12,571 steps
“Happy to be here,” I said to Rosie’s chickens from a safe distance. “Really excited.”
Rosie and I stood outside the wire fence that surrounded the chicken coup. The coop was built to look like a miniature version of the lavender farm house and it had a big purple sign on it that said Poultry Palace. Under that sign, another sign identified the inhabitants: Rod Stewart and The Supremes—Diana Ross, Florence Ballard, Mary Wilson. If things got bad, maybe I could move into the coup with them. If the inside lived up to the exterior, it was a pretty fancy place, plus it looked like there was just enough space on the sign for my name.
“They’re all yours,” Rosie said. “I’ll just hang around in case you need any reinforcement.”
Rosie finished retying her purple bandanna around her blaze of red curls. She leaned over and pulled a weed from the dry dirt.
“Bend your knees when you do that,” I said. “It’ll save your back.”
Rosie pointed. “Chickens.”
“Right.” I cleared my throat, focused on the chickens. “Okay, my poultry pals. Self-discipline is like a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it gets.”
Rosie cracked up. “Here’s the thing. I love Rod and the girls dearly, but chickens reach maturity in about two weeks.”
“Wow,” I said. “And to think after all these years I’m still waiting.”
Rosie pulled another weed. “The good news is that means your brain is substantially larger than theirs. Lots of people think chickens are dumb as a stump, but they all have distinctly different personalities, so I don’t necessarily agree. But even I have to admit that every morning when they wake up, they don’t remember me from the day before.”
“Fascinating,” I said, stalling for time. “Did you ever think that maybe they were the inspiration for Groundhog Day? Or even Fifty First Dates? Russian Doll?”
One of the chickens, possibly Diana Ross, managed to slip her head through the wire gate.
“You might want to pick up the pace,” Rosie said, “while you still have a captive audience.”
I held out one hand like the Supremes singing a poultry version of “Stop! In the Name of Love.”
“I’m going to stop you right there,” I said. “If your goal is to escape the confines of your mundane existence and increase the fitness level of your life, how confident are you that you’re ready to make the necessary changes?”
One of the other chickens spread her legs, pumped both wings up and down, wiggled her little butt, pooped.
I turned to look at Rosie. “Do you think that’s where the inspiration for the chicken dance came from?”
Rosie ignored me, pulled some more weeds.
“Never mind. Okay, I’m going in.”
Rosie held the gate open just enough for me to squeak through. She handed me my equipment bag over the fence. I put it down on the ground and squatted to protect my back while I reached inside. A chicken, fortunately not the one who had just pooped, walked up my arm and tried to perch on my head. Another chicken crawled into the equipment bag.
“Help,” I said, but Rosie had disappeared.
“Some friend you are,” I yelled.
Rosie came running out of the house, shaking a box of Kashi Good Friends.
Rod and The Supremes abandoned me and scurried over to the gate, keeping their beady little eyes glued to the cereal box.
“Hurry up,” Rosie said. “I can’t stall them forever.”
I ran around, setting up an obstacle course in the fenced-in area. I moved some branches on the ground into a twisty line, angled a board off the end of a wooden box, leaned the hula hoop I’d brought up against the chicken coop.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll go first. Watch carefully.” I jumped over the branches, walked along the board and leaped from the wooden box to the ground, jump roped a few times with the hula hoop.
I thought the chickens would be right behind me like I was the Pied Piper, but they weren’t even watching. They were trying to reach Rosie through the fence to get their beaks on the Kashi Good Friends.
I blew out a puff of air. Apparently, I was even a failure at chicken coaching.
“Noreen,” Rosie yelled. “Come here.”
I jogged over. She passed me a handful of cereal through the fence.
The chickens swarmed. I stayed ahead of them, looping around the obstacle course again and again, dropping occasional pieces of cereal behind me like breadcrumbs. I wasn’t sure if chickens were capable of breaking a sweat, but I certainly did. I stopped and held up the hula hoop with one hand, just off the ground, and they actually jumped adorably over it to get to the cereal I dangled in my other hand.
Finally, I threw the rest of the cereal as hard as I could, straight up in the air, and jogged over to stand near Rosie. Rosie picked a piece of cereal out of my hair, threw it over my shoulder to the chickens.
The chickens went crazy as they scrambled over every square inch of packed dirt, tracking their favorite food, making soft irregular chirps the whole time.
“That’s their pleasure peep,” Rosie said.
“I remember pleasure peeps,” I mumbled, mostly to myself.
“Ha,” Rosie said. “Yeah, me, too. Barely. Which reminds me, do you think you can invite our parents back to your guestroom? I could use a break.”
“Can’t talk,” I said. “I’m in the middle of a training session.”
I reached into my bag to pull out my pièce de résistance. A green cabbage had been hanging out in my produce drawer since back when I’d last decided to make coleslaw only to abandon the plan in favor of takeout. I’d straightened out an old metal hanger and worked it through the center of the cabbage, wiggled it around to make the hole bigger, then threaded a long piece of rope I’d found in the garage through the hole. I’d wired a big jingle bell I’d pulled off an old Christmas wreath around the rope next to the cabbage.
Now I hurled one end of the rope over a low branch on a perfectly located shade tree, pulled it until the cabbage was hanging at the right height for chickens. Then I tied the rope tight with a square knot, the only knot I still remembered from my brief and unsuccessful stint as a Girl Scout: right over left around and through, left over right around and through.
Rod and The Supremes finished tracking down every last crumb of their favorite cereal and ambled over to see what was going on. I waited until they were focused.
“Ta-dah,” I said. “Chicken tetherball!”
I gave the cabbage a swing. The chickens caught on right away, circling around the cabbage, pecking at it, pushing it with their beaks, the bell jingling away.
“Just remember,” I said, “teamwork is the dreamwork.” I brushed my hands off, gave Rosie a big triumphant smile.
“Let me know when you need a replacement cabbage,” I said while I waited for her to open the gate.
“There’s no way you can leave that thing in there,” Rosie said. “One of the chickens will get caught on it and dislocate a wing, and then I’ll find her dead, dangling from the rope.”
“Eww,” I said. “Fine, I’ll take it down. And I’ll stop by three times a week for a half-hour supervised cabbage tetherball session, but I have to warn you, I’m only going to do it until I have paying clients.”
“Perfect,” Rosie said. “Okay, I owe you. What do you need?”
“I’ve got just the thing,” I said.