All right, the picture here is of me and our new family member, Jayden. Jayden is a Serama chicken. Lynn raised her from an egg and she follows Lynn around constantly. I think that Jayden sees Lynn as her mother hen because she wasn’t raised with any other chickens, just us.
While Lynn is the mother hen in Jayden’s eyes, Jayden has also accepted me as part of her flock. When Lynn is busy elsewhere, Jayden follows me around. This picture was my attempt to take a photo of her with my iPhone. As I was framing the shot, she jumped on top 0f the phone so I quickly switched to selfie mode. Jayden was fascinated with her own image on the phone display and was pecking at it when I took this photo.
That’s the big news for us. The newest member of our family is a house-chicken. I would have thought that was crazy a year ago, but after a year of craziness, crazy is the new normal. While 2020 was mostly forgettable (at least we’d like to forget it), we’re looking forward to creating memories that we want to remember in 2021. Part of that means getting out of the house and finding safe activities to do so we don’t get any stir-crazier than we already are. I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve been able to work from home and Lynn is also at home now, but the downside is that we never go out in public unless it’s to places where we’re sure of not running into any other people. We get our groceries and other necessities delivered. I get my prescriptions filled online and pick them up at the drive-through. We only interact with friends and family via phone or video-chat.
In other words, we live like shut-ins. What are we afraid of? Yes, there is the COVID-19 thing that is going stronger than ever, but what is our true risk? It’s hard to say because we don’t know what information to trust, but there’s always some risk somewhere. As Lynn and I were discussing today, there were no sure answers when I got my melanoma diagnosis. I wasn’t sure what the best treatment option was but I made a choice. As it turns out, the treatment worked for the melanoma but I ended up with Type 1 Diabetes.
Life is like that. You gather as much information as you can, you weigh the pros and cons, and you make a decision based on the information that is available to you at the time. Or maybe you just trust your gut. Either way, your decision could be right or it could be wrong. There are no guarantees. Living in fear, however; living in the in-between is not really living at all. To truly embrace life is to embrace risk — the risk of getting hurt or the risk of getting sick. In regard to the virus, we will be careful. Social distance, mask up, and keep exposure to a minimum. We certainly do not want to spread anything to each other or to anyone else as unlikely as that would be considering how careful we have been and will be.
I’m not a big believer in New Year’s resolutions. On the few occasions that I’ve made them, I’ve done a poor job of keeping them. This year, my resolution is simple. Stay alive and live a life worth living.
Melanoma update: No news, my health is good and my next scans are a month away. Happy New Year!