The Chicken Coop Winter Party

The bells jingle, winter lights gleam
The cold sets in, hot chocolates steam
We chickens love this time of year
Of fun, joy, happiness and cheer.

We peek in the yard, happy children run
Christmas tree arrives, how very fun
“It’s all nice and dandy.” Oreo says
“But how do we celebrate these festive days?”

Oreo’s words make Paisley mope
Christmas fun seems beyond our scope
“Fear not!” Lazy Laurie cries
A wild look crosses her keen eyes.

“We’ll have a party!” Lazy declares
“With lights and feast, peels and pears.
Invite the human girls!” she states
“We’ll decorate and use our very best plates!”

Crazy Cookie sighs, Paisley shivers
Such bold plans stress out our livers
But Oreo thinks this is a grand plan
She gets out a pen from her personal can.

Finding a paper, Lazy Laurie writes
“You are invited after two nights
Come, dear girls, to celebrate
Christmas with us, behind the crate.”

“We appreciate all you do for us
You take care of us without a fuss
We would now like to return the favor.
Together we party, yummy food we savor.”

The next morning Leena gets a surprise
What’s this note? She can’t believe her eyes
“Tanya!” she yells, running to the house
Her wild cries stun the birds and the mouse.

“What’s going on?” asks Tanya, very confused
“Can you stop yelling? My ears feel bruised.”
Wordlessly Leena hands her the note
As Tanya reads, she drops her tote.

“We knew they could talk. But this is nuts
These crazy chickens have a lot of guts!”
Nods Leena, “I guess it’s time to party”
Let’s hope they serve a meal that’s hearty!”

The party is today, the chickens work hard
They decorate their coop with stuff from the yard
Berries and pine needles, yummy delights
Lazy Laurie even pulls out a stash of lights.

Evening comes near, Paisley lays the plates
With peels and cheese and bits of dates
The coop looks festive as the girls arrive
They look surprised! The chickens high-five.

The girls sit on the rocks, while the chickens serve
Their beautiful plates with enthusiasm and verve
The girls look worried, as they politely eat
A piece of bread, topped with a peel of beet.

Leena has a plan. From her pocket she sneaks
A cookie. Taking a bite she fills her cheeks
The move does not escape the chicken eye
Lazy Laurie squawks, making Oreo fly.

A peck on her knee catches Leena unawares
She yells, drops the cookie, now its theirs
Before Leena can move, Oreo responds
Picking up the cookie, she rapidly absconds.

Next thing, we chickens fall in a pile
Lazy Laurie lands a kick, Kungfu style
Taking charge, she then bellows
To drive some sense in her chicken fellows.

Moving the chickens, the cookie she picks
Carefully she breaks it into equal parts of six.
As the girls gawk, she carefully picks each part
And serves it to everyone. Now isn’t she smart?

For winter is a time for love and sharing
“Time for us to show we can be caring!”
Her sisters nod. The human girls smile
They dig in their pockets in great style.

Out comes a bag of treats galore.
Fruits and pies, melons and more
We chickens stare, together we thank
Our lovely girls whom we must never prank.

And thus we eat, drink and share
We cuddle the girls to show we care
The night descends, the dog arrives
The party ends, it was a time of our lives.

The girls say good night, we give a hug
Paisley gives Tanya’s sleeve a tug
As she gives them a present, our favorite rock
With many thanks, our coop they lock.

Well, my sisters, have a very good night
Sleep well. Together we cuddle tight
As we watch the happy girls go home
“That’s the spirit!” shouts the garden gnome.

Paisley’s Fall Adventure

The leaves turn golden, the evenings grey
Summer is gone, fall is here to stay
We chickens feel droopy, sleepy, and all
As we slowly get used to the early nightfall.

Lazy Laurie is beginning to molt
Her plucked look gives quite a jolt
While Crazy Cookie covers the cracks with hay
“Gotta stop the draft,” she tells the blue jay.

Oreo, the biggest amongst us girls
Cleans her feathers, the ends she curls
While Paisley is worried, scared of the dark
Any noise makes her jump, even the dog’s bark.

“Now, dear Paisley, there’s nothing to fear
There are no ghosts, it’s wind you hear.”
Oreo tries her best to cheer Paisley up
As she stirs up the ice and water in her cup.

Try as she might, Paisley is not appeased
Lazy Laurie the leader looks none too pleased
Crazy Cookie laughs, her wings she beats
Says, “Wait until the night of trick and treats!”

“For you will see witches, ghouls and ghosts
Frankenstein and lions, in every corner and outposts.”
Paisley stares. Her feathers stand on ends
She marvels at the fearlessness of her friends.

“Quiet, Crazy!” Lazy Laurie frowns and scolds
As a shivering Paisley she cuddles and holds
“Halloween is a time of frolic and fun
And dress up and treats for everyone!”

“Wouldn’t it be fun if we all dressed up?
Went out trick or treating? I would dress as a pup!”
Says Oreo, as she stares at Paisley in delight
“You could be a raven! You are dark as the night!”

