Blood clots….

….bones heal. Sweat dries. Suck it up. Be a marine.
It was one of my favorite sayings when DH was (mostly solo) building our 3600 sq foot, two story house in Nevada. I would come home from work and he would proceed to tell me about his day. How many cut fingers he had suffered, or how many times he dropped tools on his toes….or sustained bumps on the head while he worked in cramped spaces. “Blood clots….” I would reply.

I thought of that saying today when I opened one of the lids covering the nesting boxes, and noticed that my big rooster was standing in the middle of the henhouse in the middle of the day, instead of being outside with his girls. “What are you doing in there at this time of day?” I asked him, and really didn’t expect a reply. But he moved, and I saw behind him one of the hens had gotten herself stuck down a chute of rolled up hardware-wire fencing. The opening was just big enough for her to lay down in, but at 2 feet tall, she couldn’t get herself out. I assume she had jumped down from the perch just above it and picked the wrong spot to land (my bad for leaving it in a bad spot in the first place).

I went in, hauled her out of “jail” and she hurried off to find food and water. Underneath where she had lain there were two eggs. She had nestled herself down into the wood shavings on the coop floor….and got to work.

I am sure there is a metaphor in there for me (us) right now. We are in a mess that certainly wasn’t our doing, but which hems us in just the same. It has been a (very) bad week at work and I come home and tell DH about the hurts I’ve suffered that day. To his credit, he does not say “Blood clots….”
I just need to be like my brave little hen….hunker down and lay an egg or two.