Technology

Just as I'm about the get the phone call from Dad's speech therapist that forebodes speech therapy being cancelled for good (the therapist is out of the office until Tuesday), we decided to get Dad a Nexus tablet to use. The computer had become too cumbersome and complicated for Dad. The few times he tried using it, he was ok, until left alone with it. Then, all of a sudden he would click the wrong button, not figure out what to do and walk away frustrated. But a tablet....well PJ and I both have one and Dad has done well using ours in the past. Mine is only a 7 inch one though, too small for Dad. So we got him the bigger one like PJ's.
It got delivered last week, a day earlier than expected, the result being I didn't have time to warn them of a delivery to the house. When I got home the look of excitement on Dad's face was priceless. He knew it was for him. he had taken it out of the box and was holding it on his lap.
We set it up with a larger font, made the applications we think he's going to use as prevalent on the screen as possible and re-introduced him to Google Maps. I think, with the exception of taking breaks to watch episodes of Breaking Bad (which we have been binge, Mom and Dad love it), Dad was on that tablet all weekend long. He seems to have really gotten the hang of it too! PJ even set him up with a Facebook account. I set him up with a Google + account. If you are so inclined, check him out on either of those social media outlets, follow him, friend him, drop a note and say hi to him. He may not post things right now, preferring to get the hang of it first, but he definitely reads the news feeds of what is going on in the lives of the people he knows. Technology can be a wonderful thing, especially when miles separate.  

Chickens

For those that remember, when we lived in Millington New Jersey, Dad had built a shed in the backyard and the side of it was attached a small fenced in vegetable garden. Fencing the garden to keep the deer and rabbits out, that’s rich. I can’t believe he had to do that. Up here neither of those critters poses a problem. Well, at one point during this time we had a goose. Her name was Suzy. To this day I don’t know what possessed Dad to bring her home but he did. All of a sudden the vegetable garden was her pen, part of the shed her coop. We had the smallest of ponds in the backyard and Lucy would sometimes venture out and go swimming in the pond. She could fly, but never really that high (to be honest I don’t know if her wings were clipped or not). Occasionally she would lay these monstrously large eggs that we would eat. A season or two is all we had with her before she went to live on a farm (and not a farm in the sky, a legit farm). I suppose in the end she was too overwhelming an animal to deal with. When you’re a kid you don’t know the why and how of much. All I knew was one day she was there, the next she wasn’t and our families somewhat bizarre foray into raising a goose was over.

Fast forward 25 plus years later. Part hobby, part moving towards some kind of sustainable living, part just me being similar to Dad, I’ve built a chicken coop inside Mom and Dad’s garage to house roughly half a dozen chickens. Honestly I think the cabin fever I had at the tail end of this winter made me delusional and I needed something to plan, design, build. If I had my way I would actually be on a small farm by now with a pig, chickens and a couple of goats. Clearly that isn’t going to happen for quite some years, so starting out with chickens is the best I can do for now and that’s ok by me.  

I’ve heard chickens are the gateway drug to farming and I have friends that hatch their own crazy varieties of chickens.  They love everything about it and they keep growing their flock by leaps and bounds. Heck, everyone I talk to says it is so much fun to raise chickens and we aren’t even talking about the fact that I could eat chicken eggs for breakfast, lunch, dinner and cooked every way imaginable. Needless to say I’m very excited for this new hobby. I showed Dad the progress I made on the coop over the weekend. To be honest I don’t think he thought I was really going to do it. Anyone who knows me knows when I put my mind to something I will do it. Always the perfectionist, Dad actually said it was coming along very well and looked good, which made me happy.

I’m hoping to get my chicks in the next week or so and hoping they are able to start laying eggs sometime late this summer. He won’t admit it, but I can guarantee Dad is going to enjoy having these chickens around as much as I will.

Below are a couple of photos of the coop. Still have a few more things to do to it, but I have a little bit of time before the chicks are big enough to be in it. I will add photos of them after I pick them up. Until then…

Loki is very excited about the chickens