Paisley stares at the sky, thinking hard
“I would love to be a raven and fly about the yard.”
Laughs Crazy Cookie, “Well, what do you know?
Find a wolf partner, and trick or treating you go!”

“For wolves and ravens make the best of friends
They play, they share food, and other odds and ends.”
We chickens laugh and jest as the evening light streams
As the night falls slowly. Paisley sleeps and dreams.

The day of trick or treating is finally here
The kids dress up in their Halloween gear
We chickens feel the excitement in the air
We peek out of the coop. Did we just see a bear?!

A movement at the door catches Paisley’s eye
She stares and then she lets out a cry
For she has just spotted a wolf at the door
“My best friend!” she yells, shaken to the core.

Right before our eyes Paisley runs to the fence
She pushes at a rock! Has she lost all her sense?
Before we know it, she has moved the rock aside
To reveal an escape hole that is not too wide.

Little Paisley squeezes out and is gone in a flash
We rush behind her, into the hole we smash 
Alas! We are too big to squeeze through
We wring our wings. There’s not much we can do.

The night falls! We hope Paisley returns
Oreo is sad, for her friend she yearns
Just as we are about to give up hope
Paisley is here. No longer we mope.

Lazy Laurie scolds, Crazy Cookie shrugs
As Paisley looks guilty, Oreo hugs
“Sorry sisters. I know I was wrong. 
But it was time to explore and come back strong!”

“I followed the wolf. We went for a hunt
Door to door. Back to front
The wolf and I made a perfect team
And that’s not all!” Paisley’s eyes gleam.

She raises her wing. A bag drops
Looking inside Oreo’s eye pops
For treats await, sweet and sour
Paisley is the chicken of the hour.

We laugh, we squeal, we grab bites
Of Paisley’s stash of yummy delights
As Paisley recounts her Halloween walk
We listen, munching, our eyes agog.

At last, it is time for bed
Our happy bellies feel well fed
“Good night ladies. Paisley, great job!
You are now the chicken coop heartthrob.”

Drawings by: Leena Zwart aged 13

Kylo Ren, the supreme leader, awakens

Kylo Ren the dog: Woof! Howdy? My mom has been keeping the computer away from me. I haven’t been able to blog at all. Hmph. So, this afternoon, I lay on my back with my paws hanging mid air, playing dead, or at least, fast asleep. My people thought I was oh, so cute. They got groggy looking at me, lying there. Soon, mom passed out on the couch, as I watched from the corner of my half closed eye.

The snore was my cue. I was up in a thrice, sneaking over to the computer. Mom stirred a bit, so I pulled the blanket over her and gave her a fuzzy nuzzle. There, there. I even tucked a little stuffie in the blanket. Satisfied, mom resumed snoring while I crept over to the computer.

My last post was back in November about kickboxing. I am getting some serious FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). So, here I am, writing about my life story since the past few months.

The winter was largely dull, other than some brief excitement in December when I couldn’t stop pooping and ended up in the hospital. My dad wanted to come in the examination room, but the hospital staff insisted on taking me without my humans. So I got some fun out of that, terrorizing the poor staff members. My fun was finally over when they put me under to do tests on me. I was sleepy for two days after that. Tanya told me later that all they did at the hospital was to put water in my body using a needle. Wow! $1000 for that?! I could have drunk that much water instead and bought treats with the $1000. My humans are sweet, but easily duped.

Christmas came around. I ate as much as I could beg my masters out of. Gingerbread houses, cookies, treats wrapped in wrapping paper, the wrapping paper itself, you name it!

Unfortunately our year ended badly with dad falling off a ladder and ripping his shoulder. He had to go to the hospital after that, and unlike in the dog world, in the human world, it is the doctor who terrorizes the patient. Dad should have taken me along, like I begged him to, but no one listens to me around here. Hmph.

Winter was very cold. The chickens were freezing their butts outside. Leena took to leaving boiling hot water in their coops. If it was up to me, I would have boiled the chicken in the water and had a nice warm soup, but no one listens to me around here (did I mention that before?)

Just when I thought I would die from boredom, Paisley, the screamy chicken, added some excitement by almost getting eaten by a predator. I will let her tell her story, but she spent about ten days in the house, giving me something to sniff and poke at, while I tried to pass the time.

And then, just like that, my luck changed. Suddenly two new people appeared in the house who I could terrorize! Woah! I couldn’t believe my luck. These people smelt and looked a bit strange, so I wasn’t sure about my attack tactic. I heard that they were from a far off place called India. What’s more, they were mom’s parents. Ok, interesting. I tried to get up close and personal, but my family played spoilsport as usual and kept me away.

When the new people did not leave after seeing me, my attitude slowly shifted from seeing them as a threat, to a potential expansion of the pack. The urge to include them in the pack became greater when I noticed some very positive traits of the new arrivals. They tended to give me a last bite of whatever meal they were having. Wow! My beggar instinct came fully alive as I started following the new people. Tanya and Leena called them Nana and Nani. If it is good enough for them, it is good enough for me. So, Nana and Nani they are.

