Things were pretty calm the other night at The Blapplegate house. Please keep this in context: the travel bag from last month’s trip was (and is) still on the floor by the bed, the taxes haven’t been tended to, there are two fabric models of Mt. Vesuvius in the basement: one of clean laundry, one of soiled. The chicken coop needs tending to, there are all kinds of wonderful, Farmers Market delights festering in the fridge because some crazy woman keeps going to the Portland State Saturday Market and purchasing bouquets of kale and colorful radishes and cauliflower the size of NBA basketballs.
Then that same woman remembers she needs to do laundry, and look at tax prep, and start studying for her Oncology Nursing Certification…. and then she realizes she’s on the verge of screaming at her poor octogenarian father, or her 99.3% perfect teenage son, or, worst of all, her husband who is practically some kind of saint. So she decides she needs to tend to some self care, and drags her rapidly expanding hind end out for some fresh air and a jog, and then she decides to go sit in the incredibly loving warmth of her Quaker Meeting group.
At which point, it has magically become Sunday night again, which is this women’s personal version of Bill Murray’s Groundhog day.

And thus, she ends up blithely ignoring her amazing collection of locally farmed Superfoods. She just eats a few hard boiled eggs, and Goliath-sized handfuls of nuts and raisins. And cheese. She eats obscene amounts of cheese. And her horrible dietary habits don’t wreak havoc on her GI system, because she takes a daily low-dose chemo for her Crohn’s disease, and it lets her stress eat and abuse her intestines.
Then there comes a day where the exquisitely beautiful produce in the fridge has turned a corner, and it becomes better suited for chicken food than human food. So suddenly this good-hearted chicken-loving lunatic decides to whip up a quick and colorful, gourmet meal for her hens, rather than for her family.

Now, the slightly odd little woman is temporarily transported back into her Happy Place: humming in the kitchen, preparing a nutritious treat for her beloved birds… An Instagram photo is snapped, and posted, cheerfully proclaiming, “Turmeric!” ~ “Apples!” ~ “Urban Chicken Whisperer!”
Then out into to Pacific Northwest blogosphere it goes, merrily landing in the break room of her husband’s workplace.
“… Mr. Blitch… Did your wife happen to cook you breakfast before you left for work this morning?”
“… Um, no. No, she did not… Why do you ask?”
(Snicker, Snicker) “Well, apparently she’s making quite a feast for those hens of hers. Lucky birds!”

So within that context, in that general place of relative calm, I turned to Mr. Blitch later that night and asked, “Which term to you prefer: Unhinged, or Unglued?”

An odd, concerned look is followed by the careful question, “Well, to describe a thing? A structure? Or….”

“No,” I reply, calmly and honestly. “A person. Me. My behavior last week when I became so furious with someone in a public forum that I completely… I don’t know, became unraveled, I suppose. Perhaps unfurled.”

“Oh, well in that case: Unhinged. Definitely unhinged.”