Better Clucking Through Chemistry

Morningtime and I have rarely gotten along. We're like relatives who see each other once or twice a year at family gatherings, socialize only long enough to remind ourselves that we truly have nothing in common, and then part ways utterly grateful that we can drop the fake smile that is making our cheeks ache.


Sigh. Perhaps I am overstating. There was that 15 week span in 2000 when I delighted in every Tanzanian sunrise.

But come on, if it takes an Ngorongoro Crater horizon to make me happy at 6am, there really isn't much hope for a Durham, North Carolina morning that starts with step-sliding through a pile of cat barf, right?

Anyway, I've found that Morningtime and I get along best when we have a routine to depend upon. A set of tasks that takes our minds off of each other so that we can both go about our own business. My wake-up routine now consists of staggering to the kitchen, putting on a kettle of tea water, and assembling a small plate of peanut butter toast and pile-of-pills-to-be-taken-with-food. The pill pile currently consists of a Women's One a Day multivitamin, a fish oil supplement, a calcium supplement, and an antidepressent (40 mg of Celexa). Once my herbal tea has steeped (Celestial Season's Tension Tamer Extra), I gather my plate and mug and head out to the deck to sit in the cool morning breeze. I am usually welcomed sweetly by my critters, who cluck, mew and snuffle their greetings while I struggle to keep my eyes open. 

 

Unfortunately, routine or not, my mornings rarely go as planned. I already mentioned this morning's cat barf (Though I respectfully left out the bitching and cursing that followed. Your welcome.). Ths morning's 2nd incident involved a pet pile-up of epic proportions. As I opened the back door and shuffled outside, Tiny Dog pushed ahead of me so as not to be left inside. The grey cat Atticus, who had been waiting outside for just such an opportunity, immediately rushed us and assaulted the poor dog with a full frontal lovefest, rubbing this way and that, unaware that his love was unrequited. TinyDog, of course, screeched to a halt and tried to backpedal away from the cat's unwanted embrace.  Five curious hens then waddled into the gap to see what all the fuss was about.  A total of seven (7!) little critters were all of a sudden directly under my feet as I swerved like a drunken coed, trying to avoid smooshing someone. I ended up sort of slowly tumbling sideways and resigning myself to some light bruising even before I hit ground. The good news: I saved the tea. Not a drop spilled. The bad news: The toast and pile-of-pills went flying. Helpless on the ground, I watched as 1-2-3-4, my entire early morning pharmacy was gobbled up by the chickens. Multivitamin. Fish oil. Calcium pill. And the 40mg of antidepressent.

Somebody is going to be one mellow chicky this morning and she isn't me. Sigh. But, like my good friend Nancy always says, "Oh well!" As the chickens set in on the peanut butter toast, I pulled myself to a seated position, leaned against the back wall of the house, and took a long drag of my Tension Tamer Extra. My TinyDog curled up on one side of me, my Atticus cat on the other. I sat outside on my ass in the cool September breeze and determinedly ignored Morningtime for all that I am worth. True story.

VITALS -- A Post Without a Pic

Lest my readership (all four of you) take this for a runaway chicken blog, I am now returning my attention to that most difficult daily task -- getting up in the morning.  As any change-seeker knows, it is one thing to understand what has to be changed and it is quite another thing entirely to know how to go about making that change.  Meggan Morehead, a brilliant psychologist and self-proclaimed morning person, leaps into that gap with her model for how to do that which you do not wish to do but know must be done, aka VITALS.  According to Meggan, VITALS is a tool that summarizes the whole of cognitive behavioral therapy in one tidy acronym.  (What is she trying to do? Put herself out of business?)

I use it. I love it. Here it is:

V.I.T.A.L.S.

(as applied to getting up in the morning)

V is for Validate. When every cell in your body is screaming, "I DON'T WANNA!!!"take a second to be kind to yourself, give yourself a gentle little stroke on the back, and acknowledge the valid reasons why you do not want to do what you don't want to do. I say to myself, "Of course you don't want to get up.  It's so cozy in your bed right now.  It's hard to move from a state of low energy to a state of high energy."  The critical piece here, Meggan says, is to avoid validating the invalid.  For example, I do not say, "Of course you don't want to get up, dear. Nothing good ever happens out there, anyway.  All of your worst fears are waiting for you out there. Better just stay where you are."  Apparently, feelings crave validation and will only intensify until they get it.  Pesky things, aren't they? Anyway, try a little validation.  See if it doesn't just magically make some of that resistance dissipate.

I is for Imagine.  As in, imagine yourself doing that which you do not wish to do in a peaceful, productive and curious manner.  I particularly like the curious part.  After all, you never really know what is going to happen when you get up in the morning.  It could be pretty good, you know?  I have a powerful imagination and I am alway slightly startled at how my inner vision can be transformed into action. Some mornings this is all I need.

T is for Take Small Steps.  I open my eyes. I sit up. I put my feet on the floor. I go do the morning bathroom stuff. Et cetera. The trick is to take the smallest steps possible so that you build momentum before you really even know you are doing it.

