The end of classes is always a refreshing change of pace.
This semester, exam period is accompanied by even more profound twists of
schedule. I’ve gone from scheming about last-minute homework trade-offs to
scheming about the most efficient time to pen the chickens. Their coop is the
scaffold upon which I structure the rest of my hours – lovely, long hours of
essay writing and housecleaning and horse-gazing. It’s a funny little routine,
given profound gravity by my determination to optimize my time.
It starts off well enough, feeding the hens and the dogs,
watering the garden. I begin to work my way neatly down the checklist. Soon I will
need to make the commute to attend a meeting or take an exam or submit a paper
at Gordon. I want to leave off on a solid note each time I come back and forth;
I hear my second grade teacher warning us to “find a good stopping point”
before silent reading ends.
However, it’s obviously impossible to accomplish the whole
list at once. The mail can’t be retrieved until it has come. The dishwasher cannot be run until it is
full. And the eggs cannot be collected until – well, I haven’t really worked
that one out yet. Without fail, I walk by or look out the window in the early
afternoon and notice that the rooster is distracted and they’re all out in the
run: optimal conditions for accessing
the coop! I duck in and scoop up the easy pickings. Then a couple hours go by.
People come to buy their eggs. I see only one carton is left. Ah, but there are
eight odd eggs in the back. If I found just four more I could put out another
carton. I know I didn’t check the two nest boxes that were occupied earlier.
And I am haunted by this knowledge until I convince myself to try “just one
more time.” (This repeats itself every day, without fail. You might think that
I would have learned by now to just wait and collect all the eggs later in the
afternoon. Alas, you would be wrong.)
By then it is dinner time, for both me and the dogs. Soon the
day, which started at 6am, seems endless. Around 7:30 I can be found sitting at
the dining room table, ostensibly working on my research paper – but mostly
staring out the window. Tracking the flow of chickens in and out of the run.
Trying to estimate when I can close them in for the night. Wondering how much
time to grant the young chicks in the neighboring run who, like all teenagers,
always seem to hang out past curfew. (Last night they decided to have a
sleepover on their porch. If they weren’t so easy to pick up, this would annoy
me. As it is, they’re just adorable.)
Finally, it is dusk. I latch the doors to the coops and
retreat into my room, turning on the heater to wait out the final two hours. The
dogs are ushered outside one last time, bribes included, and then locked in for
the night. (No, they haven’t been barking at the grim
reaper/coyote. But Teddy is under close supervision since he
was struck by a horse earlier in the week, and I don’t want him wandering.) I
set my alarm for 7am, knowing full well that something will wake me up before
then.
