Gods saves a chicken!

Today started off bad.

Really bad.

Well, I take that back ~ I woke up so it couldn't be THAT bad. But let's just say... it hasn't been one of my best mornings.

It started with a "sad" day yesterday. You know, one of those days where you feel sad all day. It probably had something to do with the argument that Wes and I had the night before over the house. We both had different ideas on how to fix something and we both felt unheard. We argued about money and finishing the house. I know you don't want to hear all the gory details so long story short... he was wrong.

Just kidding, I was wrong and had to apologize. Sometimes, I get impatient and just want the house done and I worry A LOT about where the money will come from. So I guess I was still feeling bad about the argument and just felt sad all day.

So, I woke up this morning with a new attitude and decided to go to the gym before we started school. I gathered all my gym stuff (i-pod, towel, cell phone, water bottle) and walked out the door only to realize that I had left my keys inside and I was now locked out of the house. GREEEEEEEAT!

WHY GOD? I just wanted to go to the gym. Why can't things just be easy?

The kids were all asleep so I had to try and wake them up.

I threw sticks at the upstairs windows.

I screamed.

I pounded on the house.

I gathered and threw another 50 sticks. I was getting a great workout!

I sent out a distress call to Wes at school.

30 minutes later...NOBODY heard me.

I cried... really hard. All the emotions from the past 2 days came out and I just sat in a chair outside and cried. I am talking shoulder-shaking-ugly crying.

Wes called and gave me a little pep talk. I felt better and decided I had better try climbing up the scaffolding in order to get closer to the kids window so they could hear me.

As I climbed up the scaffolding, I had a discussion with God about why he thinks I can handle all these little "problems" that seem to occur at our house. He didn't answer.

I finally get to the top of the 2 story scaffolding and start throwing sticks and yelling. Then I hear this noise coming from the silver air conditioning tubing that we are currently covering on the back of our house. (If you don't know about this, I blogged about it a week or 2 ago.)

I kept thinking, "Michelle, if a rabid squirrel jumps out at you don't fall off the scaffolding!" I poked at the tubing with a stick and it moved again. Then I heard bawk, baawk.

It was a chicken. Phew... at least it's a domestic animal... sort of.

Then my thought process went like this... IS THERE A CHICKEN IN THE A/C TUBING? No, is that even possible? The tubing is connected to the main a/c unit and that goes into the house. Can the chicken get into our house through the air vents? WHAT??????

I call Wes and he ASSURES me that it is impossible. That makes me think that yes, it is entirely possible.

I finally wake up the kids and get inside. I go upstairs and look out of the bathroom window and there is a huge hole in the tubing where the chicken has fallen through. GREEEEEEAT!

How do these things happen to me? I couldn't dream them up if I tried?

I can hear the chicken but the tubing is a few feet under the window and we can barely reach it. We (me and all 5 of the kids) are now standing together in the bathtub calling "cheep, cheep" and shaking a cup of chicken feed. Wes is on the phone telling me not to let the chicken go past the hole and climb further into the tubing and into the house.... the pressure!

I finally get enough courage to put my hand into the hole and pull back the insulation. Guess what? She laid an egg in there. GREEEEAT! Wes then proceeds to tell me to not let the egg fall down the tubes and bust because it will smell up the house when the a/c turns on. Ahhhh, the pressure is mounting!

It is about this time that I start thinking that a full-time job would be nice right about now. It would be a whole lot easier then this mom-teacher-chicken wrangler-gig that I have going on right now.

Finally, the chicken comes to the hole and peeks out. Madison pours a little food into the hole and along the top of the tube and she finally lures her out of the hole. YEAH!

I scream, "Madison, push her off the tubing before she climbs back into the hole!" Madison refuses, "NO Mom! She will plummet to her death!"

"I don't care~ she's lucky I don't eat her tonight!" I grabbed the broom, pushed Madison out of the way and smacked the chicken off the tubing. For the record... my blood pressure was slightly elevated.

Before you report me... she flapped her wings and landed safely 2 stories below.

2 hours had gone by, I was mentally exhausted. Wes calls to say he is on his way home to fix the hole. Good thing, I don't think my nerves can take a repeat episode of this.

After we repaired the hole (and stopped laughing), we could only thank God that I was locked out this morning. Only He could have known that I needed to climb the scaffolding today in order to discover the chicken in the a/c tube.

