It’s a good thing chickens can’t talk

So all day long for the past three days I have been working on the chicken coop while the girls (and boys) hang around at my feet. I know what you are thinking. You are thinking, “But I thought Bjorn (Not His Real Name) built that coop already?” Well, yes, he did. But I had a few assignments for it too, and then when Mrs. Bjorn, AKA Maggie (Not Her Real Name Either) came by to take a look at the coop, she chastised Bjorn for using 2-inch poultry wire for the yard. “Anything could break into that!” she said. That kept me awake for the next two days.

And on the third day I went to the hardware store to buy 1-inch welded hardware cloth to replace the chicken wire. Let me just say that “cloth” is not the word for this stuff. After it’s cut, it’s all sharp edges, and it’s tightly coiled around the roll, so it snaps back every time you let go of it. You know that movie, There Will Be Blood? It was about the oil business, but it might as well have been about building chicken coops with welded hardware cloth. I have cuts and bruises all over. I look like I’ve been cage fighting instead of cage building.

Here’s the other thing. I actually kind of enjoy these handywoman projects, as long as nobody is around to comment on my working methods. I like to work in sprints, and then take reading breaks. And I can’t do the same thing for very long, so I have to switch from painting to nailing to cutting to reading and then back again. And finally, in the midst of such a project, my vocabulary becomes limited to about three words, all beginning with the letter F. Really, it’s just one word, but the inflections are different. There’s the murmured “Oh F” when I’m mildly frustrated by a turn of events. Then there’s the “F!!!!” when one of my ideas just isn’t working out. And when blood is drawn, there’s “F!!!! F!!!!! F!!!! MotherF-er!!!!”

These minor catastrophes occur on the average of once every five to seven minutes throughout the day, making me quite unfit for polite company. I blame my ADD, which makes me lack tolerance for frustration and somewhat combative. You could read it in a book, I swear. And for anyone who thinks it is wrong of me to blame my antisocial behavior on my “condition,” all I can say is

F that!