I love Nani. Absolutely. I like Nana too, but Nani cooks. She makes these flat breads called roti, and guess what?! She always makes one for me. When I get this butter covered delight I am in seventh heaven.

Now, being a supreme leader, my natural instinct is to ignore people when they call me. But I never ignore Nana and Nani if they call me. Because I know, treats await. I go, I sit, I drool, I beg, and I chomp. Can’t complain. Life’s good.

Backyard Chicken Summer Escape

The sun shines upon our wings
We chickens roll around in dust
Happiness tugging our heartstrings
As our feathers dance in a gust.

We love that summer is finally here
Feels like we waited far too long
For the hot sun. Best time of the year!
The birds sing a happy summer song.

Lazy Laurie is being lazy
Oreo swings in the hanging chair
The slow days drive Crazy Cookie crazy
While Paisley lays eggs everywhere.

Crazy Cookie retreats in a nook
Taking with her a few sturdy twigs
Unaware that Oreo is stealing a look
As she works hard, draws and digs.

Oreo puzzles as Crazy Cookie works
Her careful drawings make no sense
A projectile? A plank? Her head jerks
Did Crazy Cookie just draw the garden fence?

A loud voice from behind! Oreo jumps
“A plan behind my back?” Lazy Laurie stares
Pointing at Crazy, Oreo backs and slumps
Showing she knows nothing of Crazy’s affairs.

“What’s this, Crazy Cookie?” asks Lazy Laurie
“Why am I not in the loop?”
A guilty faced Crazy Cookie says, “Sorry.
But life is more than the yard and the coop.”

Paisley comes over, curious at all the fuss
Crazy Cookie climbs the garden bench
Pointing her twig at her art to discuss
Her new plan which sounds very French.

“Using this trebuchet, or catapult, if you will
The plan is to fly over the fence and run
We could go for a walk, try the neighbor’s dill
Its high time we had some adventure and fun.”

Paisley stops midway from her egg lay
Lazy Laurie holds her heart and sighs
While Oreo stares in utter dismay
There’s a wild look in Crazy Cookie’s eyes.

“Told you she’s crazy!” whispers Oreo
Paisley nods and shakes her head.
Lazy Laurie evaluates this new scenario
While Crazy Cookie gets supplies from the shed.

A large plank, and a big rock
Makes the perfect chicken see saw
Climbing at one end, she yells a command squawk
Oreo and Paisley obey, full of awe.

Screaming a loud and a strong war cry
Oreo and Paisley jump at the other end
Making Crazy Cookie fly in the sky
And into the neighbor’s yard, they send.

Next up is Lazy Laurie, just as before
Oreo and Paisley know the drill 
Sending her flying is no chore
Easy peasy with their fine jumping skill.

Paisley is light as a feather
Big Oreo makes a huge jump
Sure enough! In the neighbor’s heather
Paisley lands on a soft lump.

Now Oreo is in a bit of a fix
No one left to propel her over
From the neighbors comes a flying brick
Propelling Oreo! She ends up in clover.

The mouse claps, the birds cheer
The bunnies bow with silent respect
The squirrel smiles from ear to ear
As we chickens move about and inspect.

Herbs and berries! Delights await
Our eyes pop, our mouths water
We cheer Crazy Cookie the great
The vegetable patch we slaughter.

A bark ends our summer fun
Flying comes the neighbor’s dog
Quick! Atop the trampoline we run
The fast dog jumps too, mouth agog.

He lands on the trampoline, oh my!
We chickens have nowhere to go
What’s this? His leap makes us fly
Over the fence, away from our foe.

Back in our yard, safe and sound
We cluck as the defeated dog barks
We declare Crazy Cookie crowned
As summer queen of us matriarchs.

Mixed feelings about 2024

The year 2024 is ending. This was a rollercoaster year for us. There were many pluses, but also many minuses. Let’s unpack the year 2024 in Elfland.

The positives: The kids and I started the year with a bang. We travelled home from India, refreshed and raring to go. Rosie the dog turned 15 in May, which was a milestone that we were not expecting. We spent a few nights at the camp and did our usual things at Elf land. On a personal front, the most significant progress was that I got my stories “The flying boy” and “Animal diaries” edited. “The flying boy” is the only one that is nearing completion and will be self published this year. But that was not all. Tanya and I attempted NaNoWriMo with some good results. I am hoping to have more writings published from the work that came out of NaNoWriMo.

In terms of travel, the girls and I took a trip to Philadelphia. That was short. We couldn’t do more because of Rosie being too old. But the trip was very fun. I went back to India for two weeks in September which was nice too.