Only He knew that chicken needed rescuing.

Only He knew the smell of a dead chicken in our a/c vents for the next few months would have pushed me over the edge... right into a straight jacket!

God is amazing. Sometimes, he uses little problems in order to save us from bigger problems.

God really does care about the little things... and the birds of the air.

I will leave you with the lesson God taught me today:

Matthew 6: 25-27

²⁵"For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?

²⁶"Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they?

²⁷"And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life?

Wes and his flock

We have always lovingly referred to Wes as a "Mother Hen".

He is very protective of the kids and likes to keep his "chicks" close to him at all times.

Have you ever seen a mother hen with her baby chicks? She will lovingly tuck them up under her wings so a predator is unable to see them. It looks like she is sitting on them and smothering them to death but she's not. They are happy and protected up under those wings.

Ok ~ Well that is Wes. After we had Madison, he worried about her all the time. He had no problems asking other people to wash their hands before touching her. When we moved to Georgia his mom took care of Madison for us while I worked and he went to college. He drove his mother crazy telling her how to take care of her (like she hadn't already raised 3 kids). He would even hide her toys so other kids couldn't touch them and make her sick. Friends used to tease us that he would put her in a bubble if he could.

After Jake was born... it got worse. He would lay a blanket over his infant seat when we went in public. He would unashamedly say NO when someone wanted to peek at him or hold him.

Then add the girls to the mix and he became certifiably CRAZY. He was really embarrassing sometimes!

When the girls got about 3, he finally started letting them go into the Chick-fil-a playground like "normal" children. He would stay in there with them and tell all the other children to stay away from his kids! He (mother hen) would follow them around the playground keeping the other children (predators) a safe distance away. I would just sit looking through the window, eating my lunch and trying to decide how I could get out of there without the other parents knowing he belonged to me!

Our chickens must recognize this quality about him.

They seem to really like Wes. When he goes outside, he will call "Cheep, cheep" and they all come running like he is the Pied Piper!

Last Saturday, while he was up on the scaffolding working, they followed him up there.

This is Reese. (as in the peanut butter cup). She climbed up and started watching him work.

He just couldn't help himself. He had to stop and pet her. Maybe that is why they like him so much. Snickers must have gotten jealous because she started climbing up the scaffolding too. See her over to the left?

There she is still climbing. Wes has gone back to work like it is perfectly normal for chickens to be climbing scaffolding. I think we are beginning to lose all perception of normal out here.

Finally, Snickers makes it to the top. Maybe we should considering putting little packs on their backs and they could start carrying nails and tools up to him. Then I could go inside and take care of some important responsibilities like filing my nails or watching Real Housewives.

Maybe this is why it is taking us so long to get this house done. Wes, get back to work and quit playing with your flock of chickens. Makes me think of a Beyonce song...

"All the single ladies, all the single ladies

Now put your hands up

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh oh"

NASA Space Experiment

Today is Saturday.

Saturdays are for resting, relaxing, and grilling out with friends. ~ Well, that is what normal people do anyway.

But, not us... Nope, we are NOT normal.

At our house on Saturdays, we work on our house. Lucky us...

Today we are working on the freakishly large space experiment that is currently taking up the entire back of our house.

I still can't help but laugh every time I see it. It is quite ugly. and large. and shiny. But I love it. (I actually look skinny next to it.) We live in Texas so I NEED it. It just might be my BFF.

It is our Air conditioning unit and I loveeeee me some air conditioning!

I know what you are thinking? "HOW DID THAT HAPPEN?" Well, I have one word for you...

WES!

Wes is what happened. This was his bright idea. He wanted an outside AC unit and he sold me on the idea. His pitch went something like this:

Reason # 1~ It wouldn't take up any room in the house.

Reason #2 ~ We could use the space upstairs to build a closet for the kids.

Reason #3 ~ We will never have to worry about it leaking in the attic and dealing with the after effects of that whole mess! ( Um... we don't have an attic but that was a good selling point honey.)

Reason #4 ~ The ac tubes will only be about 12 inches in diameter and they will run along the inside wall which we will be able to hide with window seats.

Reason #5 ~ His dreamy baby blue eyes. He just COMPELLED me to agree with him.

I reluctantly agreed. Don't judge me... I vowed to OBEY 18 years ago.

