Just Write {63}

My feet won’t warm up.

Today I learned how to make a water warmer for the chicken coop; a thing to set under the water so it doesn’t freeze. Now I just need to actually make the water warmer for the chicken coop. It looks so easy and the post even said it takes less than ten minutes.

It’s getting so cold, the water freezes too fast. I’m in and out, trudging across the backyard with my puffy coat on, hood up, to bring fresh warm water that will freeze in about an hour. But I keep doing it, because chickens get thirsty too. So back and forth I go.

We went to buy a warmer in the store yesterday but it just felt like there were so many hurdles. The price, the kids asking questions and going into other aisles and then wanting suckers. The farm store always has them asking for suckers because at the checkout they’re in this very appealing display and they are such HUGE suckers, so obvious and shiny and colorful, like the elephant in the room, in our homes and our lives. We ignore those though. It’s like we’d rather just keep walking back and forth on repeat in puffy coats, with our habits of being even though it would be easier to make a water warmer for the chicken coop.

Or get rid of some of the unhealthy elephants by facing them.

This morning Elsie walked away from me, down the sidewalk, behind her brothers. Brothers who were saying goodbye to me and see you later and skip-walking fast. Elsie was doing her slow careful toddler tippy toe walk and she stopped and turned around and she waved with a huge-looking mitten on her hand. Up and down, slowly lifting that warm little hand at me and smiling from behind her pacifier. She speaks with no words, she has fits to show you exactly what she wants and she will not stand for the elephant in the room; I already know it, and I’m so glad. She’s a no nonsense little spitfire and if it makes sense to make the water warmer in times minutes or face the elephants, she will.

She came along to teach me, of course.

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This is the 63rd installment of Just Write, an exercise in free writing your ordinary and extraordinary moments. {Please see the details here.} I would love to read your freely written words so join me and link up below. You can add the url of your post at any time. Just be sure it’s a link to your Just Write post, not to your main page, and please don’t link to posts that are not written in the spirit of capturing moments–like lists or sponsored posts. Then please link back to this post in your post so people know where to go if they’d like to join in. (Any links not following those two guidelines will be deleted.)

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