Cleaning (and chickens)

So I've been cleaning lately. I mean, I clean every day, since I have four children who leave a wake of destruction and tears in their paths as they whirl through my house every day. But I've been trying to get rid of excess clutter and generally set some order in place in this bizarre house of ours. I am, of course, immensely grateful to be a mother and am thrilled with every day that I wake up once again, God's mercies fresh in my heart, ready to tackle the chaos once again. God's mercies are renewed not just every morning but every breath. I learned that last week and I have clung to that truth mightily since then as I have gone about my motherly and housekeeping duties. Because friends, let me tell you, my motherly and housekeeping duties are not for the faint of heart.

Case in point: my older girls' room. It is a place of horrors. Madame Tussauds' employees would do well to make a hop across the pond and survey my girls' room for inclusion in one of the museums as a room sure to inspire terror in viewers. The good people at Madame Tussauds could take scrupulous notes and multiple pictures, fly back to London, and recreate my girls' room for the museum. Ticket sales would soar: come and see the room of the American Horrors! Believe it or not, this room is inhabited by two young girls, aged nine and six! Note the bug carcasses seemingly ignored in the four corners of the room! Inhale the offensive odor of urine, sweat and something unidentifiable that might be organic in nature or possibly the result of a chemical experiment! Recoil in horror at the twenty seven pairs of dirty underwear strewn about the floor while the children frolic! Wonder at the leaves and sticks taped to the wall with tape that is clearly not approved for use on walls by the girls' mother because it will strip the paint clean off! Marvel at the antique nightstand so lovingly painted by the girls' grandmother, meticulously picked clean by little girls' fingernails over the course of months, the paint chips scattered about the colorful rugs, meant to coordinate with the matching bedspreads and curtains! Note, too, the hardwood floors, once lovingly polished but now reduced to landing strips for snips of paper glued to Mardi Gras beads and trimmed Barbie doll hair! Note, too, the results of the girls' mother's attempt at teaching the girls handiwork: crochet hooks, waiting to stab an unsuspecting bare foot in the night! Knitting needles ready to be used as a weapon by a little brother without much provocation! Yarn, yarn, yarn, tangled, woven, trailing down the hall, yarn, yarn, yarn! Yarn monsters, yarn balls, yarn mats, yarn hanks, yarn bits, yarn bobs, yarn nightmares waiting to choke your waking hours with their hairy plies and clog your shower drains! The horrors! I, of course, will graciously accept a small percentage of ticket sales, which I will then hand over to a housekeeper who will rectify the ground zero that is my girls' room because frankly, I don't have the strength for it anymore.

Now, on to the chickens and my current issue with them. When I got them, I read up on them, as every good chicken owner does, because I wanted to create chicken nirvana in my backyard and procure the tastiest freshest eggs imaginable. I purchased a large container of apple cider vinegar and a plastic container because I was going to mix four teaspoons of apple cider vinegar, or ACV as it's known in the business, per gallon of water. I even marked on the outside of the container with a marker to indicate where a gallon was so I could easily fill it. I then proceeded to scrub the waterers every few days, fill them diligently only with treated water from the ACV container, and generally treat the chickens better than I treat my kids, who drink out of the bathroom faucet. And then one day, I walked outside and there they were, all six chickens, gathered around a large mud puddle, dipping their little chicken beaks into the muddy water, slurping that amoeba-infested funky water into their gullets as quickly as their necks could whip that tainted water up and down. I checked to make sure their waterers were filled; they were and the water in them glistened in the sunlight, its purity almost blinding me. I swear I could see health and prosperity in that ACV water. And yet, my ungrateful chickens had muddy beaks and sloppy toes from standing in a puddle and slurping the slurry happily. I sighed and put the ACV in a kitchen cabinet for use in cooking healthy things that my children might eat. I threw the plastic container that held the water of eternal youth and perpetual egg-laying away because I could no longer stand the sight of it. My chickens still occasionally drink from their waterers, which now are stained a bit but filled every day with fresh water, albeit from the faucet. They much prefer the dog water bowl or the standing water in the kiddie pool, because their digestive systems apparently prefer the tainted taste of dog spit and kid behinds that reside in those water receptacles. God's mercies extend to chickens as well as kids and for that, I am grateful.