A huge change in our lives occurred when Tanya finished school. It was a whirlwind feeling. I didn’t know whether to feel happy or sad about it. After going through a range of emotions, I can say that this is a positive. Tanya took a gap year and will join Penn State to study biology next June. In the meantime, she has taken a seven month course at a local tech school named CPI to study solar tech. Oh ya, and the biggest thing. She got her driver’s license. That was quite an adventure. She is all grown up now, driving to CPI and back.

Leena has many friends at school and is very mature for her age. She is moving along, growing like a weed as usual. Next year I will write about this interesting girl of ours.

Summer was not my favorite. We stayed busy with the graduation and our houses. The street painting was the summer highlight. We also got two new chickens, Oreo and Paisley. Oreo is sweet. Paisley is a runner and won’t warm up to us. But ok, she has good survival instincts!

The negatives: Ok, I promise to keep the negative section smaller than the positive, although that will be tough. We lost three animals. Baby the chicken passed at the age of 8. It was kind of expected, but still sad. Then, finally in October, the dreaded moment came when Rosie got very sick and had to be put down. Though expected, it was painful. We were very used to seeing her pleasant grandma expression. She would no longer play, but she was still there. Her absence is felt by us. Kylo Ren, our other dog, feels it the most. He seems to be bummed out since she has been gone.

Finally, the nasty shock came in terms of Daisy the chicken’s death. Daisy was only 5 and we were not expecting her to die. But a hungry hawk had other plans and got her a couple of weeks ago. It was painful. She was already dead and apart when we found her. Hopefully she didn’t suffer.

The grand finale of negatives was over the last week when Kylo had bad diarrhea and we got scared that we would lose him. We took him to vet emergency. He responded to all the medicines and is back to normal now.

Yesterday Johan fell of a ladder while working on the camper and ended up with two broken ribs. We are super thankful that he is ok otherwise, but it was a very scary situation. He had to go to the emergency room.

Oopsie, looks like the negatives are as much as the positives. I am happy to say goodbye to 2024, and looking forward to our upcoming year 2025. We have big plans for the year, and hopefully will leave the negative energy behind.

All of us are happy and healthy, although Johan has some mending to do. Our family and friends are also doing well. So we have plenty to be thankful for.

Happy new year 2025!

Our Gingerbread houses were messy as ever

The NaNoWriMo Indulgence

November was an interesting month at Elf land. Fifty percent of our family members were participating in the National November Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) challenge. Tanya and I took it up and had a great time with it.

I only came to know about NaNoWriMo mid October when I was trying to educate myself about book sales and other stuff. Someone mentioned NaNoWriMo in their youtube video. It looked exciting, but wasn’t mid October too late to jump into something like that without any planning?

The NaNoWriMo challenge involves writing 50,000 words in the month on November. That amounts to about 1667 words a day. Writers take part in this self regulated challenge with the hope that they will have their novels completed at the end of the month.

I told Tanya about NaNoWriMo. On October 31, we were driving to Tanya’s friend’s place for Halloween, when she suddenly asked what I thought of NaNoWriMo. I told her that I was tempted to give it a try, and she felt the same. So the NaNoWriMo challenge was on.

Tanya surprised me. She said that she had a novel in mind since a long time, with characters and everything. I had no idea! She was also methodical in her approach. She downloaded a format for her novel. For the entire month of Nov, she kept up with it and managed to get through her 50,000 words on Nov 30. This was a major challenge for her since on Mondays and Wednesdays she is busy from 8 am to 7 pm with her trade school and kickboxing. I know she wrote 3000 words in a day more than once! That is no mean task for anyone.

As for me, I had no ideas to begin with. So my plan was to write a bunch of short stories, blogs, research on trash and anything else that I wanted and see where I would get. The challenge proved to be a most rewarding and an amazing learning experience for me. I am still in awe with how much one can achieve with such a simple activity.

To begin, I had nothing to go on. My picture book, “A flying boy” is already written. So I spent the first couple of write ups on making sequels for the book. The sequels were different characters’ points of view of the same story. Finally, I rewrote the entire book in a poetry format! This was the most fun. But after redoing the same story four times, I was absolutely done with it.

I then moved on to my second book, Animal Diaries. This book is proving to be a challenge. To move further, I had to get an opinion. Unfortunately while the editor worked, my book couldn’t move.

I then moved onto trash research. My plan is to ultimately research trash generation and alternatives to plastic generation and hopefully come up with solutions to our trash problems. However, I realized that trying to research as well as write was very time consuming. On a couple of days I worked for four hours. That wasn’t sustainable. So I had to put a lid on the trash!

Now I finally had to pause and think about what to write. When one actually pauses and thinks is when the ideas finally come! To my delight and surprise, stories came as I spent time staring into space.

My second picture book, named “Mili finds her voice”, was the next story that I wrote. My hope is to create a picture book with this story. Of course, picture books are very expensive to produce, so this can become a chapter book if “The flying boy” does not end up generating revenue.

After this I drew a blank. And then a most surprising thing happened. I sat to write a story with no thought in my head. It’s called “Emily’s day”, where Emily doesn’t have any thoughts on how to spend her day. As my story went on, so did Emily’s day. At the end of my story, and Emily’s day, a sweet story came to life. This was an intensely satisfying experience.

