It's Been a Year.

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It's been a year since I started this blog. A year of cursing and life and death and going to work and having the breaks fail and pushing myself to fix up this place if it motherfucking kills me. When I started this blog I figured that no one would read it. I didn't even tell any friends and family, not even the husband, that I had started it. I figured that would be the equivalent of showing everyone you meet pictures of the cat art you make out of dyed macaroni pieces.

You just don't do it.

Plus, I figured that I would have stopped writing by now. You know, since I have this farm and a job and a husband and my free time consists of 'time I spend between the shower and bed after the sun goes down.' Somehow throughout this insane year I have found the time to drag my tired ass to the keyboard and write on a consistent basis.

I know, I am surprised too.

But I was even more surprised that people started reading this blog. And that they liked it. That was the holy-shit-complete-strangers-are-telling-me-good-things-about-myself-that-almost-never-happens moment.

So I wanted to thank all of you, beloved readers.

Now at this point most bloggers would say they would love to thank you all but that can't think of a way to do that but fuck that shit because that is lame as hell so I painted you all a ghost chicken.

There is no need to thank me. Okay, maybe a little.

Ta Da! I think someone out there might have a new desk top background. Or a bullion board decoration. The only thing you can't do with the ghost chicken is resell the image in any form. Other then that, think of the many uses!

Terrify small children by placing the ghost chicken on the ceiling over their beds and telling them it will pluck at their face if they are bad! Leave small copies of the pictures laying around the house to confuse guests and spouses! Put the ghost chicken staring into a mirror to reclaim it's lost raccoon chewed soul! The uses are endless really.

So this is my gift, from me to you.

Use it well, gentle readers.

Use it well.

Unexpected (and Terrible) Chicken Excitement.

Okay. So we lost* a chicken. In what I would like to think is the most traumatic way possible outside of her dying in my arms after being riddled with gunshot wounds while begging me to tell her loved ones she will miss them.

Normally when a chicken meets it's untimely end we come up short on the head count and the next day we find either nothing at all whatsoever anywhere, or a big pile of feathers.

This time was radically different.

Notably, I was asleep.

Now, Miss Chicken had failed to show up for head count, so I kinda assumed those asshole hawks had been at it again, briefly morned the loss, and then went back inside. I also had to get up at 3am because I had to be at work at stupid early the next morning. So I pretty much shut up the chickens, came inside and went to the sweet soft land that was bed.

Except I couldn't sleep because it was shitballs hot outside so I ended up roaming around looking for the fan I always put in the window. And something to put the fan on. And somewhere to plug the fan in. Look I am poor at getting to fucking sleep in the summer time alright?

So needless to say I was awake for a tad longer then I should have been if we all believe that eight hour sleep rule thing. But in the end there was something so wonderful about the drone of the fan, the cooling mountain air that is clean and clear and fresh blowing over me, and the heavy feel of Scott's arm around me, that I at last fell into a deep and restful sleep.

That was promptly shattered at about 12:35am by the frantic sounds of a chicken screaming.

Oh shit.

My first instinct was to jump up and flip off the fan. Which of course made the screaming Hi Def. I don't speak chicken very well, if at all, but I think she was saying:

OH GOD OH GOD OH NO OH NOOOOOO AUUUGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!

The screaming reached a fevered pitch that had me on feet and groping around for my pants** before being cut off abruptly.

And that was followed by dead silence.

From the sound of it, she must have been almost under the goddamned bedroom window. Which is a lot closer then I feel comfortable having screaming.

I looked at the clock. I had two hours with which to get some sleep.

I looked back outside, into the deep dark Appalachian night. And I said, “Fuck it, I can buy another chicken. ” And then I went back to sleep.

Which would have been a great plan if it wasn't for the fact that I had a horrible fucking nightmare in which I was staggering through the woods and the waist high meadows armed only with only a flashlight while finding every dead pet I had ever owned was there. Alive. Watching me. But none of them would come up to me and I could never to get all the way to them and OH GOD I AM SORRY ALREADY.

Ahem.

Is it possible to be haunted by a chicken?

Like a chicken resentful that it was screaming out for your help and you couldn't even be bothered to avenge it's death because you wanted to go back to bed even though you don't blame the raccoon that did it because it was only doing what comes natural and you would have totally eaten that dumbass stray chicken too?

You know?

Like that can't happen, right?

Right?

RIGHT!?

Oh god.

* Lost being a euphemism for she is really, really dead.

** Holly's rule of any disaster scenario: Whatever it is, you will be better off fighting it wearing pants. Not pajama pants, not shorts, not boxers. Pants.