Call the Cops, There's a Chicken on the Loose!

Now I know what you're thinking. Is it really an emergency worthy of the police when a chicken is running freely in the neighborhood? It is to somebody. On Sunday we were eating our Sunday dinner of pizza when someone knocked on the door. Everyone froze. We rarely have people over, and when someone does come to our door, unexpectedly, our first reaction is to get really quiet so that we can fake that we're not home, just in case whoever is at the door is someone who might want to come into our house (this especially the case when our house is messy, which is ALL THE TIME). K, now I know what you're thinking again. You're thinking, "Tiffaney, if you would just have your house clean at all times instead of never, you wouldn't have to worry about unexpected visitors." I know this. It's a work in progress. Slow progress, but at least I haven't given up. Anyway, JT peeked out the window, just as I was taking a bite of pizza, and lo and behold, it was a copper! Now, I might be embarrassed if someone that I know sees my house in it's usual messy disarray, but when I realized a cop was at our door, my stomach dropped, my mouth went dry, and I started to shake, just a bit, from adrenalin. Why do cops scare me? I don't know. I've never had any bad experiences yet involving the police. My brother, whom I dearly love, used to be a cop. But police are scary to me. Whenever I see one driving around, I'm careful to drop my speed so that I'm driving at least 5 miles under the speed limit and I constantly watch them, but I try to look like I'm not watching them. I try to appear like I'm just driving the way I would if a cop wasn't there, like I never speed, like I'm not doing anything suspicious. I'm pretty sure that I always look suspicious and like I'm hiding something as I drive. I once told Shane, my brother, that I always feel like cops are out to get me. He replied, "They are." Not a lot of reassurance. So when the cop came to our door, I immediately went into fight or flight mode. I decided for "fight" and went to answer the door. I still had that piece of pizza in my mouth and so I was frantically trying to chew it so that I could swallow it before I opened the door. Only I couldn't! My mouth was so dry that it was like chewing a mouthful of rubber bands. JT was hissing at me to answer the door. I was chewing. The cop was knocking again. I was chewing. JT was motioning with his hands that I should open the door. I was standing by the door and chewing. The cop was now ringing our doorbell. I was chewing. Finally I just swallowed the dry, massive, lump of pizza (why did I have to take such a big bite?!), and choking only a little, opened the door with Lilia on my hip. "Um, do you have any chickens?" the police officer inquired somewhat sheepishly. With a sigh of relief, I told him that we didn't. He then went onto say that someone complained about loose chickens and gave our address as the offenders!!!! He said that he didn't think that we had chickens and that he had called dispatch to make sure that he had the right address. He wanted to know if we had made the call. Naturally we didn't. If I was going to complain about something, it wouldn't be about chickens. It would be about the mean dog our next door neighbors own that gets free and poops in our yard and terrorizes the neighborhood. That's what I would complain about, and I would have the last time he got loose, except it was just before Christmas, and the Spirit of goodwill and forgiveness prompted me to not have the pound take away the neighbor's beloved family pet. Now somewhere down the road we have some neighbors who do have chickens. I've never seen this, but I hear them every morning, about the time our alarm goes off. Of course, I haven't heard the chickens the last few days, hmmmmm............

I haven't taken any new pictures this week, (the week is young, after all) but here are a couple pictures of when we went to the zoo with my sister-in-law Melody, and my niece, Kimmee. Or Kimbahlee, as she prefers to be called, at least for now. It was soooooo much fun! The weather was beautiful and the animals were very interactive. Melody rented a little jeep/wagon that seated two and had a little sun shade on the top. The jeep/wagon made things go so much more smoothly because it helped the girls (by girls I really mean "Carolyn" because Kimmee is always well-behaved at the zoo) go willingly from display to display instead of camping out at just one display and then pitching a fit when it was time to go on. The only problem with the jeep/wagon was that Kimmee would occasionally sit in Carolyn's "spot". Actually to be fair to Kimmee, Carolyn's "spot" was always changing, and usually tended to be where ever Kimmee wanted to sit. It was very embarrassing to me, but Kimmee was always gracious, if a little bewildered by Carolyn's random seating demands, and friction was at a minimum. I think it would have served Carolyn right if she had to walk.

Speaking of friction, there seems to be a little bit of if between Carolyn and Lilia. Lilia will be playing contentedly on the floor, and that is when Carolyn makes her move. She gets right in Lilia's face and pretty much invades her space and harasses her. I try not to get after Carolyn too much because I think she's just trying to love and play with Lilia. That doesn't make it less vexing to Lilia though, so I try to separate them, just a bit. Lately Carolyn has been stealing Lilia's toys. Most of the time Lilia is pretty easy going about this, but not so yesterday. Lilia was playing with a pair of socks (clean, just so you know--yes, I'm a little defensive about the cleanliness of my house, but our clothes are always clean--well, at least they start out that way at the beginning of the day) and I was in the kitchen. All of a sudden I hear Lilia shriek with outrage and when I came back into the living room, Carolyn had the socks on her hands, like puppets. With the wisdom of Solomon (ha!) I have Carolyn one sock and Lilia the other. Lilia thought this was a fair solution, but Carolyn didn't think it was a very fun solution and gave the sock back to Lilia. I shudder to think what their little tiffs will be like when Lilia is old enough to defend herself. Hopefully it will be good for Carolyn and help her to not be a little tyrant and it will teach Lilia to stand up for herself. I'm actually hoping that there won't be any fights, but I grew up with sisters and I know how it is, so it's an empty hope. What I can't believe is how quickly they're growing up. Lilia is already eating solid foods. When Carolyn was a baby it seemed to take forever for her to start eating solids. She clung to me and was happy to be my baby for a long time. Lilia can't wait to be big, like her sister, and is impatient when she can't do the things that Carolyn can. It's amazing to me how happy it makes Lilia to sit at the table with the family and eat food, just like her sister and the rest of the family. (Especially since she's sitting in the booster chair that she's seen Carolyn sit in, many times--Carolyn's now delighted to sit in an adult chair, like me and JT). It's as if she's swallowed the sun and happiness just shines from her. It's very bittersweet to me, because I her happiness becomes my own and I want her to be independent and strong, but she's not going to be my baby for very much longer.