Finally, after fifteen days of wandering, jumping from story to story and generating smaller ideas, I had an inspiration that resulted in a 30,000 word book. So far unnamed, this is probably my favorite story that I wrote so far. It’s about things that happen to a ship in a bottle and to various creatures that are linked to the ship. The story that I worked on so far is haphazard, since there was no initial plan and the book came to existence as it moved. In fact, this book is so far like a dream, where things happen and then other things happen, and nothing is planned. So, for instance, the kids started off as 8 year old, and then mid way I had to make them 12 and 13 year old!

Both Tanya and I are very happy to have met the challenge of writing 50K words each. We are, however, leery of what we have written. I can safely say that my 50 K is a lot of garbage (so essentially I did deal with trash!). However, the trash holds great treasures and I am quite optimistic that It’s not going to end up in landfill!

Tanya and I agree that we need to redo a lot of our work. So we are going to be doing a 420JanWriMo, which will be a second writing month in Jan where we redo our work, and hopefully get it to a more reasonable place.

There’s a lot of criticism of NaNoWriMo online. It allows the use of AI for the challenge. People found this very upsetting. However, it doesn’t bother me. AI is here to stay, and we may as well accept the role of AI in writing. I loved NaNoWriMo, because it was a path of self discovery for me. What an amazing challenge. In fact, I looked at it as more of an indulgence to my creative energy than a challenge. Looking forward to repeating such a creative indulgence next year!

Elf land heads to winter

Life has been slowly moving on here. We feel the void Rosie left. Lots of little things remind us of her. Simplest things such as shopping for lesser food, not having her sleeping in the most unhandy locations, not taking care of her little needs, come back and haunt us.

On to more positive happenings. Halloween came. We did some seriously good pumpkin carvings. Halloween was quiet because both the kids went out with their friends. I must say I was glad. I am not big on trick or treating. We plan to pick up on art and things now that winter is fast approaching.

One big happening is that both Tanya and I are participating in the National November Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). So plenty of writing and research going on at our end.

Johan has been working on the camp. He and Tanya are putting roof panels. Other than that, he has worked on cars and houses.

Tanya is busy with her solar tech classes, her barista job and music.

Leena is busy with school and her many projects. She is majorly into face creams, oils etc and keeps coming up with recipes. I am trying to keep up with the supplies!

Kylo Ren the dog: Hello, one and all. Thanks so much for stopping by. I have been lonesome without my lovely wife. Sometimes I visit her grave, but I never know what to say.

Life has been moving along. Rosie rarely moved at all, but her absence is very much felt. The humans mope about. I try to keep them going. It’s working well. We have gone for nice fall walks. The other day mom, Tanya and Leena took me to the park. They started playing basketball. Man, that’s some huge ball. I tried to catch the ball by jumping atop it with my fore paws. It’s not easy, let me tell you.

As far as shooting the hoops is concerned, best leave it to the humans. I don’t get it. Why would you try to throw the ball through some basket far above in the sky? It makes zero sense. Since you humans seem clueless about how a ball works, allow me to clarify. I will describe the structure and purpose of a ball. Any dog will tell you, a ball should be small, ideally the size of a tennis ball. It can be a bit smaller or bigger, but no bigger than what a standard dog snout can hold. Now, some balls are pointy at the edges, almost like a pillow. They call it a foot ball in these parts, even though that ball never touches a foot. If you have been following my posts, you know what I have to say to that. Humans are strange. Why would a hand ball be called a foot ball? That football is not entirely undesirable. Dogs like to bite it in the middle and run around with it. When we get tired, we drop it and sleep on it like it’s our pillow. So the foot ball, or the pillow ball, is a versatile toy loved by dogs.

But to continue, a standard ball is round and should be sized to be held in a dog snout. Why, you ask, must the size be appropriate for a dog snout? This brings me to the purpose of a ball. No! It’s not to throw into a basket. It is also not to fall over like dominoes having a bad day. The sole purpose of a ball is to be thrown as far as possible so that a dog such as me can run fast and catch it.

Today mom got a tennis ball and threw it at me. It was early morning. I was still groggy. I wasn’t upto running behind the ball. Guess what she did next?! She dipped the ball into my water and then threw it. Wow! Juicy ball! I caught it with glee and played with it for a bit.

The one thing that I notice is that now that Rosie is gone, I feel outnumbered. The human energy is overwhelming the house. I am missing the dog energy. Also, my job of protecting Rosie is gone, which makes me feel lazy and bored. What I miss the most is troubling and playing with Rosie. She never actually played but would bark loud complaints. I used to enjoy our back and forth. Oh, heaven help me.

Daisy the chicken: We saw the day Rosie was sick. We were pasted to the fence, staring at her. The humans were trying to revive her. But the animals always know. This was not looking good. Rosie was taken away. I am a bit upset about this. No one asked for my opinion. At the very least, I should have been allowed to say good bye. I think in their worried state, the humans forgot. Rosie was my girl. She and I had that special bond going. But I could only wish her from afar. Once she got back and was buried, I spent time hanging by her grave.

