little bird. Then I went back to the garage, put the incubator back together and put the eggs back.

Chick and Eggs
Here’s the first chick that hatched, along with two pipping eggs. Can you see the cracks? The black thing is a heater that won’t burn the birds (or anything else).

That’s when I noticed that three more eggs were pipping. That means they had tiny cracks caused by the chick trying to get out. I brought them upstairs and set them in the warm bin with the other chick, which had quieted down now that it was warm.

And then I thought about the work I’d made for myself: brooding another batch of chicks in my chicken coop. I had a brooding area in there that could comfortably hold 8 chicks for about a month. They had to be manually fed and given water daily. And then I had to shift them to a separate area in my chicken coop and yard so the larger birds wouldn’t kill them. I had just gone through this process with chicks I bought in March and those six birds were still separated. I was looking forward to having just one flock. These four (or more) chicks would make that tough.

But what about that broody hen? She seemed to want chicks. How about if I let her hatch one?

Worth a try, I figured. I grabbed one of the pipping eggs, took it out to the coop, and stuck it under the broody hen.

I went to bed. Around 1 AM, I was woken by squawking chicks. I got out of bed for a look. There were two more chicks with the first one. I went back to bed.

In the morning, there were three more hatched chicks in the incubator. I brought them upstairs and stuck them in the bin.

Outside in the coop, there was a fluffy yellow chick poking out from under the broody hen.

Hen with Chick
Here’s a happy mama with her first baby.

I called my friend Janet, who has experience with broody hens. I wanted to know if she thought I could stick the other chicks in with the first one. We decided on a plan of adding them one by one and keeping an eye on things. If the hen rejected the chicks, she’d kill them.

So, for the rest of the day, I worked in the garden near the chicken coop. Ever hour or so, I’d go upstairs, grab a chick, and bring it outside. I’d open the coop door, talk to the hen, pet her with my left hand, and drop the chick behind her with my right hand. I also prepped the adolescent chicken area, which was still occupied by six pullets, with a tighter screen that the tiny chicks would not get through. I even made a nest for the area and added chick food and a water bottle.

I tried getting the pullets in with the adult hens and roosters. That didn’t work out right so I herded them back into their area. I figured the mom would protect her chicks against them.

By around 3 PM, I went up for the last two chicks. More petting and dropping. The broody hen didn’t seem to mind. She’d bonded with all the chicks and they had bonded with her. They stayed together and when they got cold they snuggled up under her. It was painfully cute.

But they were in an upper nest and I wanted them in the other area. So I opened up that area and started grabbing chicks. The hen immediately started squawking, but I worked fast. In the end, I grabbed her and stuck her in there with the single egg she’d been sitting on. I closed up the area. As her chicks gathered around her and she made a spot in the makeshift nest to sit on the egg, they all calmed down.

Hen with Chicks
The hen and her chicks settled into the young chicken area of my coop.

Success!

I kept an eye on the situation, visiting regularly over the next few days. I was very surprised when they went outside just two days later. The young chickens didn’t bother them — but they also stayed far away. I think the broody hen read them the riot act while I wasn’t looking.

When I saw the chicks slip through the fence from the young chicken yard to the adult chicken yard, I nearly panicked. But the adult chickens didn’t bother them at all and they slipped right back to mama quickly.

More Chicks

Of course, my chicken hatching experience wasn’t over. There had been 18 eggs from at least two batches. There were 11 left.

Baby Chick
This was the first of the second batch of chicks to start hatching.

I checked the incubator after a day out running errands and was horrified to discover that one of the eggs had hatched and the chick had fallen into one of the water reservoirs. It was chirping away with just its head above water. In a panic, I gently lifted it out by its head and wrapped it in my shirt, then hustled upstairs to the bin, turned the heater back on, and put it inside.

Then I carried the incubator upstairs and put it on the table so I could keep an eye on it.

Later in the day, I tried introducing the new chick to the mama hen. She took one look at it and pecked it on the head. I snatched it out. Damn.

I had a little get together with friends that evening and they all commented on how cute the chick was. I explained my dilemma, which was worse than it had originally been: it looked as if I had to raise a single chick by itself.

Fortunately, my friend Alyse agreed to take it. She’d just ordered some chicks and already had some older ones. She felt confident that she could introduce it to her flock. I was thrilled. I put the chick in a yogurt container with a pierced lid and she took it home with her. The next day, she sent a photo of her significant other with the tiny chick and an older chicken sitting on his chest and belly.

Chicks
Three chicks fit comfortably in a one-quart yogurt container.

Unfortunately, three more chicks hatched the next day. Again, she agreed to take them. We met up in town and I handed off another yogurt container full of chicks.

I wasn’t done yet. The next day, another chicken hatched. (If you’re keeping count, this is number 12.) This time, I set up my camera atop the bin and videoed the last few minutes as the chick finally pushed out of the egg.


Watch that last chick hatch.

Later in the day, I met up with Alyse and handed over yet another yogurt container.

And that was it. No more pipping or hatching for the next two days. I disposed of the six remaining eggs.

Meanwhile, in the Chicken Yard

Meanwhile, I took away the divider between the chickens so all of them have access to the whole coop and both chicken yards. The mama and her babies mostly stay in that first yard where I have chick feed in the feeder. They camp out at night in a tucked away spot in the young chicken area. When the hen inexplicably got out with her chicks and Penny went after them, she charged Penny several times, successfully driving her back before I got them all back in the yard.

Chickens
The mother chicken and her babies. Note the young chickens to the left. They are mortally afraid of the big hen.

So I’ve got seven more chickens — for a total of 18 — and just have to hope the little ones turn out to be girls. One rooster is enough.