chickens and Mexico and clowns

Today.

Is laundry day.

Today is kind of an important laundry day.

How can one laundry day be more important than any other laundry day?

I'll tell you.

Tomorrow, a road trip is planned to go and purchase some full-grown roosters from another chicken-raising type person who lives 2 hours or so away.  But what you might not know about chickens, is that each flock has its own thing going bacteria-and other microscopic being-wise.

It's kind of like Mexico.  In Mexico, the people drink the water and don't end up deathly ill, right?  But if you, as an American, go to Mexico, everyone and their brother and their cat will tell you, "don't drink the water."  And if you do, you might end up with Montezuma's Revenge or some other delightful word for feeling really bad.  You might also end up with hepatitis.  This is because your body is accustomed to dangerously sterile, bleached water here in the States, while all the little Mexican babies have been drinking this water since they've been drinking any water at all, and their bodies know what to do with it.

So, in this way, chickens are like Mexico.

If they share germs that their bodies don't know what to do with, someone might get sick.

Alternatively, they might inadvertently share a deadly-to-all-chickens disease that they didn't realize they had and almost never have - but if they do have is really devastating.  And that would be really bad too.

The way that all this Mexico/chicken information relates to laundry is this.  Tomorrow, when i go to get my rooster, i will be very careful to wear clean, untouched-by-my-chickens, clothes, and i will carry freshly laundered, poop-free shoes in a plastic bag, to wear only at the destination site, after which, they will be washed again.

Are you glad you know all this?

Good.

Here's the rest of the story.

I have exactly 3 pair of pants that i wear on a regular basis.

I have my clean, fairly new, dark blue jeans that i wear mostly only to church and church-type meetings - or other gatherings where i am expected (or it would simply be courteous) to be clean.  (Yes, this is Texas.  I wear jeans to church.)

I have my work jeans.  These are old, well-loved, comfortable, holey, patchy, generally stinky, and i wear them every day to do work around the house, collect eggs, and cuddle chickens.

Then i have my alternate pants.  They can sub for either of the other two in a pinch.  And often they're what i wear when i go do laundry.

But this week, because of the chicken trip, i'm going to be one pair short, so i need to wash all three.  But since it's very important to wear pants when you do laundry in public, i had to think of an alternative alternative pair of pants.

I went digging.

I found a box under my bed of old dress clothes that i used to wear to the courthouse.  This is also the box that my dog has apparently been sleeping on top of when i am not looking.  Anyway, i found an old pair of not in particularly good shape, brown, don't really fit me anymore, dress pants.  With them i am wearing a really ratty t-shirt that doesn't go at all.  Then, as i was getting my coins, etc., together to do laundry, i discovered that these dress pants have no pockets for quarters.  I don't like taking my purse to the laundromat because it seems unwise to leave your fundage accessible to strangers.  I like to have my money ON me.  So i have constructed (word used loosely) an over-the-neck-and-shoulder type bag out of what appears to be a weird little pocket thing designed for someone's belt, and a giant adjustable strap for a suitcase or something.

I'm very fashionable.

Actually, i look a little like a really unimaginative clown.

But it's o.k.

I'm clean, and my quarters are safe.

And no, i'm not going to share a picture.