Coop situated

It's not easy deciding where to put the coop. We live on a field where many people walk their dogs off leash. We have raccoons. Both would love a free chicken dinner.

Jim decides to make my daughter's swing set into the coop. There will be three doors: the little one to let the chickens in and out if the run for the day. (We lock them in to keep the raccoons out.) The main entrance for us. And access to the nesting boxes. We decide on four nesting boxes, as they won't all lay eggs at once. We decide that a dog run from Mill's Fleet Farm is just the thing for the chickens' run.

We start building on a Saturday morning, and Jim is so proud that he is using every piece of scrap wood he's ever saved to build the coop.

Things are going along swimmingly until one of the big oak beams falls and conks him on the head. My daughter has the presence of mind to stick a bag of frozen peas on him. When we call Abbott's ER, and they tell us we better come in.

We end up there - with X-Rays and CT scans and 'how may fingers am I holding up' tests - for about six hours. We hadn't had lunch, and now, no dinner, so by the time Jim is released, we are ready to collapse. We have to eat at the hospital's McDonald's and order things we never do: fries, shakes, multiple hamburgers. I can't figure out why a hospital would have a McDonald's, except to assure future business.

I tell Jim I'll get rid of the chicks if this is just too much all together. But the doctor says he is OK, and when we get home, he (not intentionally, but very dramatically) rips his ID bracelet off and gets back to work. What a guy.