Is Ignorance Bliss?

Today was show and tell at Pre-school. It reminded me of the Naked Chef in Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. The program where he goes to the reportedly fattest city in America trying to teach the people to cook and move toward a more healthy lifestyle. One segment shows the ignorance in the classroom over the recognition of common vegetables. I found this same ignorance in my grand daughters classroom. Oh not for vegetables, I didn't try that but for where things come from. We've somehow ingrained in people's mind that you buy things from the store. You can't do it, you can't make it. The store provides it and you buy it. When we brought 3 little chicks to school for show and tell the kids kept asking our oldest grand daughter where she bought them. She kept trying to tell them how they hatched out of an egg and she watched it but they repeatedly interrupted her and asked where she bought them. Finally one little girl asked where their mom's were. The concept that they came from an egg and hatched was unfathomable. They had to of been produced in a store. After all everything is, isn't it? If you have money you can buy anything.


That story will soon not be true. Tried to call and place an order at our local feed store for 4 Auracana hen chicks. They quit taking orders two weeks ago, a shortage of chicks I guess. I just thought since you have to order 30 baby chick at a time and I didn't want 30 only 4, I'd just go in on an order from the store. I guess we'll see if we can trade a few eggs from our neighbor's Auracana hens which will be bred to an Australorp rooster and see if they produce hens that lay green eggs for the grand kids. Yup, more and more I'm having to search further for the things we once bought at the local stores. Fabric stores for instance are few and far apart in Wyoming.


Sorry, I got off topic a bit. I was talking about the ignorance in the general population. The fact that our oldest grand daughter had the opportunity to watched over and over the hatching of chicks made me fill grateful for our lifestyle. She KNOWS where chicks come from. The part that fascinated her the most this time is how the umbilical cord tore away from the egg. Next year, she will be 6 and we will go into more details about the incubation period and hatching such as the absorption of the rest of the yolk through the umbilical cord which provides nourishment for the chick for the first few days. That is how the hatcheries are able to ship chicks through the mail. They have three days to get to their destination and 30 chicks have to be shipped in one box to provide enough heat for the chicks to remain warm.


Upon arrival they are put in an enclosure that remains at 99 degrees like the 99.5 degrees their incubator was set at. This is provided by a heat lamp. To tell if the temperature in an enclosure for baby chicks is warm enough, you can use a thermometer or just watch the chicks. They will tell you if they are cold by huddling close together for warmth under the rays of the lamp. If hot, they will spread out away from the heat. Just right means they will be scattered fairly equally around the enclosure.


Week by week the chicks will provide more of their heat requirements internally and this dictates the elevating of the heat lamps to lower the temperature in the enclosure. The same principle that applies to a newborn human baby which has a poorly functioning body temperature and should be kept wrapped up warm in a blanket until their body too begins to function more efficiently.


To take the 3 chicks to class I put a heated pad wrapped in a towel underneath them and enclosed them in a cardboard box with a crack in the top until it was time to open it to show the kids. This trip to the pre-school reminded me of a friend of our daughters who asked, " When does a chicken become a turkey?" She was a teenager at the time. Education is the responsibility of the parent. Whether he or she chooses to use outside help does not diminish the fact that the result is still their responsibility. Poor education, poor parenting. So though my little grand daughters will most likely be taught in a public school - while I'm around I will see that the gaps are filled in and they gain the knowledge they so deserve.
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The second subject for today is this letter I received a few weeks ago that has left me with many moments of pause. There is no return address, no stamp on the envelope by a post office revealing the town it originated, nothing to lend me a clue to its sender.

Inside was a note telling me to call fast because it works and the person only had to pay shipping to receive the product. Now it was only last summer that a group of ladies from Canada at a neighbor's high school graduation party asked me what my secret was to looking so young. Now here just months later I was receiving an advertisement for anti-aging cream. Imagine my confusion. It definitely wasn't my sisters that sent it. So who did? Had I really gone down hill that far this past 8 month? For someone who's never had a pedicure or had her nails done. In fact, abhors a finger nail file since I equate it to fingernails on a chalkboard. Clippers are my best friend. Yup short and clean that's my philosophy besides you can't really dig in and work with long nails. They just break. As for hair, the less I have to do with it the more happy I am. Curl my bangs on week days and the rest on Sunday or when I need to look nice leaves me not having to look in the mirror so often. I have my grandmother's square Swedish face. Not unpleasant but no beauty. It is a face that babies love and many a stranger's child has thrown themselves at me in a grocery store line. So I don't spent much time looking at myself in the mirror except when I pluck my eyebrows. The ones that are so pale you can barely see them. So imagine my surprise when I began catching myself studying my face in the mirror every time I passed one. Some one had sent me an advertisement to help reduce wrinkles and now I'm wondering why. Had lines slipped in on this face unbeknownst to me? Yes, and no. Those radiating lines around my mouth are getting a bit deeper. And oh my, look at those pores. They are large. I'd forgotten about them since Zits don't come my way too often now. I can thank my Dad for them. Well, I do have crows feet around my eyes. They're just light lines right now and I prefer to call them rays of laughter since I think they denote how much a person laughs. Of course I suppose they could be squinting lines too on someone that doesn't see so well. That's me without my glasses.


But look under those eyes, oh my. They do look pretty bad. The aging lines are nothing compared to the puffiness from a hypothyroid and whoa, those gullies below the puffs. Yup, my adrenals are still taking a nap. Wish I had time to take a nap. Alas, too much to do and so little time. Good thing the doctor is sending me a new kind of adrenal drug to go along with the Hydrocortizone I've been taking for the past few years. Now if that anti-aging cream got rid of purple gouges and puffs I'd call for a case of it tomorrow.



I suppose some of the lovely color, our grand daughter's favorite color by the way, is due to extra bodies in our bed every night, a double bed mind you. Yup, 2 and definitely 1 child finds their way each night sometime after midnight into our arms snuggled between us. Funny, it isn't the same child each night. The 3 of them seem to take turns. Of course in the morning they all pile in just like our kids did when they were little. We broke a few beds over the years over loading them.


The oldest and youngest children aren't too bad but the middle child... Let's just say black and blue is the theme when you sleep with her. Oh, I suppose we could close our door at night but then we figure the little tikes need all the love and comfort they can get right now when their world is turned upside down.

I'd kind of forgotten about my neck and hadn't been studying it in the mirror until our youngest grand daughter started pinching it repeatedly. We have pinchers. Our oldest daughter pinched as a way to comfort and relax herself. No she doesn't still do it but two of her nieces do. I'm getting a bit sore. Do you think I can order anti-pinching cream instead? Or better yet, a cream that fades moles because the grand daughters will grow out of it but I just seem to collect more and more of these ugly brown spots. They're an inherent gift from my Welsh grandfather. Thanks a whole heaping lot grandpa. As for the wrinkles across my neck well, I don't mind them. They cover up the thyroid surgery scar. As I continue to produce more nodules each year in what remains of my thyroid, I will most likely need those wrinkles to hide another thyroid scar in the future.



So if you were the thoughtful person who sent the anti-aging cream advertisement, thank you I now know in detail every wrinkle on my face that I've earned over my 50 years of life. LOL! Now I figure since I know all the details I can go back once more to ignoring my lack of beauty until the next advertisement show up in my mail box.