Lazy Laurie the chicken: Ok Daisy, that’s enough. You have been dustbathing by her grave! Oops sorry. Looks like I hurt Daisy’s feelings. Actually, it’s true. If you have read our previous blogs, you will know. Rosie and Daisy were very close. It was a special animal bond. Rosie loved having us around in her old age. But ultimately she just got too old. I can relate actually. At the ripe old age of 8, I can empathize with how Rosie felt. I am the last left from our original brood. I know my time will come soon and I will reunite with my sisters Baby, Dandelion and Chocolate Sprinkles.

Paisley the chicken: I barely knew Rosie, since we only came here in July. I never thought she was to be feared. In fact, my sisters are more ferocious and scary than Rosie ever was.

I wanted to tell y’all how miserable it is to be the lowest in the pecking order. I am constantly bullied. The humans have actually noticed my compromised status in this group. To help me out, they throw feed in various directions. Unfortunately the chickens chase me wherever I try to get in. The only thing that is in my favor is that I am super fast. I grab food and then I dart right off. Crazy Cookie mentioned the other day that I reminded her of Chocolate Sprinkles, who used to dart about in a similar fashion. All I can say is, Chocolate Sprinkles must have been smart, and the lowest in the pecking order! Oh, wait. The human is here. Run!!!

Ladies, Do humankind a favor. Stop being perfect!

Why do women always try to show a perfect house, perfect yard, a perfect husband and family, perfect kids? You get the idea. Women are fixated at the idea of showing that their lives are perfect. They will go to any lengths to hide the glaring imperfections in their life and to only show the carefully edited, perfect world with pained, but smoothened, happy smiles. Why do we do this? Let’s do a pros vs cons list of this to analyze if showing or pretending that we have perfect lives is a good idea or not.

Before I am taken apart for aiming this at the ladies, men do it too. However, men do a lot of strange things and I am less involved and interested in their reasoning. I don’t have the energy to figure them out.

Pro 1: We make our friends jealous! Oh yeah. That bully who always tried to put me down. Well, here’s my perfect life right back at you! Let me rub that in your face. Take that, miss. Look at my perfect husband, y’all. And my beautiful car, my picture perfect vacations. Ah, that felt nice. Revenge is sweet, isn’t it?

Except for one tiny thing. That bully is still living in your head. She still has power over you that makes you lie about your life. Wouldn’t it be much better to shake her off?

“Hey”, you say. It’s not just for the bully. I am showing off to all my friends.

If we are talking about friends, or in other words, people we like, Guess what?! Basic human nature 101 dictates that you will actually never show off to people you like, if they are inferior to you. You would be compassionate and try to downplay your fortunes to make your unfortunate friend feel better. In other words, you are only showing off to people you consider are more fortunate than you. You may be jealous of them, and are competing with them to create an illusion of your life that is not true. So if we do need to create this illusion, are our so called friends actually our friends? Or, are we being nice to our less fortunate friends?

Pro 2: We make our neighbors or any random stranger who happens to see us either in the real world or on social media jealous. Why would we want to do that? Why put in all this effort and live a lie to make unknown people jealous? All we achieved from our hard work is to make other people feel bad about their life and existence. And to do this, we had to spend time, energy and resources. What can possibly be good about such a situation.?

Allow me to list the cons.

Con 1: It is not real. Everyone’s life is very challenging. We are only wasting our time and energy showing a perfect life. We know it is not true. Such a lie will drain you and make you feel empty. The praises are meaningless, you know it. Now, we don’t have to share our misfortunes with anyone and everyone, but we can choose to be silent, rather than sharing a lie. It’s also exhausting to keep up with a lie.

Con 2: It is a waste of our resources. We could spend that time doing something useful. We can learn a new skill, pursue our hobbies, read a book, watch a movie. Learning a new skill or pursuing a hobby might actually lead to a better life thereby making your artificially perfect world actually achievable.

Con 3: Such showing off is bad for the larger society, the world, our planet. We might be wasting money buying useless stuff to show off our shiny homes. We might be buying brand names, or indulging in travel, or other wasteful practices. This is bad for the environment. There is no positive, and plenty of actual, tangible negative in this scenario.

Con 4: You open yourself to being exploited and conned by advertisers. They target this exact urge to show off to push you to buy a new this or that, thereby further deteriorating our environment. This means, you are playing with the future of your kids by indulging in such practices.

Con 5: You are pushing other women to do similar things. Women are already overworked. They are already expected to show perfect behavior. Do not be a part of this toxic culture. Let women be themselves, pursue their interests and make a place for themselves in the world. Do not derail others by your show of perfection that others will then pursue. This chain reaction is bad for everyone, and especially for women.