Let me just tell you, I forgot the love and honor part of those vows the day the AC people pulled out of our driveway. I excitedly ran to the back of the house to see our new unit and was hit in the face with a HUGE space experiment (I am talking NASA worthy) attached to the back of our house. It was shocking to say the least. SHOCKING! I screamed in fear.

Don't worry ~ we can hide it! Wes said.

I think that is starting to become our mantra around here... Don't worry, we can hide it!

No, that is not a "little person" up on that scaffolding. Can you understand how massive this is? Look how small his head looks in comparison to that bright, shiny, silver tubing. (Doesn't he have a perfectly round shaped head?)

Well that was 1 1/2 years ago and we are finally going to hide it. I think it took Wes this long to figure out a way to fix it.

So hopefully... in the next few days... I will have new pictures. And hopefully, in the next few months, I will forgive Wes for this, this... problem.

AND better yet, hopefully, in the next few years, I will learn to stop listening to Wes when he has a new bright idea! Hopefully...

I will have to get some vervain to protect me from those baby blues!

Broken Refrigerator~Round 2

We have a broken refrigerator.

No, let me rephrase that...

We have 2 broken refrigerators! Yes...2

Let me start at the beginning.

We bought this beautiful stainless steel Samsung French Door Refrigerator when we moved into our "under construction" house. I really loved this fridge. Freezer on the bottom, lots of room on the top AND millions of fingerprints on the front. (OK, maybe I didn't LOVE it but I liked it a lot).

(Please do not judge the walls. Like I said~ we are still "under construction"!)

Fast forward 1 and 1/2 years to the present. I noticed the food in the fridge wasn't very cold. Wes, who thinks that I panic about everything, assured me that it was probably NOTHING as he checked the temp and showed me the reading on the front that said 37 degrees.

Well, being the "common sense" kinda girl that I am~ I thought, hum... 37 degrees is just over FREEZING and the food is lukewarm. The fridge is NOT working properly regardless of what the nice blue illuminated temperature-reading says!

The next day I was cooking all the food in the freezer and transferring the rest into coolers because the fridge was BROKEN!!

Wes' sister, Lauralee, found us a repairman. (Thank you, LL) He came, he saw, he... agreed with me... it was broken. He is currently working on getting it replaced by Samsung because it can NOT be fixed. Please, Lord, let us get a replacement.

My sister, Heather, being the kind person that she is~ offered us their extra fridge that they keep in the garage~ to use until we could get ours fixed or replaced. Aghhhh, thanks Heather!

We have been using it for the last week. We have really enjoyed having it here. We have become fast friends. I already consider it part of our family. We have hung our pictures on it. Everyday, I sing its praises and lovingly wipe it down and tell it how much I love it.

(Some people have 2 refrigerators in their kitchens, right?)

Life was good UNTIL... we got home from church last night.

I kept hearing this clicking noise.

What is that? I asked. CLICK...CLICK...

NOTHING, said Wes! (his classic "in denial" answer)

I couldn't just sit there. I had to investigate. I listened. I waited. I held my breath.

CLICK... Oh, there. Did you hear it?

NO... said Wes. (still in denial...)

I tried to convince him to abandon his lazy-boy-chair and come into the kitchen to hear the noise for himself.

He politely declined.

He thought I was overreacting. He laughed at me. He made jokes about it. He listened from the comfort of his chair and refused to hear what I was hearing.

(Somebody is living in the land of make believe... Sometimes, I wish I lived there with him.)

Ok, I thought, maybe I am a little over-dramatic. I am sure this refrigerator is not going out. Nobody has that kind of luck, right? I do have a tendency to over analyze things in my life. I can literally think something to DEATH!

Well, guess what?

I got up this morning and the food in the fridge is... cool at best. I opened the freezer and guess what? The bag of ice that was in there is now a lovely puddle of WATER!

Wes got up and guess what? He now hears the clicking! (Welcome back to the planet, honey!)

I Googled the problem~ it doesn't look good.

Wes called the repair guy.

I am trying not to shout I TOLD YOU SO! That would be rude. and childish. and not-productive. But oh~ so satisfying!

Wes just got home with a refrigerator that he found on Craigslist. Great, I hope this one works. Our kitchen is beginning to look like a refrigerator graveyard!