A is for Applause.  This is really just appreciating the hard work you are doing as you do it.  My little dog helps me with this.  He has a face to which I can attribute almost any thought or emotion, so he makes an excellent foil.  While I am brushing my teeth I say to him, "I know, Tinydog. You don't have to tell me.  I'm awesome. Sometimes my awesomeness makes you speechless, doesn't it?" Sometimes for me it is less applause-like and more simple acknowledgement, "See, dog, I'm up."  (Just as an aside, I think it is great modeling for Isaac to hear me applauding myself rather than waiting for applause from someone else.)

L is Lighten the Load.  Technically this means removal of negative reinforcers.  Colloquially this means, "What bad things won't happen if I do this thing which I do not wish to do?"  If I get up earlier, I will not have to run around with an anxiety attack trying to get ready for my day, my child will not go to school peeved  because I was snippy with him (and most likely late, to boot), I won't be late for work, and I won't forget anything essential at home such as my lunch, Ipod, or right shoe.  See?

S is Sweeten the Pot.  I love S. I want to marry S and have S's babies. S is the one that I struggle most with but also the one that gives me the most hope.  If I do this thing, what good things happen to me, either automatically or through my own intervention?  The automatic things are nice, of course.  If I get up earlier, I am in a better mood and have better interactions with my little one.  Very rewarding.  When the pot is sweetened by design, though, we're getting into the realm of brilliance and creativity.  Suddenly it feels less like we are coping and more like we are adapting.  The possible sweeteners are endless.  A favorite for me is baiting my living space with fun activities that I can dive right into if I wake up early enough.  A tiny knitted octopus pattern, a new video game (yes, I have my own Nintendo DS), a charged and loaded camera all prepared for an early photo shoot with the chickens, recipe and ingredients for a new breakfast treat, an audiobook from audible dot com to listen to.  You get the idea.  Just make sure that, whatever sweetener you decide on, it is something that makes your life better and does not undermine any other goal you are trying to achieve.  For example, I would love to tempt myself out of bed with any number of delicious dessert dishes but that would violate goals 3 and 7, "Achieve target weight," and "Eat less refined sugar." Deep in my heart, I believe that S is what is really going to turn me into a morning person and a happier person. 

So, that's it.  VITALS.  You can do one, some, or all of the components.  You can do them in any order.  Just do them.  And tell me what happens.  And I'll tell Meggan. And maybe some day all of our therapists will go out of business.

Coop Improvements

I'm tinkering with my morning routine again.  It is my seemingly eternal hope that by arranging, maneuvering, fussing or manipulating I will be able to create a more relaxed morning without actually getting up any earlier.  Maybe I am delusional, but I have not yet given up the belief that with the proper coordination I will be able to make my morning minutes bend to my will, work harder for me, and other such efficient-sounding blahty-blah.  I really don't want to get  up earlier.

My latest efforts to bend time have to do with the chickens.  They eat and they grow and then they eat more and grow more.  And so on.  Because their food and water dishes have not grown along with the chickens, they now need to be cleaned and filled on a daily (rather than twice weekly) basis.  Bleh.  Another morning chore I can ill afford.  Some mornings we are so short on time that the food doesn't actually make it all the way out to the food pan in the chicken coop.  Here the chickies are eating from a brownie pan full of pellet feed that I hurriedly slapped on the ground at the bottom of our back steps before dashing off to work.

This weekend I decided to build the girls a high-volume gravity-fed pellet feeder that will (keep your fingers crossed) only need to be filled once a week on Saturday, the thank-god-day-without-a-morning.  Do you want to know how I did it?

First, I went to Home Depot and bought some stuff.  A 4 ft piece of 4 inch PVC pipe, a shorter piece of 3 inch PVC, a 90 degree elbow that looked about right (not a pun, Liz Paley!), a cap for the 3 inch end, and a little saw called a "Bear Saw" which claimed to be the best out there for gnawing up thick plastic plumbing.

Then I sawed an opening in the smaller pipe to make the food trough.  Those "Bear Saw" people weren't lying.  Whisk, whisk, done.

See?

Then I put everything together like a tinker toy project.  Big pipe, elbow, little pipe, cap.  I didn't use any of that stinky PVC glue.  Mostly because I didn't have any, but also because, well, it is stinky and I didn't want to poison my chickies.  You never know, you know? I just pounded everything together with a hammer, no problem. You like?

Then I rigged the thing up sort of half in and half out of the chicken coop.  I cut a hole in the hardware cloth and slid the trough part in at a mostly horizontal but somewhat down-sloping angle.  I wanted to make sure that the pellets would flow from top to bottom.  Everthing is secured to the coop with wire. Then I filled it on up.  Had to get on a ladder to do it, but I'd much rather do that once a week on a Saturday afternoon than fill a ground level dish five mornings a week.   It can handle half a bag of Purina Layena, which should (again, fingers crossed!) last out the week.

To take care of the water situation, I bought this automatic dog waterer from Barne's Supply and ran an extra 100 feet of hose out to the coop.  When it gets below a certain water level it automatically fills back up, kind of like a toilet (but not so gross).

And then, just for fun, I hung this bamboo fence along the neighbors' side of the chicken coop so that the girls have a little more privacy.  There has been no egg-laying yet.  I think the ladies are a little shy and maybe need a little more ambience.  Thought the bamboo would help.  What do you think? Sexy, right?

Batty says, "Brrrawk...thanks Mom! I'm going to go practice laying eggs right now!"