For the good of humanity, and especially for your sisters, stop pretending that you are perfect and have a perfect life. It is ultimately the imperfections that spice our lives up. A mediocre, perfect life is boring and uninspired. To aspire for it is a death sentence to your personal growth and aspirations. Let us be ourselves, show ourselves as we are (or keep it private), and strive to be better people, rather than show ourselves as an artificial, fake person.

September in India and Elfland

September brought it’s share of excitement for me. Once the kids were in school, I took a two week trip to India. I had figured that it was a good time to take off while weather in State College was still ok.

Leaving State College without the girls turned out to be not the easiest thing. The idea of going so far away bore down on me as I drove in the middle of night to Washington DC to catch my flight. Putting my worries aside, I boarded the flight for an 18 hour trip to India via Doha (Qatar airways). Qatar airways was adequate with super short layovers, although this caused some stress on my way back since the flight from Hyderabad to Doha was delayed.

Sis, mom and dad picked me up at the Hyderabad airport. We went to mom’s place. Ganesh puja festival was going on in India. There were statues of Lord Ganesh everywhere. My parents’ apartment complex had one, with cultural events every evening.

My hope was to get some stuff organized for parents so that they would be more comfortable there. I must say I was happy with all the things I was able to do towards that goal in the two weeks. It was a packed schedule with shopping for clothes for mom (and some for the girls to take back with me), buying appliances, managing their paperwork and even getting them to buy tickets to visit us in April next year. I was very pleased with how things went.

Once home, I was thrilled to see all the progress made at home. Leena’s room was finished and painted, which is quite an achievement, since you could see insulation when I had left home. Johan finished insulating, and he and Wayne did drywalling and painting. Amazing. Johan and the girls had also worked hard at cleaning up stuff in various parts of the house and the end result was great! Tanya has an arm band now in kickboxing which means she is ahead of me in class! She seems quite pleased about that!

I have been moving along since back home, trying to get the house organized and my first children’s book going. It should see the light of day next year. Excited about my progress!

Kylo Ren the dog: Hmph! Despite the fact that I am very smart, no one ever asks for my opinion. Did mom ask if I was okay with her leaving and travelling off to some far off place? No! Luckily for Leena I didn’t starve. But let me tell you, my care was less than premium, and I could definitely feel the lowered standards. Once mom was back, I let her know exactly what I thought of her disappearance. A few bites did the trick. With mom, it’s easy. All I have to do is to place my cold and wet nose anywhere on her bare skin. She shrieks and I immediately get the pleasure of exacting my revenge.

Lately I have been getting in trouble for no reason whatsoever. My family says I am too pushy with my snout. But all I do is show love, when it is absolutely necessary. Like the times when Tanya leaves me for two whole minutes. When she comes back, I feel that it is my duty to tell her how much I missed her. But when I try, she gets all mad. Not fair. I bet other dogs aren’t left alone for such long periods of time. Ohh, here comes the Queen bee, Grandma Rosie!

Rosie the dog: What?!! Grandma?! Don’t you forget that you are my husband. That would make you grandpa. Hehe. Actually that makes sense. I am still sassier than you even at the ripe age of 15. Grandpa!

While I have been a happy go lucky 15 year old, lately my family has developed a strange and annoying habit. They like to pick me up in the air. They pick up my entire body and hold me. This is because I have lost a lot of weight, so now they treat me like a stuffed toy or something. But after being suspended in air for a couple of minutes, I remind them that I am no stuffed bunny. I bare my teeth most menacingly and snap and bark viciously. They get alarmed and put me down. I like being down. In fact my favorite position these days is to be as far down as possible, sleeping 22 hours a day outside in the sun. The last two hours are spent eating and barking at random people to incite Kylo into barking.

Oreo the chicken: Hello Rosie. May I have the keyboard? Oh! She is asleep. My turn! Hello, dear readers. I am here to make my debut into the world of blogging. The older hens have been bragging about the wonderful blogs they have written, and the wonderful places that they have visited. Paisley and I turn green with envy, but thankfully, since a lot of our feathers are black in color, the envious green stays hidden. It won’t do to show envy. Our pecking order stats can take a hit!

Let me tell you the story of Paisley and I. We were born and raised in the Bald Eagle area. We are one year old. Although we lived out in the boonies and can be considered to have had an idyllic childhood, reality is far from imagination. We lived with a few other chickens and a couple of nasty roosters. Every day was war. As a result, we have some trust issues. Our owner got some new peeps. One day we heard her talking with her husband that they want to downsize our brood. The hubby looked appetized and we smelt danger! One fine day our owner caught Paisley and me and put us in a dog crate. “This is it”, I thought. We are soup! But life had other plans for us. Soon people came by and took us in plastic containers to a new backyard that had three other chickens. These people named us Paisley and Oreo and wisely kept us separated from those scary older birds. They would try to socialize us by getting us together in the yard. The older hens made several planned attacks on us. However, they were foiled by the humans who sprayed them with a water gun! I am happy to say that I am now well assimilated into the group and am also getting warm and comfortable with the humans. Paisley is a whole different story!

