I am all over the place. I purposefully left the house to go work at the library so that I wouldn’t be distracted and yet, I still haven’t gotten anything done. I mean, nothing that’s truly measureable.
I have answered emails. I’ve edited photos. I’ve made notes on this book on photographic lighting I’m trying to read, but it is SO boring. I need to get my hands on some lights and manipulate them. Trying to do it through book work is just not getting it done. I’ve got appointments set up from here to next Tuesday. I’m trying to build a website and then because I have no idea what the difference is between CSS, HTML and re-directing subdomains to main host servers. I’m kind of making things up as I go along on the hosting sites that I use since they boast how user friendly they are. Just don’t ask me how to do something twice. I reached out to someone who does website design, but hell if I know if I’m being taken for a ride. I just want to say, “Look, take this piece here and put it with that piece there like this!” I’m a tactile person. I want to reach into the computer and manipulate the pages so they do what I want. I’m actually considering getting some index cards to represent each page and doing a little interactive skit with this designer so that they get what I’m talking about. I don’t have the technical language to explain it. It’s embarrassing. I sound like English is not at all my first language. There’s a lot of “uhhhh” and “wait, what did you call that?” going on. Thankfully, the designer is patient (or there are major dolla, dolla, bills y’all that are to be had when this is all said and done).
Anyway, I’m at the library, trying to put projects together. I’ve been marinating on a few ideas and there are never enough hours in the day to get things done. I finally got around to taking some photos of Viv the other — first time in a long time, I know.
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The good news was that I remembered how to use the camera. The bad news was I only had about 20 minutes to get a few snaps off before we had to move onto the next thing — dinner, homework, bath, hair, bed.
The phrase “Running around like a chicken with it’s head cut off,” keeps popping up in my brain. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a chicken without a head — I mean, still feathered and in one piece, like on a farm, just minus the head. I thought you were supposed to wring a chickens’ neck. I guess you could hack the head off with a swift blow of a hatchet like you’re Ned Stark or something. My mom used to tell me this story of how she could remember watching her grandmother pluck a chicken for dinner. I was like, “Okay, how old are you, really?” My mother and her great-grandmother’s chicken skills actually came in handy several months ago when I mistakenly purchased some kosher chicken for a recipe.
Let me back this up by saying, all I wanted when I went grocery shopping was a whole chicken, cut up in pieces. I wanted to fry up some chicken for the Hubs, do a real Southern inspired meal. I wanted a whole chicken, preferably one that I didn’t have to separate myself. In the refrigerator case at the store, you’ve got your Purdue brand, your Nature’s Promise, your Giant Food and so on. The whole chickens are either a) whole or b) in pieces but only 6 pieces. I’m not math wizard, but I’m pretty sure with a chicken, you get 2 wings, 2 thighs, 2 breasts, and 2 legs. 2+2+2+2 is 4, right? Right. Something was missing — usually the thighs — from the 6-packs. Well, dang it! I wanted a whole chicken. This was getting ridiculous. I continue to cruise the aisle and I see this brand that I have never seen before — Empire Kosher. I’m not knocking them, I’m just giving you a head’s up. Empire, thank heavens, has a whole chicken cut into 8 pieces. All 8 pieces! So I toss it in the cart, get the rest of my accoutrements and am on my merry way.
Comes time for dinner. . . .
I open the Empire Kosher package, take the pieces out and start to rinse them off. The first piece has a string like thing on it that I try to brush off while running it under some water. Nothing falls to the wayside. So, I turn off the faucet, pat the piece dry and try to pinch whatever is off the skin of the chicken. I pinch it, tug it and I shit you not,
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I know! I know what you’re saying, “But Hilary with One L! You’re dealing with a chicken! Chickens have feathers!” Yes, they do, but all chickens that I’ve ever dealt with heretofore have been devoid of feathers. All of them. Naked. Naked chickens. Feathery chickens? I can’t abide that.
So, after I placed the chicken back in the sink, I called my mom and gave her the rundown on what had transpired. Her response?
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Suffice it to say, there wasn’t much I could do put pluck the chicken pieces and get on with my life. Mom instructed me on the easiest and best way to de-feather the chicken. Which is what I did, because that’s how I roll. But, I will tell you that I didn’t eat any of that chicken when I served it up for dinner. Truly, there wasn’t anything wrong with it, but me and that chicken has been a little to intimate for me to just tie a napkin ’round my neck and throw down. Freakin’ feathers. Blerg!
*sigh* now I’m hungry. . .