Bits and pieces

Last year I mentioned the chickens the neighbors behind me bought "To teach their kids responsibility, and how to care for living things."  Oh, it was an elaborate thing to watch.  They cleared the land...the city made them, they bought a chicken coup...lovely little thing, they put up a flimsy 'stick' fence and they bought five chickens.  And, the daddy even built a deck of sorts between some trees for the kids to play on.  It seems they only do when company comes, or one of the kids has a birthday party.

For a very long time, the guy never put his tools away, and that annoyed my dead husband greatly, and that thereby annoyed me.  I even pondered how I might be able to at least put the tools on the concrete pad under the 'deck', but getting into that area, thanks to the flimsy fence, is not possible.  I was so pleased to find that after several rain storms the tools finally disappeared. 

As time went on, I checked the chickens every day.  The white one, I named Florence, quickly learned how to 'jump the creek' and I would see her meandering around their back yard as a result they were all in solitary confinement.

Over time they were given their freedom, but soon Florence and Peaches disappeared never to be seen again.  The chicken area has become very unkempt, littered with "stuff".  But the remaining chickens are allowed to roam, and I watch them almost every day.  They seem to be doing okay, but my concern for their living quarters and roaming area is another thing.  It's dang messy back there.

Oh, daddy has provided some kind of apparatus to keep them warm, I know because I can see a heavy duty, bright orange, electrical cord has been strung across the ground and creek to the coop, so at least they are concerned about keeping the remaining chickens alive.  Still, I've yet to see the kids come to attend to the fowl.  Daddy appears to be the one taking care of them.  Come spring I hope he does some clean up around the place.  I certainly would before allowing my kids to play in such a 'chicken poop' place.

Then, as you know, last year I build a low, retaining wall along one side of my front yard property.  A job that required moving over a hundred decorative concrete blocks, and moving 'a ton' of dirt from a mounded flower garden I wanted to remove.  This was a project I had asked my gardener to do [three times], but he showed no interest in it, and I eventually gave up and tackled the job myself.

Anyway, yesterday I was walking around the yard, and I discovered part of the wall had collapsed.  Man, I was angry...seriously, I had done a good job making sure that would not happen.  At first I blamed the moles, because they had been working that area last summer, and I thought perhaps with the rain, the tunnels below the surface had collapsed, causing the wall to lean.  Hmmm, in that case, wouldn't the wall have slowly leaned backward, but remained somewhat in its original shape?  This was more violent, the concrete blocks were actually strewn about, almost as though some kind of activity had caused the collapse.  This made me wonder about all the mornings I've looked out my front window to discover the little white wire fencing around my front yard had some damage.  As though something had tried to squeeze through it.  At first I was going to blame my gardener and his trimmer for the damage until I discovered this was happening on days my gardener had not even been here.  What a puzzlement?  I'm beginning to think perhaps I should sleep during the day and stay awake at night keeping watch.  Is it raccoons, coyotes, stray dogs or cats?  There is no perfect crime...I will (eventually) figure this out.

And finally.  Lumosity. When I started this program [a whole year ago, in November]
to increase my Brain Profile Index, my starting point was 170, for my age group. Frankly, I though I would simply be playing games, not really believing they would help my mental agility at all.  Each game is designed to do one of the following, increase your speed of processing, memory, attention, mental flexibility and problem solving, 'what could it hurt?' I asked myself.  Well, surprise, surprise, surprise, it has helped...a lot.  Over the year my mental agility has jumped from 170 to 1165.  My best areas are problem solving 1280, and flexibility 1327, while I'm still having a problem with attention, because, these are the most visual games, and I have a problem with my eyes, especially my peripheral vision.  As a result, with the movement these games have, I have trouble keeping up with what's going on in each game.  However, over all I'm at the top of the scale with regard to my age group...and once in a while, I check to see where I stand in other age groups and find I'm holding my own with regard to those fifty year old range.  Ha, ha!

Anyway, there you have it, an update of 'stuff'.  Bits and pieces of the things that have happened over the last year.  I'm sorry Florence and Peaches are gone, I'm hopeful one day I can solve the mysteries involving my front yard fencing and wall, and lastly, I'm going to continue to try to increase my brain power by playing games.

Good times, good times.