Paisley the chicken: I yell! Yes, that’s my specialty. I let out such a shriek that humans get temporarily disoriented and confused. While they are figuring out what just happened, I use all my evasive and maneuvering skills to get away from the humans.

That said, I do get close to the humans. I am curious about them, but like to play it safe. I am slim and beautiful. I have been told that I have beautiful eyes (ahem). However, my slender build has placed me lowest in the pecking order. Sigh! If not for Oreo, I don’t know if I would ever get any food. Oreo is big. She almost looks like a turkey. Oh I am so glad she is my friend and protector!

Escape escapades

Crazy cookie the chicken: Lately we chickens have been the most adventurous of the whole lot of creatures at Elf land. So I get to start the blog of the day.

Our humans have a double fence system to keep us chickens inside the property. There is an inside fence with a gate. This is followed by an outside fence with a second gate. One would think this is enough barricade to keep four squawking hens from leaving their land. Well, one would think wrong! Allow me to elaborate with a most exciting story.

One fine day, Lazy Laurie was pecking around near the fence, when she suddenly saw something from the corner of her eye. On the other side of the fence, from the depths of the neighbor’s yard, emerged two juiciest and yummiest looking worms! Lazy Laurie’s eyes popped right out! She sent me on a mission. I was to watch the neighbor’s yard for the next couple of days and report my findings regarding the viability of the neighbor’s yard for free ranging.

After just one day of observation, I was able to give most favorable reports of the neighbor’s yard to Lazy Laurie and my other sisters. Not only is the neighboring yard full of juicy worms, it also has unpecked, untouched flowers, grass blades, flies, you name it. It’s a haven, right in front of our eyes, lying wasted, waiting for our attention. But how would we get there?

“No problemo”, said Lazy Laurie with supreme self confidence. “A fence is simply an opportunity to try one’s jumping or digging skills”, she added. Lazy Laurie rocks. After carefully evaluating the inside fence, Lazy Laurie found a weakness in the design. There is a bench for the humans to sit on right by the fence. Under our admiring eyes, Lazy Laurie jumped on to the bench. She then proceeded to use the said bench as a launch pad to become airborne and land neatly in between the two fences. The rest of us quickly followed.

Once there, Lazy Laurie scouted the second fence, until she found a small hole in it. “Ahha”, said she. And in a thrice, we were out of the second fence and into the neighbor’s yard. Yumminess awaited us. We spent a blissful hour checking out the delicacies offered by the neighbors. We pulled worms, plucked flowers, caught flies and ran in the yard. It was so fun!

Lazy Laurie the chicken: Crazy Cookie is an optimist. She covered our escape. Let me bring the story back to earth and tell you what happened next. A bunch of youngsters from the neighbor’s house saw us! Luckily for us, and unluckily for them, they aren’t trained to catch us. We used our usual evasion tactics with great success with them. We darted about in all directions, while they tried to catch us. The young neighbors seem to love us. This isn’t surprising, humans usually love us in all forms. Alive, dead, on a stake, on grill, you name it! Since we preferred the option 1 (of staying alive) we weren’t about to let them catch us.

Things were going well for us. But then, this cute human rooster came by. He tried to catch us. My resolve weakened, and I froze for a second. He grabbed me (it’s spring time, we are broody, what can I say). I was proud (although a bit worried) to be the one to be grabbed! Luckily my human mom came by just then, and we were all taken back to our home and put in the safety of our coop. It was an exciting day. I penned a little poem in the memory of this adventure.

We the chickens loved the neighbor’s yard

We ate plenty of goodies, soft and hard

Until I was caught by the human rooster

Which was sad, but ooh! Such a confidence booster!

— Lazy Laurie

Kylo Ren the dog: I escaped too! The other day someone rang the doorbell. My mom was forgetful and she opened the door without locking me away. I ran to meet the stranger. I was going to get in my lean, mean mode. However, the visitor turned out to be a girl that looked like my Tanya. I got mellow at once and was wagging my tail and my entire butt around like a bumbling fool. But then I looked at the road. The sweet girl had come with a boy! He was waiting for her in the car. I was back to my mean self (in case you don’t know this, I don’t like boys). I growled and barked. Tanya held me by my collar but I strained to get away. Unluckily the visitors left and I was dragged back into the house.

Last but not the least, it was my birthday last Thursday. I turned 4! My family sang the “happy birthday” song. Oh joy! I went completely crazy with excitement! Tanya solemnly told me that I was four now and was no longer a boy, but a man(!). Leena said that she was going to call me Mr. Kylo from now onwards since I was grown up! I play-bit at their jaws to correct their misconceptions. I don’t intend to grow up any time soon. Before you leave, please don’t forget to check out the pictures below of my parents. I think I look a lot like my dad. He looked naughty (heh heh). But I have my mom’s classic German Shepherd coloring. You can say that I got the best of both my parents’ looks. You wouldn’t be wrong!

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