You can take the kids out of the city, but…

…you can’t take the city out of the kids.
Or can you?
I don’t know the answer to that. I’m working on it.

For us, summer has just begun in earnest. The kids finished school on Friday after what was the fastest, most jam-packed two weeks ever. I practically lived there.  We went straight from that into a party on Saturday for the kids’ classes. That was a surreal experience. Never have I thrown a party with such a melting pot of people who didn’t know each other. It was interesting.With a few unsung heros that day, it worked and was a pretty big success. Without Truce (names have been changed to protect the innocent. ha.)  in the backfield organizing the 2-hr kickball game, I’m not sure the kids would have had such a good time. At any rate, that party lasted until after 9 and wore me out like I imagine a 10K would Betty White. ( I originally chose “5K” for that analogy, but Betty White is pretty spry, so I upped my distance.)

From that tiring Saturday, we had some family spend the night and by Monday, the kids were all ready for a week in a psych ward. We were shot. But in the last two days, we’ve slept in and slowed down and now–this is summer.

We’ve had some recovery now. We’ve napped and eaten ice cream and watched some movies we had been wanting to rent. So today it was time to clean up a little. Do some chores. Work around the farm.

OK, kids. Come on. Let’s get to work.

It was like I had grown a 3rd eye. They were shocked by the word chores. So I backed off my vocabulary. For today, I would trick them into working. After that, it would somehow become automatic. How, I have no idea.

I was loading up Saturday’s party trash for trash day. Loading the trash is not the small affair it was when I lived in the city. There, my driveway was 25 feet long. Here, the trek to the end of the driveway is more like a 1/4 mile. We have a Rover for that. It helps to be able to drive the trash. Dragging it was a beast.

Mama’s Boy was “helping” me with the trash chore, mostly because he didn’t want me out of his sight. This morning, his variety of help was rather unhelpful. This is when i began to ask myself internally how to put some country into these kids. They were used to the 20 foot driveway and the pavement and scooters and sidewalks. And neighbors.

They are not used to bugs. And biting flies. And dirt.

By the end of the trash thing, I considered calling a walk in clinic for some child-sized valium. The flies pushed him to the edge where he’s still teetering. I’m hoping to bring it back around today.

After the trash, it was  chicken coup time. This is not my favorite job. Truthfully, they scare me. Two of them have become roosters and are very angry beasts. I realize they were probably always roosters. I understand the birds and the bees and the chickens. But we inherited 4 baby chickens from a 3rd grade class. They hatched them and kept them safe. They did not identify their gender. So now I have 2 angry roosters, 2 pooping hens, and 4 babies that always look shell shocked as they watch the larger chickens patrol the coup. The babies are safe in a bunny hutch, inside the coup. I am hoping that soon they’ll be all together in the open coup, but I’m still watching that situation.

They were hungry when I got to them this morning. I guess I don’t have the schedule down properly yet, because they were clamoring. A clamoring chicken isn’t a good thing, in case you’ve never seen one. And the trick to a clamoring chicken…or rooster…is to go into the coup armed with food, throw it, get them away from you and do what you need to do.

Unfortunately for me, the food was stored high inside the coup, which meant I had to fight my way through the crowd of clamoring birds to get to the food.

Carnage, I tell you. It was pure carnage.

I made it out alive, as you already know if you have endured this far. But still there was one task left: cleaning and refilling the water thingies. I figured that using the hose in the garden would be more efficient than dragging dirty water bottle thingies through the kitchen. So I went to the garden. The garden has a splitter set up between the sprinkler and a hose. First you have to turn off the sprinkler and then you have to turn on the hose.

Or so I thought.

While intently leaning down over the sprinkler, 12 inches from the ground, I flipped the switch.

It turned the sprinkler on. The sprinkler hit me in the face and head with staggering force. Well, I guess that wasn’t the right order to do things in. I managed to get the sprinkler turned off, but not before a full body soaking. Then I turned on the hose and washed out the water buckets.  After a few minutes, I had to wash out another bucket. So I turned on the sprinkler AGAIN.

Good grief.

You can take the awkward lady out of the city…