Well, you gotta watch for those toxic chemicals these days, I tell ya.

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I'm writing my paper about my pretend child -- she's a 17 year old mentally retarded girl who is non-verbal, violent, and so far has not figured the social graces necessary to work well with others. The thing is -- I think if I had had a retarded child first, I wouldn't have the other two. I think that Russell takes a lot of work and effort and he's a smart capable kid in a lot of ways. I cannot imagine having to cope with a child with severe mental retardation and have to consider the possibility of a long-term care facility for my child.

In fact, I think it takes pure guts to have a second child after having a retarded child. I know I wouldn't have done it. And it's not that I'm being selfish, I just know that I wouldn't have a whole lot left over after dealing with a retarded child when I was a single mom. I barely had much left over after dealing with my constantly sick Bear boy as it was and is and I often feel guilty for the bare minimum attention Genny gets after I've done all the crap I have to do for Russell. I often find myself making up for it somehow.

My latest guilt trip involves making her a green dress for St. Patrick's Day. I'm making the middle dress with a green gingham under dress and a shamrock pinafore. The pinafore will be switched out to a matching butterfly and flowers in blue for Easter. Two bangs for my buck, baby!

The bunnies are frisky, the quail are nesting as cute as can be in little holes under branches of sage brush, and the new rooster has his phermone thing going on. This is of course the same rooster that attacked my ass on Saturday. I bent over and was collecting eggs and suddenly felt something weird and painful on my butt. Thinking it was my husband trying to playfully smack me with the rake or something I whirled to see this F**KING rooster start to fluff up his feathers and go to make another pass at me. I got the rake and chased his stupid fowl ass out of the hen house. I came out and looked at my husband and in utter disbelief uttered the phrase,"That stupid cock attacked my ass."

My husband, stupid man that he is, could not contain his smirk. He said,"I know how he feels." I glared at him and dusted off my butt and stomped inside, swearing to wreak all kinds of fowl havoc upon the rooster and inflict celibacy infinitum upon the husband.

Instead, I just made Mike collect the eggs because the rooster doesn't attack his ass and I attacked Mike, which worked well for all involved.