It's a Red Chicken Day

 Our 15,673 days of marriage have changed the love of my life into a spoon-clicking cereal eater jumping on my last nerve. Before you hop on a rabbit trail to figure out how long we’ve been married, it’s about forty-three years. Our hope hangs on finished home construction by the end of the year. We’ve served sixteen of eighteen post-retirement months in a rented warehouse with an attached three-room apartment. It’s nice, but not the home we desire. 

My Dear Hubby (DH) and I had a fascinating conversation about Einstein’s theory of relativity to answer the question, “Why is time slowing down the closer we get to move-in day?”  Einstein’s theory, as an illustration, breaks down. Let me try another one.

Logically, we know we will move into our new home soon. Month by month, we watch the building progress through every construction phase. But we feel time slowing down. DH thought of the illustration of a donkey with a carrot in front of its nose. No matter how fast or slow time goes, our unfinished home is the carrot, and I am the grumpy donkey. Time creeps along. I know we will move in very soon, but during the last few months of construction, time feels like it is dragging. 

Despite my grumpy inner donkey, I found joy in an unexpected place. On the narrow road into our future subdivision, we drive past a mini-farm with a llama, two goats, a peacock and a variety of chickens in a small enclosure; black, brown, white and red chickens. I enjoy checking out the animals as they move in and out of the shelter near the back of the enclosure. On a grumpy donkey day, a running ruby-red chicken caught my attention. It was the only animal running lickety-split after the other chickens and underneath the llama. The joy I felt seeing the running red chicken put me in a good mood. 

DH asked what I was laughing about as he turned the corner. 

“I’m having a red chicken day!” He must have thought I had lost my mind.

What does a running red chicken have with impatience to move into our new home? 

No, I don’t want to keep chickens on our acreage. But I do want to find the funny joys in life. Be like a chicken, not a grumpy donkey and be blessed with a running red chicken day.

                    A Rhode Island Red Chicken