Bad Day and the Glad Game

Today has been a long, rough day. It started out with my daughter telling me there was a dead chicken on the side of the house. I needed to get the girls to school, so I took care of the chicken quickly and off we went. When I came home I discovered that there was some kind of ruckus in the chicken coop and all the chickens were missing. The thing was, whatever got in there didn't get in through the gate. We are thinking skunk or weasel maybe. Well, there was nothing else I could do about that, so I went about with my day.

It was a bright, sunny day without terrible wind, so the kids and I went outside. We cleaned out one of the long garden boxes. I added some compost (from my own compost pile) and then we planted peas. We also cleaned out and added compost to another square bed which, if the weather is nice tomorrow, I will plant some beets, radishes, and possibly cabbage in. It was so nice to be outside in the warm sunshine and to dig in the earth. I took the camera outside and Michael and Rachel took pictures. Here is their view of the world. The pictures are only the ones Michael took. Rachel took a lot of her finger and her knees.

I love his self portrait

Gardening essentials: Water bottle & calculator

Rachel using a spoon to dig up weeds

After we ate lunch and the kids went down for quiet time, I went outside to see if possibly Lindsey had left her coat out there. It's been missing for a couple of days. Instead what I found was one of the missing chickens, alive, but barely. It was wounded badly and I knew the humane thing to do would be to kill it, but I just couldn't. Robert was gone, my father-in-law had gone to town and so I called my home teacher. He was kind enough to come out to help take care of the chicken. His wife also came to be some moral support for me. I think I could have handled finding a dead chicken, I've found them before, but to see one hurting so badly, well, that was hard. Not to mention that I am really emotional right now. Women sometimes get that way, and I am already a very emotional person. I did a lot of crying today.

We are going to set out a live animal trap to see if we can catch whatever it was that came into our chicken coop. If it is a skunk I really hope the dogs don't get too near it.

The evening ended nicely, though. My friend brought dinner over with her so I didn't have to cook. It was so sweet and I am very grateful. Then, with the evening still so nice, we went as a family for a short walk down the road. We didn't go very far and we didn't go very fast since Rachel decided she wanted to walk, and she doesn't walk very fast, but it was good to go out together and walk. I think the dogs enjoyed it also.

Some interesting things about today, though. After I found the first chicken this morning, I told my dad that I wanted someone to take over my life for today. He reminded that I didn't want that, and that there was someone who would gladly take over my life, and promptly ruin it. No, I didn't want that. So, I asked the Lord to take over for me, I'd try to do what He wanted me to do. I don't know if I succeeded, but I did feel better after that. Things will be okay. The other interesting thing about today, at night I am reading the girls the story Pollyanna. We are just near the beginning, but she tells about the glad game and many times in the story she talks about looking for something to be glad about. In fact this is what she has to say:

"You see, when you're hunting for the glad things, you sort of forget the other kind"

And this one:

"And the harder 'tis, the more fun 'tis to get 'em out."

So, today I've been looking for things to be glad about. I can be glad that I don't have to worry about feeding the chickens anymore for now. We now have more room to put the chickens that we are going to raise for food. I'm glad that I got to spend some time with a good friend and I'm glad that I have good friends who care about me.